Conversation is a powerful mechanism to draw a team around a plan of action if we understand how the process works and how to harness the dynamics.

This is how my friend Arthur Gobey describes how ideas align:

consensus-1The arrows at the top are supposed to indicate how people arrive for a conversation with different perspectives.  The arrows all point downwards but if you have facilitated a few workshops you will know this neat picture does not begin to describe the degree of divergence participants can bring to a session.  And the neat flow lines, diverging then converging on “the proposal for a subject or action” are nothing like the muddle, confusion and frustration often happening in this phase.  Perhaps it would be better to show the first phase of a workshop like this:

consensus-4

In the most complex issues, the confusion may persist. But in my experience there is always a meeting of minds.  Where alignment does not happen, something else is going in the team.  Consider stopping the process to find out what it is.  It is worth designing workshop agendas to allow for this divergence and convergence and the accompanying frustration.  For instance the process I use for initiating projects can be shown like this:

consensus-2

The steps in the process are probably self-evident. If not let me know and I can put a posting about this.  I like to show my clients how this process allows for the conversation dynamics that play out in workshops.  I do this by overlaying one on the other like this:
consensus-3

OK, I  admit the picture is stylised and sterilised. However I see it happening all the time.  In the opening sessions we work in small groups.   This allows individuals to zoom off at radical tangents.  What is more, these tangents can be heard and considered.  Of course, sometimes they are not tangents at all and the team realises they were close to missing the point.  So I find the process works.

Two final comments:

First, if you are in a workshop in which confusion reigns, ask yourself if this is natural divergence.  Bounce your thoughts off the team.  It is sometimes heartening for us to know that our experience is indeed normal.

Second, if you are engaging in this process, get help. It really is worth getting help from a good facilitator if you are planning to go through this process.  I once read a rule of life that we should pay for our haircuts.  Well, it was a man sort of thing, but the same applies to hair-do’s I suppose (eek!!! thin-ice alert!).  But the same applies here.  I am astonished sometimes when large organisations launch projects worth hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars, that will place them ahead of the game, then they quibble over the cost of someone who can take them ably through the initiation process.  Instead of months of confusion, a good facilitator can help you define a project plan in days.  Weeks, if it is a complex programme.