How to gain ownership and agreement out of conflict
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Consensus is where every individual member of a group fully accepts the group’s conclusion for the collective benefit of the group, and is fully committed to supporting it. People are willing to do this, even where the choice is not their individually preferred option, where they feel they have been fully listened to and understood, and where adopting the majority perspective is the fairest and most expedient way forward.
Consensus Reaching is the process of arriving at this point, and is all about providing the listening, understanding and fairness required to ensure that commitment.
The rules of consensus can be found in the general article on Consensus Reaching, and they have been adapted below for remote meetings where they can be used in conjunction with a whiteboard tool.
- The proposal is written out clearly on the whiteboard, and the facilitator checks that everyone understands it
- People then generate virtual sticky-notes of their reasons for (green sticky-notes) and against (pink sticky-notes) the proposal
- If people are concerned that a point is not clear, they can raise the issue and the facilitator can ask for clarification – which should be captured on the sticky-note
- People are then asked whether all the arguments on which people are basing their opinion are present, and asks people to write up any that are missing, and any counter-arguments to existing sticky-notes – duplicates can also be removed at this point
- Suggestions to modify the proposal during the debate are not allowed, but the debate can be stopped and a new one started if everyone agrees
- When the last sticky-note is written, the facilitator again asks if there is any other piece of information on which someone is basing their decision which they have not seen written so far
- The facilitator confirms that everyone feels that their points have been captured, and that every sticky-note has been read and understood by everyone, and that everyone is now basing their decision on the same information as everybody else
- The facilitator asks if everyone is therefore willing to abide by and support a majority choice – if not, the facilitator seeks to understand why, and what else needs to be discussed to make a majority choice the fairest option
- The facilitator creates a green ‘YES’ and a red ‘NO’ sticky-note and takes a vote (by people positioning their cursor over the relevant sticky-note) on whether the proposal as originally stated is to be adopted. The vote is binding on the group
Consensus Reaching takes time, particularly with larger and/or strongly opinionated groups. The simple process is to share the rules with your meeting participants and then work through them in order.
There are slight derivations to this process which can be found via the following links:
Track your progress to ensure the efficacy of this strategy.