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Money Matters: How to skyrocket consensus in your team

By Peter Ord - Special to the Daily Herald | Feb 4, 2023

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If someone asked you today to rate the consensus you currently have on your workforce team, what would your answer be? Could you say 80% or higher, or is it something much lower? Would it surprise you to know that 39% of employees don’t believe their organizations collaborate enough? 

Let’s face it: Making decisions that everyone supports is difficult, especially in the workplace. 

As a manager or CEO, you might be tempted to take control of the situation and make the decision for everyone, but that can lead to devastating results. If you constantly make decisions for your team, employees don’t know what to do when a decision needs to be made and you aren’t available. And if you continuously micromanage the team, those who aren’t as outspoken might not provide essential information, leaving team members feeling left out and great solutions forgotten on the table.

The best approach is to help your team reach a consensus. This can lead to better work relationships, help resolve conflicts and produce better solutions. Keeping that in mind, here are three methods to skyrocket consensus in your team: become a facilitator, encourage open communication and foster connections.

Become a facilitator

Facilitating involves guiding the conversation instead of controlling the conversation and ensuring each person participates. This method can help the team make better decisions together. 

However, not every leader recognizes this skill. Carly Fiorina is known by some as one of the worst CEOs in history. Upon entering HP, she made countless changes and radical decisions while ignoring the feedback from her team members and employees. She dictated instead of facilitating. In just six years, HP lost half its value. With all of her eloquence, drive and intelligence, Fiorina missed getting buy-in and consensus from her team, cementing her organization’s losses and her eventual dismissal from the company.

On the other end of the spectrum lies the example of Alan Mulally from Ford Motor Company. While Mulally lacked any experience in the auto industry, he knew how to facilitate and access the knowledge that his team possessed. He also knew how to help everyone reach a common goal. Through the facilitation of his team’s strengths, the organization went on to mass-produce a vehicle that anyone could buy, forever changing the auto market. These two examples could not be more vastly different, and the reason comes down to a leader’s ability to facilitate.

Using Mulally’s example of facilitation, rather than making decisions for your team or letting them wander aimlessly, guide the discussion so you pull from each person. Facilitating rather than guiding during conversations and meetings will make it easier for your team to reach a consensus and develop stronger solutions. 

Encourage open communication

Poor communication skills contribute to 44% of project setbacks and failures, yet open communication skills are essential for a team when they need to reach a consensus. Open communication means everyone feels comfortable sharing their concerns or opinions. It means each team member listens to what the other has to say and responds accordingly. It means addressing and solving disagreements instead of ignoring the issue.

When an organization fails to encourage open communication and listen to its team members, it can miss out on some amazing opportunities. Take Kodak, for example: In 1975, Kodak engineer Steve Sasson invented the first digital camera. However, executives failed to see the use for the device and quickly put a halt to its development. Kodak was quickly outpaced by companies that recognized the new trajectory of photography and declared bankruptcy in 2012. Once the leader in photographic equipment, Kodak was left behind, all because they failed to listen to a brilliant and forward-thinking engineer.

What opportunities might you be missing if you aren’t encouraging open communication? Does one of your team members see a potential issue that others haven’t yet recognized? Can someone on your team provide a creative solution for a current problem? Can team members resolve issues on their own because they fostered connections and feel supported? Open communication is a powerful way to drive growth and build consensus within and across teams. 

Foster connections

In 2021, 47.8 million employees resigned from their positions at work, the highest number of resignations ever recorded. Last year, Twitter’s “great resignation” played out on the world stage for everyone to see. With the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk came massive changes. Given the ultimatum to “Commit to a ‘hardcore’ work environment or be fired,” hundreds of the workforce resigned. Many pointed to the inability to connect with Musk and his agenda as their reasons for leaving. How this will play out for the massive organization still remains to be seen, but since October, Twitter has lost 35% in advertising revenue, one of its strongest contributors to net worth.

How can you foster connections with employees and encourage them to stay? One way is to create organizational traditions. One such tradition began unexpectedly for my organization through a rather hilarious mishap. A few years ago, we planned a company picnic and decided we would serve our employees the most delicious meat for the main course. However, in all of our planning, we neglected to purchase both plates and utensils for our guests. Rather than being discouraged by the lack of tableware, we went ahead and served the meat in red Solo cups. Our good-natured employees laughed over our mistake, and what began as an oversight on our part has turned into a much-loved company tradition. I’ve found this yearly event and other team-building activities have helped my teams feel more connected and supported because of the relationships and memories they have built.

By becoming a facilitator, encouraging open communication, and fostering connections, it’s possible for your team to reach a consensus and develop powerful solutions. History has shown us what happens when consensus is built and when consensus falls apart. Our team, our organization and our customers benefit from an organization with a shared mission and vision. Make the choice today to skyrocket consensus in your team and give your team the best shot at reaching the stars.

Peter Ord is the founder of GUIDEcx, a client implementation and onboarding project platform based in Lehi.

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