Consensus - which does not mean unanimity

Consensus means overwhelming agreement. And, it is important that consensus be the product of a good-faith effort to meet the interests of all stakeholders. The key indicator of whether or not a consensus has been reached is that everyone agrees they can live with the final proposal; that is, after every effort has been made to meet any outstanding interests. Thus, consensus requires that someone frame a proposal after listening carefully to everyone's interests. Interests, by the way, are not the same as positions or demands. Demands and positions are what people say they must have, but interests are the underlying needs or reasons that explain why they take the positions that they do.

Most consensus building efforts set out to achieve unanimity. Along the way, however, it often becomes clear that there are holdouts -- people who believe that their interests will be better served by remaining outside the emerging agreement. Should the rest of the group throw in the towel? No, this would invite blackmail (i.e. outrageous demands that have nothing to do with the issues under discussion). Most dispute resolution professionals believe that groups or assemblies should seek unanimity, but settle for overwhelming agreement that goes as far as possible toward meeting the interests of all stakeholders. It is absolutely crucial that this definition of success be clear at the outset.

Facilitation - a way of helping groups work together in meetings 

Facilitation is a management skill. When people are face-to-face, they need to talk and to listen. When there are several people involved, especially if they don't know each other or they disagree sharply, getting the talking, listening, deciding sequence right is hard. Often, it is helpful to have someone who has no stake in the outcome assist in managing the conversation. Of course, a skilled group member can, with the concurrence of the participants, play this role, too. As the parties try to collect information, formulate proposals, defend their views, and take account of what others are saying, a facilitator reminds them of the ground rules they have adopted and, much like a referee, intervenes when someone violates the ground rules. The facilitator is supposed to be nonpartisan or neutral.

There is some disagreement in various professional circles about the extent to which an effective facilitator needs to be someone from outside the group. Certainly in a corporate context, work teams have traditionally relied on the person "in charge" to play a facilitative role. The concept of facilitative leadership is growing in popularity. Even work teams in the private sector, however, are turning more and more to skilled outsiders to provide facilitation services. In the final analysis, there is reason to believe that a stakeholder might use facilitative authority to advance his or her own interests at the expense of the others.

Mediation - a way of helping parties deal with strong disagreement

While facilitators do most of their work "at the table" when the parties are face-to-face, mediators are often called upon to work with the parties before, during, and after their face-to-face meetings. While all mediators are skilled facilitators; not all facilitators have been trained to mediate. The classic image of the mediator comes from the labor relations field when the outside "neutral" shuttles back-and-forth between labor and management, each of which has retreated to a separate room as the strike deadline looms. These days, mediators work in an extraordinarily wide range of conflict situations. Mediation is both a role and a group management skill. A group leader may have mediation skills and may be able to broker agreement by putting those skills to use. But, again, when the search for innovative solutions rests in the hands of one of the parties, it is often hard for the others to believe that the leader/mediator isn't trying to advance his or her own interests at their expense.

The big debate in professional circles is whether any mediator really can (or should) be neutral. The referee in a sporting match must be nonpartisan; he or she can't secretly be working for one team. The referee tries to uphold the rules of the game to which everyone has agreed. This is what is commonly meant by neutrality -- nonpartisanship. However, some people have argued that a mediator should not be indifferent to blatant unfairness. They believe that the mediator should not turn a blind eye to potentially unfair or unimplementable agreements, even if the "rules of the game" have not been violated. Yet, if a mediator intervenes on behalf of a party that may be about to "give away the store," why should the others accept that mediator's help? The answer probably depends on the level of confidence the parties have in the mediator and the terms of the mediator's contract with the group.

Before the parties in a consensus building process come together, mediators (or facilitators) can play an important part in helping to identify the right participants, assist them in setting an agenda and clarifying the ground rules by which they will operate, and even in "selling" recalcitrant parties on the value to them of participating. Once the process has begun, mediators (and facilitators) try to assist the parties in their efforts to generate a creative resolution of differences. During these discussions or negotiations, a mediator may accompany a representative back to a meeting with his or her constituents to explain what has been happening. The mediator might serve as a spokesperson for the process if the media are following the story. A mediator might (with the parties' concurrence) push them to accept an accord (because they need someone to blame for forcing them to back-off the unreasonable demands they made at the outset). Finally, the mediator may be called upon to monitor implementation of an agreement and re-assemble the parties to review progress or deal with perceived violations or a failure to live up to commitments.

"Facilitation" and "mediation" are often used interchangeably. We think the key distinction is that facilitators work mostly with parties once they are "at the table" while mediators do that as well as handle the pre-negotiation and post-negotiation tasks described above. Some professionals have both sets of skills, many do not. Neither form of consensus build assistance requires stakeholders to give up their authority or their power to decide what is best for them.

Recording - creating a visual record of what a group has discussed and decided

Recording involves skills that seek to ensure that a visual record is created that captures the key points of agreement and disagreement during a dialogue. Some facilitators and mediators work in teams with one person specializing in keeping a written record of what the group has discussed and what has been agreed. This can be done on large sheets of paper, often called flipcharts, tacked up in front of a room. With the introduction of new computer and multi-media technologies, this can be done electronically as well. The important thing is to have an on-going visual representation of what the group has discussed and agreed. Unlike formal minutes of a meeting, a group memory may use drawings, illustrations, maps, or other icons to help people recall what they have discussed. Visual records prepared by a recorder ultimately need to be turned into written meeting summaries. Like minutes, these summaries must be reviewed in draft by all participants to ensure that everyone agrees with the review of what happened.

