Author: Terence

I am a Minister of the Uniting Church in Australia. My current ministries focus on consultancy and teaching about consensus based decision-making, mediation, governance training and professional supervision for Ministers. I am co-author of the book "The Church Guide For Making Decisions Together". I live on the beautiful Far South Coast of NSW from where I undertake ministry across the globe. Contact me at terence@makingchurchdecisions.com

Why isn’t consensus embraced?

If consensus is so wonderful then why doesn’t every group take it up? In a recent post, I spoke about 16 wins that come from using consensus-building approaches. So, if it achieves so may good results why is there resistance to consensus-based discernment?

Nothing is broken

There’s an old saying: “if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it!” There are many people who think that the parliamentary model works just fine. So they don’t see any point in going to all the trouble of learning this newfangled consensus stuff!

The people who are content with the current approach are the people for whom it works. From the perspective of people for whom English is a second language, the less well educated, women, young people and the marginalized the current way decisions are made is broken. Ask these people if a parliamentary / Roberts Rules of Order approach is good for them.

It is also broken because way too many decisions do not get implemented. The same old issues keep returning. Decisions are made and they don’t get put into effect. Decision-making that doesn’t result in action is broken!

Consensus approaches are resisted because people with influence claim that nothing is wrong. Check it out for yourself – are they right? If you want to encourage consensus discernment processes in your church then start pointing out where the current model is broken.

Fear of Losing Power

As the old saying goes: “winners are grinners”. Who would not be happy with a process that improves their chance of getting what they want? So, naturally, people resist consensus discernment when its introduction threatens their power.

When changes are made in a system the equilibrium is upset. A repositioning of power takes place. There will be resistance from those who fear losing power. Consensus – despite all its benefits – is not taken up because it has enemies.

If you want to encourage consensus do not be naive. Expect opposition and plan ahead for how you can make and support the case for change in a highly ethical way.

Obstacles to Consensus in the Culture

By far the biggest obstacle to the embrace of consensus discernment is culture. Basically, we have it in our head that some things are valuable / sensible / right and others are not.

So in Western culture, we find the following.

  • ideas that are expressed in clumsy ways or tentative terms are regarded as inferior to those presented in clear and assertive words
  • asking questions is seen as nitpicking and a diversion from the main discussion
  • complexity is avoided in favor of pithy statements and confident speeches
  • passion is alright but don’t show too many feelings
  • analysing and exploring implications is seen as going off on a tangent – never regarded as a good thing!
  • being productive / fast is valued whereas going slowly is frowned upon
  • questions are perceived as challenges – as though the questioner has done something wrong
  • presenting an alternative point of view is seen as being negative or a conflict that must be solved as quickly as possible
  • once a majority view is said to exist everyone else is expected to get on board or be seen as a spoiler

Culture is hard to overcome. If you want to bring change you will have to challenge the prevailing culture and affirm its alternatives. Think about some of the ways that you can do this in a meeting. What affirmations can you offer to the people who are devalued? What interventions can you make or statements of another way can you offer? Find and affirm values from the Christian faith that align with consensus approaches to discernment.

Conclusion

Change to consensus needs to happen! There are many good reasons why this is so – at least 16!  Consensus is good for individuals and groups and yet this is not universally recognised. Resistance comes from a lack of awareness of the problems, fear of losing power and the influence of culture.

Support the people who experience the pain of the current approach, educate others about its limitations, take the power issues seriously and teach and model an alternative church culture.

Consensus-building: 16 wins you get now!

Consensus-building approaches to decision-making are often criticised for taking too long to get a result. While I don’t agree with this view I want to encourage you! There are lots of great wins to be had. They come long before and after a decision is reached.

Values Shape Individuals and Organisations

Consensus-building rests on some key values. They include

  • full participation
  • seeking mutual understanding
  • desiring and generating inclusive solutions
  • accepting shared responsibility to find answers to challenges

When these principles of participatory decision-making are employed in churches and other organisations then they produce significant results. Consensus-building approaches to discernment build stronger individuals, stronger groups and stronger agreements.

Stronger Individuals

  • Improved leadership skills

By learning to attend well and to support others, people enhance their ability to lead in many different situations.

  • Stronger powers of reasoning

By taking into account all the relevant information people learn to discern what is important and how the parts fit together. Generally, they get better at working things out!

  • More confidence

People who are affirmed about their contribution feel good about themselves. This enhances their willingness to make a contribution at other times.

