Consensus Is Nice If You Can Get It

It ain’t a plebiscite.

We’ve presumably hired smart, ambitious people and set them up to succeed. Good job, us. But! Smart people acting in good faith can come to incompatible conclusions. While leading people in the direction they already want to go is easy, sometimes we have to get them going somewhere else.

How many times over the years as a leader and manager have I found myself saying, “look, folks, it’s not a democracy”?

I don’t know how many. It’s a large number. 

Having to say something like that might indicate a breakdown somewhere along the way. But not necessarily! Sometimes smart people can, in good faith, disagree about the best approach to complex problems. Sometimes it really does fall to the team’s leader to make a decision.

If the buck is going to stop with you anyway, you may as well just unstick the situation and get on with it.

In “(I Can’t Get No) Objectivity” I wrote:

“I have long subscribed to a notion of “servant leadership” that means I see my role as much more about supporting the vision of the team rather than imposing my own.”

And that’s true! I feel that if I’ve done my job right, my teams are better than I am at the work. Whether in creative direction or people management, I try really hard to maintain an ethos of open-mindedness and curiosity. 

Still, though…decisions need to be made. 

“A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be.”

-Rosalynn Carter

Authority is granted. Credibility is earned.

There is at least one key disadvantage of servant leadership: when it’s working well, it’s very nearly invisible. Most of the time that’s okay — never let ‘em see you sweat, right? Equanimity is contagious.

And anyway, it would be pretty incongruous to draw attention to it. “Look at me! Look at me! Look how servant-y I am! Don’t you all appreciate it so much!” Hmm. No.

But if you’ve been doing the “servant” part really well, you may not have the credibility you think you do when you go to do the “leadership” part. 

Kate Eberle Walker notes in The Good Boss that despite the importance of showing vulnerability, admitting mistakes, and being authentic, there is a rather important flip side:

“Most employees want confident managers, and they want to feel like they are working for someone who they can learn from and who knows what they are doing.”

Look, If you’re the boss, you can always just tell the team what to do. You’ve got that authority! But that’s…not generally the most effective way to lead a creative team, at least not for long. So how do you build the credibility to be able to make decisions even while practicing servant leadership? 

One key is to involve the team in the decision-making, of course. But maintaining credibility requires doing this in a very specific way: soliciting input without giving the impression that every decision is up for a vote.

It’s a very fine line to walk. I doubt I personally have ever really been that successful at it, but I have seen it done, and I think it’s critical. It’s not easy.¹

Tyranny

If you’re able to make a critical decision that the entire team unanimously supports, well, congratulations. Good for you. Let us know how you did it. 

In my experience, except on very small teams, there’s always at least one person who’s sure leadership is going in the wrong direction, who’s sure you don’t know what you’re talking about.  (And on a larger team it might not just be a team member; it might be a whole contingent!)

I know this, of course, because I’ve been that person. I’ve thought, “management is off their nut here! How can they not see the obvious right answer? Are they incompetent? Are they stupid? Are they up to something nefarious?” 

And of course as a leader I’ve been the recipient of this sentiment, too. (I do empathize, but it can be tough to be on the receiving end, I won’t lie.)

Emboldened by the very call for input, that team member (or contingent!) — who has the big opinion, who is sure they are right — will chime in and lay out exactly what they think. 

And they might actually have a great take, or make a really great point! But maybe, for whatever reason, it’s just not the way you’re going to end up going. Sigh. 

When you then announce your decision, this person inevitably feels 1) like you’ve clearly made the wrong decision (they told you the right decision!), 2) like you’re intentionally disregarding them, and 3) like the entire exercise in seeking input was probably just theater anyway, bread and circus to appease the commoners while the elites do as they wish. They will feel (and probably loudly announce) that they’re being gaslit. Double sigh. 

It can be tempting to spend a lot of cognitive resources — and time — engaging with this person, trying to get them onboard. But doesn’t that expose the team to some sort of “tyranny of the minority?” Yes it does. It’s almost certainly not worth it.

Conversely, it can also be tempting to tell this person to sit down and shut up. (I have been told to sit down and shut up.) Also probably not the best approach.

The goal is really three-fold: 

• Empower the team to be involved in critical decisions and listen to them; after all, they usually have great collective expertise, they’re usually the most affected, and they’re the ones who will have to implement it anyway.

• Ensure the team feels empowered and listened to.² It’s important not to gaslight them into thinking they have more say than they do, but it’s also important to let them know how much say they really do have.

• Get a damn decision made.

I just don’t think there’s an easy way to do all that.

There’s an approach that floats around sometimes known as “disagree and commit.” Theoretically, this describes a culture, a mindset, and a structure designed to avoid the constipation of consensus. 

It goes basically like this: we’ll get the right people together and really have it out. We’ll die on our hills, stump for support, persuade, challenge, argue — and then once a decision is made, we’ll all get right on the boat and start sailing.³ 

For a while I was taken with this. Sounds good! But then I learned that a certain large tech company had really popularized this doctrine — and that it maybe wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. 

I heard from an individual who had worked there that many folks snarkily called it “disagree and submit.” That it was largely seen as air pudding at best, and as a culling mechanism at worst — getting folks to lower their guard and share what they really thought, and by so doing expose themselves to various retributions or consequences.

And this is the crux of the problem. While “disagree and commit” acknowledges that consensus can be difficult to achieve — and is fundamentally unnecessary — it suggests a dedication to input and debate. But it doesn’t really do anything to guarantee that: it’s incredibly easy to imagine it being used in bad faith.

I suppose the putative tenets of “disagree and commit” are solid. I just don’t think the best practice here can really be reduced to a pithy catchphrase. Bringing the team along on a decision is just a complex and delicate process that requires thoughtfulness, transparency, confidence, and curiosity. Damn.

Decisions need to be made.

“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” 

-Theodore Roosevelt (maybe) 

In most of my own time in leadership, I had really high-performing teams reporting up through me. When the team was running on all cylinders, most decisions were pretty much made by the time they got to me. My role was just to watertight them. (Yes, I just used “watertight” as a verb. Deal.)

Sure, occasionally there would be a tie-breaker kind of situation, at which point I’d often feel completely ridiculous, some kind of self-appointed Solomon, offering to cut the baby in half or something. 

But in those situations, once I got over myself, usually a few well-placed questions and some simple challenges to assumptions could help the folks involved to reframe the parameters and come to agreement. 

And then rarely — but not never! — I’d have to just lead by fiat.

The phrase “consensus is nice if you can get it” was actually said to me once. Many, many years ago I happened to be in a conversation with a very senior leader (read: Board of Directors level). I asked, with all the uncertainty in the industry and the economy, and with a headstrong group from such diverse backgrounds, how does the Board ever manage to decide anything? And this person responded with a shrug: “Everybody in there knows decisions need to be made. Consensus is nice if you can get it, but it’s really not necessary, you know?” 

Of course, at the time, I did not know. But over the years I had the chance to work on teams where I saw exactly this work, and had the opportunity to attempt it myself.

Servant leadership isn’t no leadership, and sometimes a leader just needs to decide. Be right more often than you’re wrong, and you’ll be fine. Nothing to it.

1. Before I move on, I want to note: I’m always wary of wielding quotes like this one from Carter. I don’t want to imply that I somehow think I was, am, or ever will be a “great leader.” That’s not at all how I see myself. But, I find the aspirational aspect inspiring. (Well, sometimes depressing. But mostly inspiring!)

2. Note that this is related to — but not the same as — actually empowering them or listening to them. See Manager Judo for some nuance on the risk/benefit of performative listening.

3. Woof, that’s a lot of metaphors.