Four Ways To Make Group Decisions

The material in this article is an adaptation of a chapter from Em Griffin’s book, Getting Together, published by InterVarsity Press.

You’re the chairman of the Church’s missions committee. You’ve held the post for two years, but up until now the group’s duties have been routine-recruiting speakers, corresponding with missionaries, handling the funds that go to the denomination’s mission board.

Now you’re faced with a larger responsibility. This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of your church’s founding. Your pastor wants. to celebrate by raising $50,000 for a special missions project. He’s committed to making the campaign go, but he doesn’t know what the project should be. That’s your job.

You aren’t completely in the dark. He’s given you some overall guidelines: You’re to focus on a single ministry, not a hundred different agencies. You’re to invest in people rather than things. You’re to find a project that will turn people on, a specific need that will capture their imagination.

And there’s no dearth of ideas. People can always think of ways to spend money. Already requests have surfaced and been sent to your committee for consideration:

1. Support a young couple in their work of radio evangelism behind the Iron Curtain.

2. Educate indigenous doctors for a mission hospital in Bangladesh.

3. Support a fledgling seminary for native American Indians.

4. Provide seed money to launch a combined Young Life/Youth for Christ outreach among the unchurched teenagers of your community.

5. People on the island of Haiti are the poorest of the poor. You could finance a local cannery, which would provide employment and keep the singlecrop harvest from spoiling.

6. An inner-city pastor has approached you for help in setting up a holistic ministry in an urban housing project. His plans include a food co-op, tutoring, legal aid, parenting classes, and discipleship groups.

All worthwhile projects, but you and your seven-member committee are overwhelmed. How do you decide? You obviously want God’s will. But one member has announced that it’s God’s will to support the radio evangelist, and you’re not so sure he has a pipeline to divine truth. The problem you have is typical of many faced by Christian group leaders. You want to select a project by using a decision-making process that will allow God’s will to speak through all seven of you.

Unfortunately, no decision-making process is perfect. Each has its pluses and minuses. Not surprisingly, the strengths of one are the weaknesses of another. It’s often a tradeoff. As leader of the group, you have to figure out which one leads to a good decision in your situation.

Five factors make for a good decision:

• Quality. How good a decision is it?

• Time. How long does it take to decide?

• Commitment. Will all the committee members really support it?

• Attractiveness. Did the process create an espirit de corps among committee members?

• Learning. Did the committee learn during the process?

That’s the goal: to reach a quality solution that all are committed to in a short amount of time, while still liking each other and learning in the process! Let’s look at four different methods to achieve this goal:

Voting

The process of taking a vote is almost synonymous with democracy. Virtually every club, organization, school board, and legislature in our culture conducts its business on the basis of majority rule. But there are different ways to set it up. Let’s see how this might work for the missions committee.

As chairman, you lead a discussion on the relative merits of the six proposals. You try to be impartial, giving everyone an equal chance to voice his or her opinion. After an agreed-upon period of time, you call for a vote. The project that receives four of the seven votes wins. If the first ballot totals three votes for Bangladesh doctors, two votes for the joint Young LifelYouth for Christ proposal, and one each for Soviet bloc radio evangelism and the Arizona seminary, the group would discard the losing projects and revote on the top two.

Another route to a majority decision would occur if the group discussion began to center on one of the projects—the inner-city work, for instance. One of the members could move that this be the official focus of the fund drive. At that point, all of the discussion would focus on this single proposal. When a member’s “call for the question” is supported by the others, you proceed to vote the idea up or down. In case of a three-three split among members, you, as leader, would cast the deciding vote.

Whichever route you take to get there, the final outcome is based on a one-man-one-vote principle that’s consistent with democratic ideals. On paper it looks like a good way to do it. But in practice, it’s a mixed bag:

The quality of a majority rule decision is usually better than what would be selected solely by the luck of the draw. Suppose that an all-knowing, allpowerful, beneficent ruler of the universe (God) singled out the holistic urban project as the best use of the money. The odds of hitting upon that specific solution merely by chance are one out of six. Surely your panel of reasonably intelligent men and women of good will can improve on that. To claim 100 percent certainty would be presumptuous. But it’s not unreasonable to hope for a 70 percent probability of success.

