Theme 3 - Teams

How can we help our group to agree?

Groups need structures that assist participation and fair-decision making. Helping your group to reach agreement requires a commitment by individuals within the group and a toolbox of group decision-making methods.

Individuals can:

• Encourage the participation of others
• Use affirming messages for others contributions, even if you don’t agree with them
• Make sure you don’t dominate the debate
• Prevent conflict from becoming personal
• Stick to the topic
• Agree to go along with a popular strategy or activity, but don’t feel compelled to conform to the wishes of the majority if the differences are important
• Understand the different personalities and styles in your group

Inevitably decisions will need to be made around a topic with some conflict. If after allowing extra time for a problem solving approach it becomes apparent that a consensus is not possible, the group must agree which strategy they will use for reaching a decision. Common strategies are:

• Voting
• Allow the expert or leader to decide
• Nominal Group Technique
• Delphi Technique

Voting

This can be open or closed. In open voting the chairperson requests a ‘show of hands’ (raised hand) in favour of a particular decision and a show of hands against that decision. The greatest number of hands wins the vote. In a closed vote the members are asked to submit whether they are for or against a decision. This is usually done by writing ‘yes’ or ‘no’ (or ‘for’ or ‘against’) on a piece of paper which is then given to a neutral person to count. The numbers for and against are added up and which ever is greater wins the vote.

Allow the expert or leader to decide
This technique allows the group to delegate the responsibility and the authority for making a decision to the leader or to an identified expert. There may be times where this is appropriate especially if the issue is highly specialised, however it is a non-inclusive decision-making strategy and is not always suitable for group projects.

Nominal Group Technique

This structured technique allows everyone to present their ideas without feeling threatened. The steps are:

• The team leader presents the problem and gives everyone (working in groups of about six people) ten minutes to write down ideas and suggestions for problem solving.
• Ideas are shared in a round robin fashion with one response per person read out and put onto a flipchart at a time.
• Ideas are discussed sequentially and clarified if necessary.
• Anonymous voting of ideas or anonymous rating on all ideas (depending on the number of ideas).
• Votes are tabulated.

This Mycoted Ltd web-site has more details about nominal group techniques, plus links to variations of this method.

Delphi Technique

The Delphi technique is useful for reaching consensus when face-to-face discussion is not possible or not preferred.

• The method uses electronic mail, fax or postal mail to ask the group about their problem solving ideas.
• A facilitator collates the ideas and sends them to the group with room for further ideas, clarifications or comments.
• Either a consensus idea will emerge, the facilitator can prepare a report on the ideas with most merit, and agreement, or an anonymous voting system can be applied to all ideas.

This University of Wisconsin has a full description of the technique and templates for the Delphi technique (pdf).

This Centre for Rural Studies site lists some advantages and disadvantages of decision making styles plus the Mycoted Ltd. site has a wonderful range of creative problem solving techniques.