How Consent Can Defuse Tension

I just came back from a meeting between various leaders and members from a small community whose task was to come up with a plan to establish a process to ensure that the various organizations from that community would work more closely together. You can imagine some of the issues/concerns brought up: independence of each board; decision-making processes; how binding such decisions would be; how much each representative would weigh given the varying size of each organization; and so on.

At one point, it was mentioned that one board actually controlled two organizations (which is the case). One person in attendance then said, with some angst, that both organizations could not sit at the table being created since the board, executive director, and membership were the same... that in effect, that would make it unfair to other organizations by giving the rep two votes...

This is when I brought forth the notion of consent decision-making, decision with zero objection. When decisions are made this way, suddenly, numbers no longer matter. Everyone at the table is equivalent, regardless of how many organizations are being represented. If a board oversees more than one entity, it simply means there may be more objections, but no more power. As soon as this became understood, the entire issue immediately disappeared! And it also took care of the "independence" issue: the table's decisions could not be made without the consent of all its members, and as such, no decisions could be imposed on any organization.

So much energy is spent on trying to control the flow of power: who gets how many votes, who gets to decide what, who gets to veto and who has to follow. Sociocracy takes that entire layer out of the picture and allows for the more important discussions and topics to be worked on. When power is the underlying issue, people are much less willing to be open and honest as that transparency could potentially be used as power leverage. Take power out of the picture and suddenly people's humanity has room to emerge. Remove control dynamics, and empathy seeps into discussions. Allow people to be true, and they will rise up to the occasion and become an active member of their communnity/organization/group/etc.

Even without implementing Sociocracy as a Governance Model, Consent decision-making can be used as a tool and facilitate better, more effective, and way, way more satisfying meetings. Here you see a copy of John Buck's Consent Decision-making flow chart. I find it extremely useful to follow as a guide when I facilitate meetings, and I also find that is is a great reference tool for circle members to keep track of the process when decisions are being made using consent.

It takes a while to train circles to become proficient at using this process, but once it is understood, my experience is that it becomes a part of the common language and culture, and form there, it becomes very difficult to go back! For one, I don't think that I could!