A good decision is likely because the issue has been aired in the light of day. Everyone’s had a chance to pump for his or her pet project, while poking holes in the plans that seem inferior. It’s a lot tougher to fool seven people than just one. Usually the collective wisdom of the group will be greater than the knowledge of any individual.

A relatively high-quality solution isn’t the only plus for majority rule. It’s possible to reach a final judgment within a short time span. Not all chairmen are comfortable with this feature. They’d rather talk an issue out until everyone seems happy. When the last holdout gives in, they say, “Let’s vote.” In this case, voting is a mere formality-the stamp of approval required for the minister. But the ballot process can take a decision that’s dragging on and on and bring it to an abrupt conclusion. Used this way, voting is a method of conflict resolution.

Calling the question not only moves the group to a swift decision, but it also forces individual members to make up their minds. I have a friend who has a terrible time figuring out what he thinks. Once, in a spirit of pique, I asked him if he had trouble being decisive. After a long pause, he answered, “Yes and no.” Voting cuts through the fog of ambivalence.

Of course, this time-saving feature can kick up resistance to the winning solution. You can’t expect a person who’s been voted down to be committed to a decision he or she thought second best. Even a member on the winning side may be less than happy with the choices. How many people do you know who have been truly excited about a presidential candidate over the past two decades? Sometimes it’s worse than that. A member may be drastically opposed to the will of the majority—believing they’ve done something stupid, harmful, or even sinful.

Attraction to the group follows the same pattern. We think folks who see things our way are very fine fellows indeed. “My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.” So decision by majority rule tends to draw us closer to those on our side of the issue, but alienates us from those who differ. This divisive feature is tempered by having multiple chances to cast ballots on varied issues, so that my opponent in one case is my ally in another. Overall, however, voting acts as an irritant to group cohesion.

Voting and learning go hand in hand. The push and shove of parliamentary debate is a great training ground for leadership. One can hardly survive a number of motions, seconds, amendments, calls for tabling, and calls for the question without picking up a certain sensitivity for guiding a discussion. Similarly, the airing of different viewpoints is a great way for everyone to become knowledgeable about the topic at hand. By the time the vote is cast, everyone on the missions committee should know much more than they did at the start.

Appointing an Expert

This isn’t as easy as it sounds, because it entails figuring out which expert to pick. Of course, you or the pastor could do the deed by simple fiat. But dictatorial solution is outside the spirit of group decision making. A group can give its authority to a single wise person, but it can’t duck the responsibility for making a good selection.

When it comes to selecting a competent pro, there’s rarely a lack of volunteers. Self-styled experts always come to the fore. The trouble is, you “can’t tell the players without a program.” The guy who wants to be appointed resident guru may not understand his own limitations. The woman who has the wisdom of Solomon may be too shy to put herself forward.

It’s especially hard to pick the best member from within your midst when the possibility of hurt feelings lurks just beneath the surface. I remember a time I was counseling at a high school summer camp. Kids were divided into four teams for sports competition. As coach of one of the teams, it was my job to sign them up for the big swim meet. We needed one swimmer for each event, and we didn’t have time for tryouts. “Girls’ fifty-yard backstroke! Who’d like to enter?” I shouted at the team meeting. Two girls volunteered. How was I to pick between them? I asked if either of them was on a swim team.

Both nodded. Did they remember their times for the fifty-yard backstroke? No. They even looked alike!

The only noticeable difference was that one gal was eager to do it while the other was somewhat reticent. So I picked the former—and she lost badly. Later on in the week, I saw the second girl swim. We would have been well represented. I had a Junior Olympics swimmer on the team who could have won the race wearing army boots. She hadn’t volunteered because she’d just washed her hair and didn’t want to get it wet again!

So identifying your best person is tricky. Getting him or her to volunteer is an additional hurdle to cross. But even if you identify and recruit the best person in your group, you still run up against a barrier to getting a top-quality solution. With one person—even the best person—you can’t get synergy.

You may not be familiar with the term synergy. (You’re not alone. I once had a student define it on a test as “sufficient energy to sin.”) It refers to a group solution that is better than the best idea of any one member. A prized goal in any group decision, it comes about when members pool their expertise to achieve a collective wisdom greater than anyone of them possesses on his own.

