The Destructive Nature of Fake Consensus

The Destructive Nature of Fake Consensus

Consensus is overused in decision-making. Leaders, in the United States, often default to seeking consensus, seeing it as the holy grail of group decision-making, believing that this is the only or a good way to ensure buy-in to the decision. There are several problems with this choice of decision-making style, including but not limited to the following:

• First and foremost, most decisions should not be made by consensus. Victor Vroom’s research shows that 60-80% of situationally appropriate decision-making styles ultimately rely on the leader having the final say. More on this later.
• Fake consensus — when the leader pretends the decision is being made by consensus, but it isn’t — creates significant skepticism, distrust, and disengagement.
• Consensus can result in poor decisions with bad outcomes if individual experts’ input is not honored; this is sometimes known as “groupthink.”

Let’s look at why consensus should not be the default for group decision-making. I’ll review two models: (1) the spectrum of group engagement and (2) Victor Vroom’s Situational Leadership model.

The Spectrum of Group Engagement

There are many ways that groups make decisions, with consensus being only one of them. The styles on the spectrum, moving left to right, increase the number of people included in the process.

Each of these methods has pros and cons. A sample of each is provided below.

A few notes about the different decision-making methods mentioned above:

• People confuse unanimity and consensus.
• Unanimity exists when everyone loves the decision. Try this with seemingly simple decisions like going on vacation to Hawaii or eating vanilla ice cream; you can’t get unanimity with even these seemingly universally appealing choices.
• Consensus is reached when everyone feels heard, can live with the decision, and will support it outside the room. Note this last phrase. Will people support it when they’ve left the meeting?
• Avoiding voting as much as possible in organizational life; it’s divisive; there are ways to get a sense of direction that don’t involve voting, e.g. dot voting with multiple dots per person.

Victor Vroom’s Situational Leadership Model

The second model I want to introduce to you is the work of Victor Vroom, professor emeritus at the Yale School of Management. Vroom’s decades of research, based on true cases and used with over 200,000 managers worldwide, produced a taxonomy of ways leaders make decisions with their core team. Leaders who adjust the decision-making process to the situation are referred to as situational leaders. These leaders adjust their decision-making process to increase the development level of their staff, “as defined by competence, commitment, confidence, and motivation to perform a particular task without supervision.”

A situational leader is one who can adopt different leadership styles depending on the situation. The following section is adapted from Victor Vroom’s work. Vroom’s research shows that there are four concepts that powerful situational leaders understand and utilize:

• Taxonomy of leadership styles
• Effectiveness criteria
• Situational factors
• Time- and development-driven models

1. The Taxonomy of Leadership Styles

Vroom distinguishes five degrees of involvement by a group in the decision: Decide, Consult Individually, Consult Group, Facilitate, and Delegate.

2. Effectiveness Criteria

Your leadership style makes a difference. The five choices are not equally likely to prove effective. The choice of decision-making method is assessed against four criteria: 1. the quality of the decision made; 2. the effectiveness with which the decision is implemented; 3. the amount of time consumed in making the decision; and 4. the extent to which the decision process contributes to the development of team members. A leadership style that is best for one of these criteria is not necessarily best for another. For example, a decision that is time-sensitive may not be the best opportunity for developing team members

3. Situational Factors

In some situations, a more “autocratic” or decisive approach is likely to be most effective. In others, various degrees of involvement on the part of your group or team are likely to produce better results. Being an effective leader requires recognizing when to use each of these ways of making decisions. The normative model utilizes 11 factors described later in this column.

4. Time- and Development-Driven Models

The priorities you place on short-term (e.g., minimizing time) or on longer-term (developing your team) considerations will affect the optimal style for a given decision.

11 Factors to Consider

Vroom’s model suggests 11 factors that a leader should consider when choosing which decision-making method to use. These are:

1. Decision Significance: The significance of the decision to the success of the project or organization.
2. Importance of Commitment: The importance of team members’ commitment to the decision.
3. Leader’s Expertise: Your knowledge or expertise in relation to this problem.
4. Likelihood of Commitment: The likelihood that the team would commit itself to a decision that you might make on your own.
5. Goal Alignment: The degree to which the team supports the organization’s objectives at stake in this problem.
6. Likelihood of Disagreement: The likelihood that the team will be in conflict or disagreement about preferred solutions to the problem.
7. Group Expertise: Team members’ knowledge or expertise in relation to this problem.
8. Team Competence: The ability of team members to work together in solving problems.
9. Interaction Constraint: The difficulty and/or cost in convening a meeting of group members due to their geographical dispersion or the immediacy within which action is needed.
10. Importance of Time: The “opportunity costs” of involving group members stemming from the amount of their time and your time which would be necessary.
11. Importance of Development: The value of further developing the capabilities of group members, their ability to work together as a team, and their identification with organization goals.

Tips and questions to think about

• Observe yourself and notice how you tend to make decisions; try to use different decision-making methods suited to the situation.
• What stops you from using a wider range of styles?
• Take a Vroom course which involves a detailed assessment of your decision-making style. Contact info@orgpg.com to learn about OPG’s decision-making workshops, which feature Vroom’s assessments.
• Ask others on your team to do more leading and facilitating of meetings, decisions, and more.

This post was originally published in Wiley Publishing’s Campus Security Report in April 2023.