As a leader, consensus is one of the keys to being an effective leader.
When you have effective teams full of people that are great at their job, they will inevitably disagree on the path forward. The same goes for your group of peers, whether that is in your department, cross functionally, or both.
Building consensus is a skill that must be honed to make sure that we continue to move forward, making the best choice possible with the information we have in front of us. You have to pick a direction, you can’t argue a path forever and ever until you get the perfect solution that everyone agrees on.
This is where you as a leader have to work together with the people involved and build consensus. You do that by first forming an opinion of your own, hopefully based on all the information both (or all) sides of the debate have put forth. Then from there, you have to ultimately make a call, before that happens, you need to work with the key stakeholders to get them rallied around making the call and moving forward.
Building consensus isn’t an easy task, people are very opinionated when it comes to things they are passionate about. There is a lot of emotions and they tend to boil over. It’s your job as a leader to rally them and get them supporting the path forward, even if they disagree initially.
I hope this was helpful! Thanks for being here! Take care!