  • More commitment

Consensus-building assumes that people see themselves as part of a team. Its foundational assumption is that we are in this together. You get what you expect from people! Groups that regularly use consensus-building techniques experience higher levels of commitment from the membership of the group.

  • Better communication skills

Any process that expects people to listen carefully, check that they have heard accurately, and to carefully and respectfully present their views is a training ground for good communication skills! People don’t lose these skills when they leave a meeting that uses consensus-building processes.

  • Greater ability to assume broader and more difficult responsibilities

A key value is that everyone in a group shares responsibility for the work and the outcome. So, this broadens people’s horizons about what their role is in the group. Their success in offering leadership in the consensus-building process gives them confidence that they can do it elsewhere.

Stronger Groups

  • Greater ability to utilize multiple talents

If your decision-making process expects you to use the insights, experience, wisdom and personalities of everyone – why wouldn’t that spill over to other times? Discovering and valuing multiple talents benefits a group in every circumstance.

  • Access to more types of information

Groups can be closed or open. They can be inward-looking or seeking the best information from wherever they find it. It is a no brainer to work out which groups will thrive. You can foster and honor an organisational culture that seeks the best information from whatever source is appropriate.

  • Development of a respectful, supportive atmosphere

When members of a group know that they are respected and learn to support each other it makes for a great workplace, church or group. These types of groups just work better! So use a consensus-building approach to discernment because it significantly reduces combative and disrespectful interactions. Win!

  • Clear procedures for handling group dynamics

Groups are complex. However with the values of full participation, seeking after mutual understanding, desiring and generating inclusive solutions, and accepting that people share the responsibility to find answers to their challenges the procedures are in place to handle any kind of situation in your group.

  • Increased capacity for tackling difficult situations

A group that draws on all members, is open to generating new ideas, is patient, respectful and positive has the ability to tackle complex matters. Put in place the values that undergird consensus-building discernment. Then you will ensure that your group can handle more difficult situations than when people were just told what to do.

Stronger Agreements

  • More ideas

Generating more options for action means it’s far more likely that you will come up with something that works.

  • Higher quality ideas

It makes sense that if you generate more ideas that the quality will go up. Also, the commitment of consensus-building processes to quality information, from wherever it is sourced, provides the seedbed from which great ideas can grow.

  • Solutions that integrate everyone’s interests and hopes

When discussions focus on needs, hopes and interests then it is possible to find a lot of common ground. However, when the focus is on positions and “what I want” people get locked in. Consensus-building discernment understands that people have many interests embedded in an issue. It identifies these on the way to developing an agreed course of action.

  • Wiser decisions

When the perspectives of everyone are taken seriously then the best mind of a group can come to the fore. Churches that make decisions by consensus (ie aiming for 100% support) appreciate that wisdom is not always the property of the majority. Sometimes the wisdom is about the timing of actions or that further things need to be done before implementation.

  • More reliable follow through

If people don’t see their needs being met in an agreement then it will not get implemented. Strong agreements happen when people see their hopes realised in a decision. There is no process that is more likely to produce high levels of buy in than a consensus-building model.

Conclusion

Using consensus-building approaches to decision-making gives participants a great experience. They learn new skills and create better options for action. This experience gives a group great wins in addition to the quality of the decisions that they make!

8 Tools for the Mediator Leader

Getting Started

The Mediator leader brings a distinctive mindset, operational style and hopefulness to a conflict. The Mediator is a marked contrast with the Demagogue and the Manager. Mediator leaders are not necessarily professionally trained as mediators. In this context, it means leaders who are seeking to bring disputing parties together by seeking bridges of understanding leading to an agreement. Therefore they must approach conflict in a specific way, and use a suite of skills that build relationships, trust and shared solutions.

The 8 tools used by the Mediator leader are outlined below. They are a brief summary from the book Leading Through Conflict: How Successful Leaders Transform Differences into Opportunities, by Mark Gerzon.

Integral Vision

When a conflict erupts the first thought is to try and calm things down and to fix it as quickly as possible. If you are involved as a leader you see people hurting, the congregation threatening to fracture, funding at risk – it seems to demand action. But the first thing to do is – nothing!

If no one’s life is in danger then take a step back. Unless you take time to understand the whole picture – in all its complexity and inter-related parts – then you will make an inappropriate intervention. The vision required of a Mediator leader is an integral vision – one that integrates the parts of a  conflict into a whole.