Convening - bringing parties together

Convening, or the gathering together of parties for a meeting or a series of meetings, is not a skill that depends on training. An agency or organization that has decided to host a consensus building process (and wants to encourage others to participate) can play an important convening role. In a private firm, for example, a senior official might be the convenor. In the public arena, a regulatory agency might want to convene a public involvement process. There is some disagreement about whether or not the convenor or the convening organization is obliged to stay "at the table" as the conversation proceeds. In general, convening organizations want to be part of the dialogue, but we do not feel they must commit to on-going participation in a consensus building process.

Someone has to finance a consensus building process. When it takes place inside an existing organization, financial arrangements are reasonably straight forward. When consensus building involves a wide range of groups in an ad hoc assembly, it is much less obvious who can and will provide the financial support. If costs are not shared equally by the parties, for example, if they are covered by the convening organization, there are special steps that must be taken to ensure that the outside facilitator or mediator has a contract with the entire group, and not just the convenor, and that the organization(s) providing the financing do not use that sponsorship to dictate the outcome.

Conflict Assessment - an essential convening step

A conflict assessment is a document that spells out what the issues are, who the stakeholding interests are, where they disagree and where they might find common ground. It is usually prepared by a neutral outsider based on confidential interviews with key stakeholders. There is some disagreement over whether the same neutral who prepared the conflict assessment should then be the one to facilitate or mediate, if the process goes forward. Typically, after interviewing the obvious stakeholders as well as the less obvious participants suggested by the first group, a neutral party will suggest whether or not it makes sense to go forward with a consensus building process, and if so, how the process ought to be structured.

Such an assessment can be presented orally to the convenor, but it is probably better that it be written and distributed in draft to everyone interviewed, before it is finalized. The recommendations resulting from a conflict assessment are not the final word. Only the stakeholders themselves can decide whether or not they want to proceed, and, if so, how they want to organize the effort.

Single Text Procedure - a way to generate agreement

Roger Fisher, Bill Ury, and Bruce Patton, in their well-known book, Getting to Yes, first suggested the phrase "single text" negotiation. Rather than having each party propose its own version of an ideal agreement, a neutral party carries a single version of a possible agreement from party to party seeking "improvements" that will make it acceptable to the next person on the list. (No one needs to know who suggested which modifications along the way.) It is also possible to work together in a meeting to collectively revise a single text, although in that setting it is more likely that some parties will find it harder to accept a proposed "improvement" because they know who it came from.

Creating and Claiming Value - a way to maximize joint gains

Our colleagues, Howard Raiffa, in his book The Art and Science of Negotiation, and Jim Sebenius and David Lax, in their book, The Manager as Negotiator, have helped to popularize the idea of "creating value." Most people think of negotiation or problem solving as a "zero sum" game in which a fixed amount is allocated among competing parties. An efficient agreement, therefore, is presumed to be one in which all the gains available have been allocated among the parties. This tends to overlook the fact that there are numerous ways to "make the pie larger" in most situations. Thus, an efficient agreement is really one in which the parties have done all they can to create value as well as allocated all the value they have created.

Lax and Sebenius describe what they call, "the negotiator's dilemma" as the key problem facing everyone in a consensus building or dispute resolution process. How should they manage the tension between creating and claiming value? This tension results from the fact that creating value requires cooperative behaviors while claiming value revolves almost entirely around competition. Given that everyone in a group process has what are called "mixed motives" (that is, they want the pie to be as large as possible, but they also want as much for themselves or their side as they can get), they've got to figure out how much to cooperate and how hard to compete.

There is some disagreement among experienced practitioners about how likely it is that value can be created in every situation. On the one hand, those who are generally optimistic assume that value can almost always be created by trading across issues that parties value differently (e.g., "I'll give you this (which is not that important to me), if you'll give me that (which you don't care that much about"). Even in a situation in which there appears to be just one issue -- price -- under discussion, there are ways to "fractionate" the issue (i.e., break it into parts that can be traded) or to link that issue to future considerations. Those who are generally pessimistic assume that there are severe restrictions on the possibility of creating value in many situations, either because there's nothing to trade or because asymmetries in power allow one side to demand what it wants or walk away.

We want to differentiate the idea of maximizing joint gain from the simple-minded language of "win-win" negotiating. We are interested in helping parties do better than what no agreement probably holds in store for them. Doing better than one's BATNA (Best Alternative To A Negotiated Agreement) is the way to measure success in consensus building. There are few, if any situations, where everyone can get everything they want (which is what "winning" sounds like to us).

Circles of Stakeholder Involvement - a strategy for identifying representative stakeholders

A stakeholder is a person or group likely to be affected by (or who thinks they will be affected by) a decision -- whether it is their decision to make or not. When we talk about circles of stakeholders -- we are talking about individuals or groups that want or ought to be involved in decisionmaking, but at different levels of intensity. Some stakeholders are very hard to represent in an organized way. Think about "future generations," for example. Who can represent them in a dialogue about sustainable development? In the law, various strategies have evolved so that surrogates or stand-ins can present hard-to-represent groups (like the members of a class of consumers who have been hurt by a certain product or like children who have no capacity to speak for themselves in a court proceeding).

Sometimes, it is necessary to caucus all the groups or individuals who think they represent a certain set of stakeholders for the purposes of selecting a representative for a particular dialogue or problem solving purpose. Such meetings typically need to be facilitated by an outside party. Finally, there are various statutes that govern who may and who must be invited to participate in various public and private dialogues. Ad hoc consensus building processes must take these laws into account.