My experience is that going to the other extreme has more subtle dangers. Trying to lead a small group with too much consensus-building is a bad idea too.
This is a belief earned out of personal experience. Some of my most significant problems as a small group leader arouse out of a desire to always lead by consensus. It’s a tendency I still fight today.
Like so many other things, the precedents that are set early will linger. It’s so hard to change this after you’ve already set off on the wrong foot.
There are 4 major reasons why trying to lead through consensus isn’t as wise as it appears.
#1) Despite appearances, making decisions through discussions doesn’t actually fairly and equally pull everyone into the decision making process.
To make a decision in a group discussion setting, the people who are best at argumentation and debate will be advantaged. Assertive people, or folks who think quickly, or speak persuasively end up shaping what is going on disproportionately.
This isn’t all together a bad thing. But it is ironic: these people will have a disproportianate impact no matter the leadership style of the leader. The truth is, that some of these traits might even closely correlate with leadership skills. The bottom line is that leaders lead; no matter what the official group leader does, some people are along for the ride and others will shape the journey.
#2) Consensus building is awkward and slow. Sometimes people just want a decision to be made. As stated above, the folks who have a strong opinion are most likely going to make it known regardless of what the leader does. People without a strong opinion are probably not interested in a protracted conversation about things to bring everybody to the same page.
#3) Consensus building gives the appearance of helping a leader avoid responsibility when things don’t go right, but this appearance is an illusion. In honesty, I’ll have to confess that this is one part of the appeal for consensus-building for me.
I had this idea that if we all came to a decision together, then if things go South it won’t seem like or be my fault.
Turns out, when things go South, nobody is really focused on how we came to an idea. They are just focused on the fact that I’m the leader and I approved the idea.
That’s actually as it should be. It’s appropriate that a leadership failure falls on my shoulders. The inapprorpriate part was me ducking responsibility in the first place.
The issue runs deeper than issues of responsibility. I’d go so far as to say that a decision reached by consensus is more likely to go astray.
It’s easy– though not wise– to reach general sweeping decisions by consensus. The nitty gritty decisions, the oh-so-importantt details though, often aren’t worked out in such a manner. This is partially because there are so many unanticipated decisions that have to be made on the fly. We can’t reconvene the group every few hours to come to decisions that pop up along the way.
The disconnect between people planning things they don’t have to execute is a problem. I have learned that I’m much more likely to make attainable plans if I’m soley responsible for them. I’m much more likely to consider the obstacles that stand in my way if I’m going to be implementing something.
It’s easy for a group to make plans to shoot for the stars and for some poor schmuck to try and make this work. When the original conception doesn’t happen, the implementer ends up feeling frustrated and the group ends up feeling like their vision was ignored.
#4) It’s better not to ask somebody for their opinion than to ignore an opinion that’s been spoken. Very rarely does everybody truly agree about much of anything. Inevitably, the final plan looks more like some people’s agenda than other people’s agenda.
There are numerous decisions that I don’t care about one way or the other… But if somebody asks me, and I express an opinion, and then they ignore it, suddenly I’m invested. I don’t care about the actual outcome. I do care that my opinion was ignored.
Trying to build a consensus creates this problem: lots of people have expressed an opinion that will, to various extents, be ignored. These people, like me, probably would have been happy to go along with a decision that was made outside of a discussion.
This leads to the question: If we can’t be dictators, and consensus has lots of pitfalls, just what should we do?
I’m a firm believer in shared leadership. The difference between shared leadership and consensus building is that shared leadership identifies specific areas of expertise: consensus building gives everybody an equal share in all aspects of group life.
It’s awesome to put one person in charge of a service project. It’s a bad idea, in my experience, to try to arrange a service project with equal imput from all members.
It’s great to have somebody in charge of arranging meal assignments. It’s a bad idea to spend much of the group’s precious time discussing whether we should have rotating assignments or just bring whatever we feel like.
It’s a great idea to ask someone to lead next week’s discussion. It isn’t very practical to ask everyone to lead the discussion.
Shared leadership avoids the pitfalls listed above. That quiet person who can’t get a word in edgewise in the discussion, we can use there strengths and allow them to impact group life. It takes mere seconds to say “Suzy, would you be in charge of X” rather than taking hours to hash things out. A good leader, of course, will be on top of Suzy’s progress. He won’t duck responsibility for overseeing Suzy’s assignment. But s/he can check in and work directly with Suzy around the bumps in the round rather than trying to work something out with the whole group. Finally, people are enpowered to have an impact in those areas they have a strong opinion. Somebody who states a strong opinion will have the oppurtunity to see it through.
Our agressive small group strategy of splitting every two years is what I believe God wants us to do. It requires leaders. Shared leadership is a powerful way to build these leaders.
Fellowship Church has adopted “intentional apprenticing” as a core value. These practices lend themselves to this task.
I’m not saying that there is no place for consensus within a small group… however, this place is much smaller than what I’d originally thought.
pastormarty
jeffsdeepthoughts
billydotcom
steveblumer