Follow me on Linkedin if you like provoking posts about software development. Let’s socialize!

Contrary to popular belief, democratic voting is a terrible way to reach consensus by a team. In fact, achieving consensus by voting does not help teamwork or foster collaboration. Here are some reasons why:

• Because the process of building consensus more often than not becomes about winning the debate at hand so you can get enough votes to prove you are right or your idea is the best one, rather creating the sense that you are one team.

• “Democracy voting” is a process that enables a majority of members to impose their will on a minority at any time they wish.

• Members of a “Democratic” team often learn that the best way to kill new ideas they find threatening is to demand an immediate vote. If you can force a vote before people can hear a new idea, you can kill it off just about every time. Unfortunately, all the best ideas for improving a team process will be new and (temporarily) unpopular when first introduced.

Still pursuing an agreement helps you leverage the collective intelligence of the individuals in the team. So go ahead and use a consensus-building process to get the opinions and issues on the table. You might even take a binary vote to “take the pulse” on where people stand but don’t use the voting result blindly to set a decision.

If you want everyone on the team actually to own a decision, you must shift the conversation from achieving consensus to building alignment. And first-to-five can be an excellent tool for that.

The Fist to Five is a technique for quickly getting feedback or gauging consensus. The leader makes a statement then asks everyone to show their level of agreement with the statement by holding up some fingers.

0 = Closed Fist - No way, I will block this 1 Finger - I see major issues we need to resolve 2 Fingers - I see minor issues we need to resolve now 3 Fingers - I see minor issues we can resolve later 4 Fingers - I’m fine with this as it is 5 Fingers - I love this! I will champion it.

With this quality voting, you can better work on the agreements and build team alignment on the decision.

Democratic voting can kill innovation and be an illusion of safety. However, innovative consensus solutions can help team alignment and ownership.