One of the most crucial elements of leadership that we teach in the decision making process is on new initiatives and levels of agreement that need to be in place in the team to make those decisions.
We often confuse consensus with concordance, believing that alignment means that every person needs to fully agree and be happy with every single decision that needs to be made.
It’s exhausting trying to please everyone on the team especially with conflicting priorities and strong opinions and so we never reach alignment or worse we end up with a “Frankenstack solution” meaning we’ve included an idea from everyone to reach agreement but now our final solution is not sound.
So, how can we work inclusively yet still move the team into quick and sound decision making?
Firstly, understanding who has a voice, vote and veto in the leadership structure helps determine where the decision making needs to take place and how involved each team member needs to be in discussing what we ultimately agree to.
Ideally we shoot for consensus but sometimes we need to shift the level of agreement down to a lower level to move forward once the majority agrees.
The key is confirming the desired level of agreement ahead of time and not expecting that it will always be concordance or even consensus.
Managing expectations in terms of who has voice, vote and veto and the level of agreement needed to close an agreement is a helpful step in building a cohesive and aligned team.