Consensus Building

We had a meeting with the group over the last weekend, and talked about how to build consensus. We first talked about how things had been going since the last meeting/training. It's important to check in to be able to feel out the environment as well as hear any important feedback or concerns since the last meeting. This is also a time where you can check on any assignments or tasks that were asked to be done at the last meeting. And so, we did this, we checked in with people and addressed any concerns that were raised. It went very well.

We then talked about how a group can work together to build consensus. The process that we used and explained to them was based on a number system. You used numbers 1-5, and each number represents a feeling or disposition for the item at hand. For example, if we were talking about making banana break for the neighbors down the street, and we were a family of four, we would go around to all four members of the family and asked how they felt about the idea. Mom says a 2, which would mean that she would be okay with it, but that it wouldn't be her first choice. Dad says he is a 1, which would mean that he was all for it and had no reservations. Susie says she is a 1, so she also has no reservations. Johnny says that he is a 4, meaning that he REALLY doesn't want to do it, and his reasoning is that the neighbor's little boy was picking on Johnny the other day at school and making fun of him.

The process would be to ask the numbers, and then go around again to see what the reservations are for each of the individuals. We would then discuss these reservations and look into possible other options and ways to address the concerns that exist. After coming up with ideas, and putting them into place, we would then go around again and ask the individuals what their NEW number is, now that the concerns have been addressed. Depending on how this goes, you may need to repeat this process, or decide that you will be operating on a majority vote basis.

This is only one way to build consensus. This is the way that we taught the group, and helped them to practice it with the real concerns that they had as an organization. Overall, I think that it went really well, but could tell that the directions could be slightly confusing. I think a part of that was that people weren't able to have directions in front of them because of their impairments with vision. Depending on the group, you would just need to figure out how to best explain the process to the group. The idea here is to help build the unity in the group and to then strengthen the organization.