Delegating the judgment to one person looks much better when time is a crucial consideration. You may not get a good decision, but you can get it fast. Sometimes that’s just as important. All six mission projects have their strong points. It would be a shame to fritter away the golden opportunity through indecision. Besides, six committee meetings can consume eighty-four man-hours of precious time (seven members x two hours x six meetings = eighty-four hours). One quickie meeting of the committee to select the pro, plus his or her time spent in research, will probably add up to only ten or fifteen hours of work. The time efficiency is vastly superior to anything involving face-to-face interaction.

Delegating the choice to an expert does little to insure member commitment to the plan of action. Group members will usually go along with a decision made by someone else—as long as they don’t see it as central to who they are or what they are about. Should the church’s brochure be printed in four colors at Acme Press or in two colors by Ace Printers? Who cares? Let someone who knows the business decide. But if the girl who married the Russian defector is my niece, however, or I met the Lord through the ministry of Young Life, I want some part in deciding which project we pick. Even if I agree with the decision, I won’t work as hard if I wasn’t involved in the process. I’ll be apathetic or even hostile to an idea that hasn’t been shaped by my input.

Decisions by experts are a bit stronger on group cohesion. You’ll recall that one of the drawbacks of voting was that it split the group into two opposing camps. Appointment removes that source of irritation. The burden of judgment is on someone else’s shoulders, so they’re free to enjoy each other’s fellowship. It’s not the best-friend type of attraction that comes out of the crucible of common stress, but a warm, mutual appreciation can grow while members are waiting for the final word.

Appointment is a loser when it comes to learning. True, the man or woman who knew something about missions is selected and now knows more about missions. But the rest are left out in the cold. Their ignorance confirmed, they conclude that it takes a seminary degree to decipher the nuances of missiology—and quit trying.

Delphi Technique

This calls up images of an ancient Greek oracle making decisions by consulting the entrails of a pig. That is not what this method is about. The technique involves collecting the decisions of each member and subjecting these to a process of statistical averaging. It’s like averaging judges’ scores at a figure-skating competition. Here’s how it works for the missions committee problem.

As chairman, you solicit suggestions for the fiftieth anniversary project. You can do this by mail, phone, or in one-on-one interviewing. You ask committee members to rank the projects in order of their desirability. The first choice is assigned number one, and the least favored alternative is rated number six.

The next step is to feed back this material to the committee without identifying who voted for what. They can study the data and draw their own conclusions before you survey them a second time. If I were a member of the group, here’s what I’d be thinking:

-No use wasting a high choice on the cannery project. It’s a dead issue. Three people are strongly opposed.

-Radio evangelism is right up there. I just can’t see it. Sometimes I’m more sure of what I’m against than what I’m for. I think I’ll put it last on my list next time to try to keep it from moving up.

-The native American seminary doesn’t stir much interest one way or the other.

-The group’s really split on radio evangelism and education for the doctors in Bangladesh.

-There’s general, though not unanimous, support for holistic inner-city ministry.

You then ask the members to go through the rank-order process again. They can list the items the same way they did the first time, or they can rearrange their priorities in light of the initial results. It’s possible to go through this cycle six or seven times, but things usually shake down after the second ranking. The lowest total is the group’s choice—even though the group never actually meets together.

The big advantage of the Delphi technique is the equal weighing of each member’s input. Statistics are no respecter of persons. The big giver, the handsome man, or the lady who’s clever with words can’t sway the group to their side. It’s a balanced one-man-onevote system. Eccentric ideas get submerged by proposals that have general support.

I saw a perfect example of this when I assigned different methods of decision making in my group dynamics class. I asked students to indicate the order in which Christ called his disciples. Note that this is a problem with a right answer, although it takes a harmony of the Gospels to ferret it out.

The voting group was heavily influenced by a selfconfident fellow who was a Bible major. He was certain that John was first and Philip was the last one called. But he was certainly wrong and led the others astray. The group using the Delphi technique avoided the problem. There wasn’t any room for wheeling and dealing.

You’d think that any system of averaging would render a poor-quality decision. Not so. The Delphi technique seems to tap into the collective wisdom of the group. It doesn’t occur every time, but synergy is a distinct possibility. In my class, the Delphi technique came up with a better solution than any of the other groups. Of course, these students had some biblical knowledge. As long as most group members have a decent grasp of the topic at hand, the solution will be at least as good, if not better, than other methods.

In terms of time, the Delphi technique is great. It takes only a few minutes to rank-order a list of possible choices. One person can quickly tabulate the results.

