The Trouble with Consensus Leadership

I used to believe that the group always knows best and their collective decision making will result in the most effective result. As my career progressed and I became a manager, I also began to think in this way. Many of the decisions I would make would involve getting my employees to help weigh in the pros and cons of a certain idea or project. We would then discuss as a group and essentially vote.

Having seen and been a part of this consensus decision making first hand, I’ve come to realize that it rarely works. It may work well in a political or judicial environment, but in business it falls flat in a few big ways.

First off, your team members do not know everything that you do. I don’t mean this in a conceded way, I mean it the sense that you have been provided with knowledge and information that you’re team simply doesn’t have. This could be you knowing more details on the companies 3 year strategy as you have spent a significant time with an executive or two at your company. This could also be that you spend far more time that you team in the budget so you have a stronger understanding of what has netted good vs bad ROI (Return on Investment). And chances are, you probably also have more experience in this domain which may provide you with some more context on how a decision like this has played out in the past.

When you go the consensus route, it can create a lot of ambiguity, uncertainty. and an overall slowdown I’ve been a part of many a planning session where we have all sat around the table discussing what we should do next year. We’ve all been there. There are some great ideas, and are also some not so great ideas. There’s also lots of ideas that could go either way but need some more thought and detail. Lots of ideas can look good from 500 feet away but when you get up close, they tend to get a bit harrier. That’s where it helps to have someone work through the clutter of those ideas and decide for the group.

With uncertainty as mentioned above, comes frustration. When things are always left to the group to decide, things start moving at a slower pace. The same ideas come up over and over again. Things don’t get put into action. One of the more frustrating exercises is to repeatably come back to the same ideas in group discussions, then dance around how it will executed only to leave that discussion no further ahead as the group couldn’t come to complete agreement on how to proceed. What’s often needed here is someone to make a call. Once you make that first call on how to start, then you can adapt and change the process and you can involve the group in that, but getting started often needs a decision make who knows the direction they want to take it in.

As the leader, it can feel at first like it’s easier to allow the team to discuss and decide. Wrong. This rarely makes things easier and usually leaves at least one person upset with the outcome. It’s also not really their job to make those calls. You’re team can inform you and let you know what they think, and you should allow for this info exchange, but that does not mean you have to follow that information verbatim.

Lastly, it provides everyone the same voting rights regardless of their position, status, or knowledge. This just doesn’t make sense. If I’m leading a project to revamp our corporate website, do you think I should allow the same voting weights for a designer vs a web analyst vs a customer success rep vs a sales rep? Of course not. Chances are you have a team like this as well so why should everyone be given the same voting rights in decision making. It’s your job as lead to get the most out of these stakeholders, and make the best possible decision with the information you have.

I don’t thing getting a consensus is all bad and there is certainly a time and place where it can work but in my experience it’s a style of leadership and decision making that is overused and pretty much always under-delivers.