The skills required when using integral vision are to question, reject and test the validity of anything that seeks to put dividing walls between the parties. This includes rejecting labels, disrespecting the integrity of those with different opinions and nurturing the webs that connect us.

Systems Thinking

Once you are focused on the whole conflict you need to work at understanding how the parts are connected. So you will look at relationships and history between the parts. You will seek to understand the character, goals and values of the different parties to the conflict. The goal here is to think systemically!

The skills one uses here are probing questions that seek to unpack the relationships that give rise to the conflict. For example: Why does this church always push out its Pastor every 3 years? What is the personal and faith history of the people that are on opposite sides of support for a new building project? What is it in our church’s story that makes change difficult?

Think of integral vision as making sure that you have all the pieces of a jigsaw in front of you before you start. Then systems thinking is searching for which piece connects to the next.

Presence

More than our minds are required to solve a conflict. When you bring all your emotional, mental and spiritual resources to the midst of a conflict – this is presence. A leader needs to be very self-aware in order to be present in a conflict. So s/he needs to acknowledge their fears, anguish, hopes, anger, etc and deal with them.

The goal of presence is to be calm, available, attentive and capable of contributing to the transformation of the conflict.

Developing that ability requires the application of specific skills. Leaders address their emotional response to conflict and learn to be peaceful in it through a variety of strategies. Examples include solitude, coaching, prayer and spiritual direction, feedback from colleagues, intentional 360 reviews, meditation, playing music or creative art.

Calm, attentive persons who can bring the whole of themselves to their role as Mediator leader have presence. Presence is the master tool and makes it possible to use all the other tools. Because it is so very difficult to be this detached when one is very involved in a conflict it is wise to know when to bring in an external mediator.

Inquiry

Accurate and comprehensive data and analysis are essential for understanding. Without understanding it is impossible to transform a conflicted situation. It is amazing how many leaders go ahead with proposals on how to end a conflict before taking all the time necessary to understand it.

Mediator leaders value understanding and will not short circuit this stage. They also know that they do not have all the insights required in order to get a handle on the issues in a conflict. Therefore they seek the opinions of others – parties to the conflict, outside observers, professional sources of data. Mediator leaders understand that quality information is what makes it possible to find solutions that meet the needs of the parties.

Two skills go with this tool – questions and listening. Valuable inquiring questions begin with who, when, where, how, what, why, what else. Because understanding requires taking in information a Mediator leader is a good listener. So they always make sure that they “get it”. Often they will check back with a speaker to be certain that they understand the point. In the listening, they are understanding what is accurate and inaccurate; and monitoring spoken and unspoken communications.

These first four steps are preparation. Constructive, trust-building processes are essential to achieving transforming and positive outcomes to a conflict. Skip them at your own peril.

Conscious Conversation

Mediators know that people have choices about the way that they communicate. Their goal is to create a setting in which the parties can relate to each other is more constructive ways.

The skills involved include reminding, or perhaps educating, participants about the different ways they can use to engage in communications with each other. The range includes verbal brawling, debate, discussion, making presentations, negotiation, offering counsel, and silence. A negotiated Behavioral Covenant can be helpful preparation for dialogue in conflict situations.

By making it possible to have conscious conversations a Mediator leader is offering and nurturing alternative ways for the parties to engage. Thoughtless counter attacks and knee-jerk reactions are replaced with conscious conversations. Then out of these new ways comes deeper understanding and hence new options can emerge.

Dialogue

Dialogue is possible because the first five tools have been employed. The Mediator’s goal in using this tool is to get parties to connect across what divides them. Then from this comes a greater awareness of interests and a catalyst to reduce attachment to the original positions.

The skill required of the Mediator leader is to keep the parties focused on exploring their interests or goals. Usually, people want to focus on their “positions” or strategies that they believe will achieve their goals. Explore interests and not positions.

Interests based mediation or negotiation has been effectively used for many decades in local and international disputes. The classic and still relevant presentation of this approach is by Fisher and Ury – Getting to Yes. This book is an easy to read introduction to the goals and strategies of dialogue.

Bridging

Talk is not enough to resolve a conflict. The participants must do something quite different in relation to each other or in response to the presenting issues that gave rise to the dispute. However, these ideas will not come from the genius of one side or the other. Rather the bridge needs to be built from both sides so that it can meet in the middle.