But the very efficiency of the method prevents members from drawing close to each other. There’s no chance to compare ailments, swap jokes, or show pictures of the new collie pup. None of these would directly help your mission group make a decision, yet they’re the stuff that interpersonal attraction is made of. We can be a bit cynical by saying that as long as there’s no interaction, folks won’t have reason to get mad at each other. But that’s a poor reason to adopt a mechanical process.

Learning isn’t much better. I may catch a glimpse of social reality by seeing how others rank the items, but there’s no opportunity to discuss relative merits. It usually takes the public push and pull of ideas to stimulate new insights. Leadership training is also nonexistent. The biggest drawback, however, is the total lack of member commitment to the solution. Because of the statistical averaging process, you can end up with a solution that doesn’t exactly match anyone individual’s input. That doesn’t create feelings of ownership.

Consensus

When I say consensus, the picture that comes to mind is the seven members of the missions committee sitting around a table, all nodding their heads in agreement. As chairman you’ve asked, “Are we agreed, then, that our anniversary effort should be to raise funds to educate Christian doctors in Bangladesh?”

“Yes.”

“You bet.”

“Let’s do it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Sure.”

“I’m for it.”

That would be great. If all the members can coalesce on a given project, you know that the group will break their backs to make the fund drive go. When member commitment is crucial, it makes sense for the leader to take pains to insure that everybody is behind the action.

Of course some will say, “You’re dreaming, Em. I can barely get the seven of us to agree on where to go for lunch. No way is such a diverse group going to reach unanimity on a single plan. Even if it were possible, it’d take hours of time.”

I never promised that consensus was easy. You have to be prepared for a long haul. Unless your committee is acting as a rubber stamp, it can take hours of questioning and probing to reach unanimous consent. There’s not even a guarantee you’ll get it in the end. All that time may go for naught. But it is possible.

On a twelve-member jury, one person can hold up the group if he or she has a reasonable doubt. This forces the group to talk things out along the lines of evidence. The old movie Twelve Angry Men had Henry Fonda as the one holdout against an eleven-man majority that wanted to rush to judgment. They were incensed at Fonda’s stubbornness. But the rules of law state that 11-1 isn’t good enough. They had to reach consensus. By the end of the third reel, Fonda had converted them all to a not-guilty position. This may seem far-fetched, but it’s been known to happen in real life.

Of course, a jury has a relatively simple task. Their decision is a simple guilty/not guilty. They don’t have to generate ideas to support their choice—that’s up to the prosecutor and lawyer. And, supposedly, they are free from personal bias in the case. None of these is true in our missions committee example. But perhaps the example of a jury helps to show that consensus is a possibility, and that it’s worth striving for when the stakes are high.

Can you reach consensus? There’s no ironclad guarantee. You may become a hung jury. But sticking to the following guidelines will give your group a decent shot at reaching agreement.

• Announce your intentions right from the start. Let folks know that you’re prepared to hash things out until the group reaches a decision that everyone can support. This means that a single person has veto power. One member can block a decision if he or she feels it’s taking the group down the wrong path. Obviously, this could result in total chaos if everybody lobbies hard for his top choice. So encourage a mutual forbearance, where people listen to others’ thoughts.

• Be a process person. As leader, your concern is more on how the group decides than which of the six options they pick. So be a bit suspicious of quick agreement. If you publicly check out the reason why people are in favor of a given idea, they may discover that they don’ t see eye to eye. Better for everyone to discover it now and wrestle through disagreement. You want to end up with true unity, not just a papered-over rift.

• Encourage open expression of disagreement. Conflict isn’t necessarily bad. It can be healthy. Some members have quite probably come to the group with “hidden agendas”—pet solutions they are privately committed to. If these thoughts stay beneath the surface, they’ll keep a person from honestly considering any other possibilities. Better to get all the thoughts on the table.

• Don’t mistake silence for agreement. It may seem reasonable to assume that people would speak up if they objected to the drift of the conversation. Some will. The average group has a few members that have no unspoken thoughts. But the same group typically has one or two reticent . members who are slow to voice their opinions. They may be naturally shy. Perhaps they’re intimidated by higher status or more vocal members. Whatever the reason, you need to create an environment that supports their ideas. Seek out their thoughts; encourage them to plunge into the conversation.

