When working with teams, leaders have the opportunity to observe how teams make decisions. In most cases they will discover that there is no explicit process for making decisions. Most of the time an implicit and unclear majority rule is used. What does this mean? A person suggests something and looks around to see if there is general agreement or disagreement. Agreement is not explicitly sought. If there are no objections, it is interpreted as agreement.
Experience shows that people do not voice objections for a variety of different reasons:
• They are still thinking.
• They haven’t fully understood the proposal or don’t think a decision is being made.
• They want to see if others have objections before they state theirs.
• There is a certain intimidation factor because of the person who made the suggestion (it could be a strong leader, an authority figure, a friend, a strong advocate, or someone they don’t want to get into conflict with).
• They have doubts but don’t feel comfortable raising them.
• They lack clarity on whether they are supposed to voice concerns or are allowed to.
• They’re waiting to be asked for their opinion.
All these reasons may lie behind the silence—a silence with potentially dangerous impact on the implementation of decisions reached. The danger lies in the fact that those who fail to express their views at the time of the decision will express them later during the implementation of the decision. This might end up postponing implementation, blocking it, or reducing the motivation of the silent ones to execute the decision, which then destroys trust.
The Fist Five is a decision-making process based on consensus, in which everyone is able to express his or her thoughts about a decision in a simultaneous voting process. Fist Five is not based on complete agreement. Consensus is defined here as a process of discussion in which group members talk, sense, and think together, resulting in a decision that everyone can ultimately support. Consensus is recommended as the best means of making decisions for most teams and, importantly, it lays the groundwork for trust.
The Fist Five provides positive ownership for decisions, it encourages a healthy dialogue, and it allows issues to surface and be aired. Because it is announced, people become aware that a decision is about to be made; this forces those involved in the decision to express clearly what the proposal is. As people are asked to express what is behind their votes, new information is brought into the room to be considered and discussed.
Finally, no decision is made until the objections are resolved and the issue is ready for implementation.
Here’s how the Fist Five works: The person who has a proposal to be decided on spells it out in a way that clearly establishes the essence of the proposal. For example, “I propose that we hire a new PR advisor.”
The person making the proposal gives the team members half a minute to reflect, then asks them to raise their hands and use their fingers to vote on the degree to which they agree with the proposal, according to the scale shown in Figure 3:
The Fist Five
By using this method to visually test the potential for consensus, everyone can see where everyone else is on the decision continuum.
The next step is for the person who made the proposal to ask the voters on opposite ends of the spectrum (those who gave it a fist or a one and those who gave it a four or a five) to express what is behind their thinking. This will uncover and bring in new information that should be included in the process.
Sometimes people are opposed to a decision but do not know exactly why. They can’t give a good rationale and say, “I just don’t think this is the right decision.” A way to help such people explore their thoughts (which may not even be conscious to them) is to ask, “What has to be true for you to accept this decision?” or, “What would you need in order to change your vote from a two to a three?” This allows these individuals to contribute information that illuminates their thinking.
This process may be more time-consuming than a simple majority vote but it enriches the decision and ultimately makes its implementation easier. The team will come to a new consensus or make a different and better decision.
When Jenna began her discussion saying she had no energy and was getting burned out working on the team’s challenges, it was like a burden had been lifted from the team. Sensing this, she said she thought that a lack of trust might be one root of the team’s performance issues. What ensued was an objective discussion about what was working well and what wasn’t in each of the three trust dimensions—ability, integrity, and loyalty—without blaming anyone for their individual performance. She let the content of the discussion guide each member to see his or her own parts in the team’s performance. The team agreed that a lively outburst of “Trust issue!” could be grounds for pausing team conversations and exploring any concerns they faced.
This approach also led the team to reach out to its manager about the lack of support the team felt at times. Impressed with the work the team had done on using trust as a guiding framework, he agreed to be subject to the “Trust issue!” cry when he was needed to support the team.