A Mediator leader is like an engineer who has the drawings and believes in the possibility of constructing something wonderful. However it is the parties that must bring the materials.

The skills that are required are the things that make it possible for the materials to be delivered to the site. They are trust, social capital, respect, healing, empathy, understanding, courage, collaboration, caring, even love. The Mediator leader fosters, protects and encourages these things

When the bridging happens it can come suddenly and surprisingly. At play here is a “fundamental and mysterious truth: the energy between the parties must change in order for conflict to be transformed.” (Gerzon p. 57)

Innovation

Innovation is the breakthrough that now seems to provide an alternative to an ongoing conflict. While such an idea might have been imagined before, it could not be achieved until now.

The Mediator leader sustains the hope of the participants that around the next bend there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. Their skill is to help the parties recognise and celebrate the bridge they are building and to affirm and test the innovations that arise.

Equally as important is to make sure that there are very high levels of agreement with the proposed solution. This is more than some parties sitting silently and sullenly while others rejoice. It means testing that the stakeholders will promote the solutions among their constituencies and resource its implementation.

Afterword

Don’t pop the champagne corks just yet! Things sometimes unravel and great hopes are dashed. Your role as a leader at this time is to support the leaders who have seen an alternative vision for relationships in their community. You do this by reminding them of their agreements and how positive they felt. Coach them in how to carry the conversations forward into their constituencies. Maintain the hope and keep pointing out the path that has been created. Within Christian communities, this obviously includes the use of Scripture, prayer and other spiritual disciplines.

These are 8 tools that really work. They have been used successfully in many apparently intractable conflicts – large and small. Remain hopeful, grow your skills and then use them.

Leading Through Conflict

Types of Leaders

Leading Through Conflict (Mark Gerzon) is the name of an important text for leaders. It is also an indispensable capacity for all who care about leading their community well. Leadership doesn’t happen by accident. Don’t be asleep on the job when conflict arises. Reflect on your style of leadership in a conflict and choose to be the best at leading that you can be!

Gerzon says that there are three types of leaders – and they engage with conflict in different ways. We all have the capacity to display the traits of each type of leadership. So be careful! The more we live in one “space” the more that becomes our dominant style.

Leading as a Demagogue

  • intensifies conflict
  • lacks compassion and dehumanizes persons on the other side
  • relies on ideology and not experience
  • prefers indoctrination to inquiry, misrepresentations over the truth
  • shuns complexity
  • tears down bridges and refuses to listen to new options

The Demagogue, and those who follow them, have contempt for the idea that reconciliation is possible. Therefore they prefer fear based exploitation of differences so that they can maintain their power.

The Demagogue wants to control the situation for their own ends.

Leading as a Manager

  • defines themselves by their place in the system
  • only pursues the interests of their group
  • does not think holistically but in narrow compartments of specialty or role
  • disregards the other
  • accepts existing boundaries

The Manager is often surprised by conflict because s/he doesn’t see the whole picture but only their part. So they usually struggle to generate options because of their narrow worldview. Managers hate conflict and try to “fix” it by managing the symptoms or trying to banish conflict by smothering it or through executive order.

Leading as a Mediator

  • is a steward of the whole rather than an owner of the parts (Admiral Joe Dyer, US Navy)
  • takes into account the whole and accepts complexity
  • welcomes diversity of contribution
  • commits to bridging divides and partnering with all stakeholders to do so
  • builds trust
  • delights in innovation and creative surprises
  • hopes and works to bring that hope to life

The Mediator type of leader accepts that conflict is inevitable in complex organisations. Respect for all points of view leads the Mediator to facilitate the capacity of diverse groups to listen to each other, think systemically, and to patiently inquire until there is a complete understanding of the issues.

Leading in the Mediator style uses the following 8 tools. They were first mentioned in the post 8 Steps to Turn Differences Into Opportunities. They will be expanded upon in the next post.

  1. Integral vision – acknowledging all sides of the conflict
  2. Systems thinking – understanding the connection between the factors that contribute to a conflict
  3. Presence – using all your emotional, spiritual, and mental resources to understand the nature of the dispute
  4. Inquiry – asking the right questions to get all the relevant information
  5. Conscious communication – making good choices about how you communicate during a conflict
  6. Dialogue – inspire people’s ability to work through the conflict
  7. Bridging – build partnerships that cross the borders that divide
  8. Innovation – foster breakthrough ideas and new options for resolving differences

Conclusion

In today’s complex world it is the Mediator style of leaders who have the most to offer. Think about conflicts in which you have been involved. Have there been times when you have shown the traits of the Demagogue, the Manager and/or the Mediator? Which approach resulted in the most innovation for finding a sustainable long-term solution?