• Don’t expect complete unanimity. That’s not really your goal—which is indeed fortunate, because it’s almost impossible to achieve this side of heaven. What you’re shooting for is a solution that can gain everybody’s approval. A lot of folks aren’t sure what’s best. But everybody has strong opinions about what’s worst. Your job is to help people discuss an alternative that all can agree to—even if it isn’t first on everyone’s list.

Consensus stacks up well against the other methods in terms of quality. It leads to synergy with impressive frequency. The last time I gave the assignment about the disciples, one fellow put Bartholomew high on his list while all other group members had him down the line with Thaddeus and Judas. They tried to force him to give in, but he stood his ground and argued well for his answer. But he was wrong in thinking John was first-and wiser heads prevailed on that one. So the group ended up with a much better answer than anyone of them had by himself. Consensus is the best route to synergy.

You can see how it also stimulates learning. After pooling and weighing everyone’s knowledge about the disciples, the group as a whole came out of the session smarter than they went in. And New Testament history was just part of the gain. The members received a short course in group dynamics. They can draw upon this interpersonal experience when tossed into another problem-solving situation.

When it comes to member attraction, I know of nothing that will pull people closer together than a common commitment to unity. The Christian song “We Are One in the Spirit” is a hymn of consensus.

I once invited, a class of sixteen students to our home for an informal evening together. I left the actual night and time up to them. I only asked that no one be scheduled out. Given night courses, jobs, family responsibilities, church work, and travel plans, this was an almost impossible assignment.

But they stuck with it. After a prolonged discussion, they finally arrived at a date that fifteen of them could make. It wasn’t easy. Many of them had to flex their schedules to accommodate the group. But still, one international student was shut out. He worked five nights a week and desperately needed the money. The two nights he was free, a number of others had ironclad conflicts.

It looked like an impasse, but the group refused to quit. They entertained a number of possible solutions, some quite bizarre. Then one girl suggested, “How about if we all chip in a buck and hire someone to replace you that night? You’ll still get paid, the work will get done, and we’ll all be together!” Everyone chimed in their agreement.

The fellow looked confused. He admitted that the plan was feasible, but he couldn’t believe they’d do this for him. When the reality sank in, he was ecstatic. So was the group, and the evening was a huge success.

Two notes of caution: If the group tries to reach consensus and fails, the resulting frustration can cause interpersonal attraction to plummet. It’s easy to find a scapegoat for the group’s problem. Everyone blames someone else.

The opposite tendency is equally dangerous. The group may become so intent on having unity that no one can afford to raise honest doubts. This desire for togetherness-at-all-costs can lead to false consensus. The phenomenon has been labeled “Groupthink.” No one wants to rock the boat or spoil the cozy feelings.

Groupthink is a special danger in Christian groups that treat all disagreement as schism. Such an atmosphere has a chilling effect on creative thinking. It’s often the result of a leader who subtly promotes the view that opposition to him is sin. I can’t help but feel that any leader so rigid deserves the second-class decisions that will come from his or her group. But it’s a shame that the followers have to suffer as well.

I find it helpful to think of the proper relation between consensus and attraction in this way. Closeness isn’t the aim of consensus; rather it’s the byproduct of true agreement.

By now you may be thoroughly confused as to which method of decision making to use with your missions committee. No method is perfect. They all have problems, but each one has something to recommend it as well. Voting is a good all-around route to go. It’s familiar, it doesn’t take long, and the decision reached is usually decent. But the losers may feel grumpy and flag in zeal when it comes time to implement the decision.

Appointing an expert is one way of handling things with dispatch. By doing it, you avoid squabbles between members. But then, there’s no guarantee the decision will be a good one. There’s also no ownership of the solution.

The Delphi technique offers the intriguing blend of a quick, high-quality decision. But it treats the human side of decision making as nonexistent. And that’s what members will be when it comes time for group effort.

Consensus promises the wisdom of Solomon together with the kind of member commitment, attraction, and learning that a leader dreams of. But remember—all these people pluses come only when consensus is actually reached. If the process is abandoned, the benefits disappear. And the time involved in reaching consensus is sometimes horrendous.

So what’s it going to be? It’s your choice. As for me, if the decision is a really big one—like a $50,000 fund raising project—I’d opt for consensus. (You could tell it was my favorite because I saved it for last.) But now it’s up to you. Different situations can call for different methods. And only you can tell which one fits your particular group and task.