Self-awareness is a key skill in effective leaders. As you engage in conflict situations note when you are behaving as these different types. Foster and build your capacity to function in Mediator mode. Think about a situation that your local congregation or group is facing right now. What skills of the Mediator type of leader can you employ in that situation? Plan for how to use the 8 steps that turn differences into opportunities.

We’d love to hear what works for you. Please share some of your experiences in the comments section.

Communication in the groan zone

Communication is important at any stage in a group decision-making process. But to get through the groan zone requires special attention to your communication and leadership.

  The Groan Zone

Signs that you are in the groan zone

  • it seems that the discussion is going around in circles
  • misunderstandings and miscommunication abound
  • tensions are rising as people press for a solution when none seem obvious
  • people are defensive, short tempered and insensitive
  • exasperation, confusion, frustration, boredom and aggravation are present

The groan zone is the most difficult place in the process of group decision-making. Yet it is the essential bridge on the way from a wide collection of divergent ideas to the development of an agreed decision.

The dynamics of group decision-making

When discussion commences on a new topic what usually happens is that people start with a “business as usual” approach. So the first ideas are familiar opinions. Suggestions are usually to follow a well known path – even if it is known not to work!

Stage two is possible when the culture and practices of the group encourage the sharing of different perspectives. This is where different approaches and life experiences can be shared; “left field” ideas get floated; and new insights can come forward. At this point the thinking of the participants is becoming more divergent – the range of the discussion is widening, looking less controlled, the possible outcomes expanding and the end point less certain.

Stage three is the groan zone – more on this later.

Stage four is where the ideas of people start to coalesce and come closer together. The thinking of the group is converging. From being like the wide end of a funnel it gradually narrows down to a clear point from which a solution can emerge.

Stage five is the decision point – all these divergent ideas from the start of the process have converged to one agreed point of decision.

Communication in the groan zone

As a group moves into the place of greatest divergence in its thinking, and least clarity about where this is all going, there are key communication messages. The first responsibility of a facilitator or leader is to encourage people to hang in there.

People don’t like uncertainty. They stress out when they think that a process is not going anywhere. They get angry if they see a solution and other people keep slowing things down by talking about “other stuff”. Therefore many people want to get out of this space as fast as possible. So they simplify things too quickly – rushing  prematurely to a decision.

When people experience discomfort in a process they often judge the group to be dysfunctional and the / or the process to be bad. Communication that helps people to see that this phase is normal and necessary encourages them to stay with it for a bit longer. The groan zone is a direct and inevitable consequence of the diversity that exists in a group. Assure people that this cluster of many ideas and perspectives are the ground from which a solution will come.

Communication strategies

  • When people are rambling – paraphrase what they are saying
  • If there are misunderstandings and miscommunication ask open questions or check with people what they have said
  • Where people press for a premature solution ask what areas of the discussion this solution may not be taking into account
  • Encouraging empathy and supporting openness are responses to defensiveness, short tempers and insensitivity
  • Explore the sources of exasperation, seek clarity and respect feelings

The goals of your communication strategy

People have to sit with the tensions and the desire to “get this over with” that is inherent in a group discernment process. It is by spending sufficient time growing insight and understanding of one another and our ideas that make it possible to see common ground.

Therefore the key goals of your communication strategy in the groan zone are to encourage patience, enable perseverance and to foster tolerance. By using your communication skills to create this culture in the group you create the space for the process goals to be achieved.

The process goals are increased understanding of one another, recognition of options that meet the needs of more people in the group, and beginning to explore for common ground. Convergence will not happen unless the leader makes the groan zone a tolerable experience. It will always be hard but it can always be worse!

Conclusion

Group decision-making provides the most creative, effective and long term successful form of decision-making. However the path is not a straight line. First there must be an expansion of the conversation from the familiar to the new. Later these new insights will be incorporated into a solution that will be reflected in a well supported decision. The link between the divergence phase and the convergence phase is the groan zone. Here the disparate pieces are processed, the common ground discovered and collaboration is fostered – community is built! There are many resources available for how to build consensus through this stage. Please avoid the trap of pressing for premature agreement just because it gets a bit too hard.