If no one told the smaller speech community how the larger one was operating, there was a failure somewhere along the line. The English speakers didn't actually "see" consensus making -- the consensus had been reached without them knowing anything about it.
Certainly, that's a fair thing to say. Unfortunately, I myself (the only one who really could have said anything to them) was still just learning what it meant to operate that way, and was not far enough along to be explaining stuff. I just knew that their accusations of Mr. Lamb being dictatorial were wildly off the mark. All this time later, I can see what was going on much more clearly.
Would you say that the consensus method preferred by the Vietnamese is designed to ensure that when it comes to the final decision, everyone will be of the same opinion?
Well, that kinda raises the question, "designed by whom?" I mean, it's a way that one culture has worked out the challenge of decision making among large groups. My own home culture has found a different way to do that, namely by following Robert's rules of order and having public debate and voting. So in a sense, any method a given culture uses to reach a decision is "designed" to reach that goal--and generally with the least amount of conflict they can manage. Consensus method works for Vietnamese almost certainly because they have a communal culture, where the group's needs tend to take precedence over individual wants. All the customs and norms reinforce this. If we had fully understood at the time what was happening, AND made the attempt to transplant the consensus method to the German American group, I suspect we would have failed. That culture is far more individualistic, and probably could not have made it work. (For that matter, I wonder whether any Vietnamese ethnic churches that survive 100 years in America will still be practicing consensus method; I rather doubt it. People get Americanized pretty quickly.)
"Designed" was probably the wrong word, in kinda the way that it is also wrong in a phrase like "Nature designed cats' eyes for easy night vision."
Maybe more like "suits this purpose well". Anyway, to keep things both epiphanic and applicable, I'm gonna switch from talking about ethnicities in churches and switch to the concepts implied by @Ruth's last post, ie. smaller speech community(SSC) eg. the German Americans at Lambchop's church, larger speech community(LSC) eg. the Vietnamese at Lambchop's church, and their decision making processes in what I will call "organizations".
So, for Lambchop or anyone else who has experience with these things...
If there are 100 people in the LSC, and ninety wanted to vote for Option A, and 10 wanted to vote for Option B, would it be considered a failure by that community if the 10 dissenters were unconverted by the time of the overall organization's general vote?
And if so, how do they use the time between the announcement and the vote to garner a unanimous consensus for Option A? Do they just keep repeating the original arguments until the 10 holdouts have been convinced into sincere belief?
(And I suppose you could also have the 10 converting the 90 over to Option B. Probably a bit more work, but I think the same questions would apply.)
If we had fully understood at the time what was happening, AND made the attempt to transplant the consensus method to the German American group, I suspect we would have failed. That culture is far more individualistic, and probably could not have made it work. (For that matter, I wonder whether any Vietnamese ethnic churches that survive 100 years in America will still be practicing consensus method; I rather doubt it. People get Americanized pretty quickly.)
Personally, I find that consensus tends to evolve naturally from open discussion on most topics (assuming vaguely reasonable people and excluding irrational political-type prejudices). Thinking back to my church warden days, almost all the discussions that started off as somewhat contentious were resolved by consensus, following frank discussion. To me, the chief difference with the way you describe your Vietnamese community operating is not the seeking of consensus, but the fact that the discussion happens in a an assortment of side channels. To me, that means that not everyone is operating with the same information, although I suppose if you have enough reconnection points in your small conversations, then the important information held by one person will eventually get circulated around the whole community.
If we had fully understood at the time what was happening, AND made the attempt to transplant the consensus method to the German American group, I suspect we would have failed. That culture is far more individualistic, and probably could not have made it work. (For that matter, I wonder whether any Vietnamese ethnic churches that survive 100 years in America will still be practicing consensus method; I rather doubt it. People get Americanized pretty quickly.)
Personally, I find that consensus tends to evolve naturally from open discussion on most topics (assuming vaguely reasonable people and excluding irrational political-type prejudices). Thinking back to my church warden days, almost all the discussions that started off as somewhat contentious were resolved by consensus, following frank discussion.
Did these consensuses sometimes involve compromise, ie. one group wants one thing, the other group wants another thing, so someone proposes a third option that gives both sides a little but not all of what they want, and that third option carries the day?
I would assume ALL of those things happen--namely, that those who start with different information connect enough over the month or so between the initial announcement and the voting day that everyone has the same pool of info by voting day; also that compromises are proposed, considered, circulated, and one or more finally agreed on. I can't say for certain, as my own interaction with this community is mostly by report from others (my own Vietnamese is not good enough to allow me to be part of this whole thing, so I hear from those who are).
My impression is that there is a substantial amount of yakking going on at all times; it's no joke, really, when I say that the Vietnamese community probably knows the color of my underwear. The gossip in the community is the downside of that level of connectedness; the upside is the opportunity for consensus.
Now certainly there are occasions when consensus fails. The big one I remember is when the church split, and the direct cause of the split was the fact that our adversaries were carrying out acts of violence (breaking car windows, following women home at midnight, etc.) and threatening more (kidnapping, arson). There were those who were willing to stand up to that sort of pressure, and there were those who didn't feel able, and we couldn't blame them. So the greater part of the church did stand up to the pressure, and our adversaries used the unannounced meetings, an absurdly low quorum number, and the ignorance of our English-speaking members to force through a mass excommunication of over 60% of the church, including babies. The handful of Vietnamese speakers who knuckled under called us the week this all went down, in tears, to say they couldn't cope, and we told them not to worry. But of course, you can't have consensus when a number of people fear for their lives, and the rest of the group is saying "Fuck that."
But that's the only case of consensus failure I can remember.
Going back to my comment about not voting if you don't know the candidates or the issues, there is always the counter argument, if you do not vote that is a vote. It could be said Harris lost because 3% of those who would normally vote did not.
When asked how they would have voted, people eligible to vote who did not do so were fairly evenly split in their preferences: 44% said they would have supported Trump, while 40% said they would have backed Harris.
I would assume ALL of those things happen--namely, that those who start with different information connect enough over the month or so between the initial announcement and the voting day that everyone has the same pool of info by voting day; also that compromises are proposed, considered, circulated, and one or more finally agreed on. I can't say for certain, as my own interaction with this community is mostly by report from others (my own Vietnamese is not good enough to allow me to be part of this whole thing, so I hear from those who are).
My impression is that there is a substantial amount of yakking going on at all times; it's no joke, really, when I say that the Vietnamese community probably knows the color of my underwear. The gossip in the community is the downside of that level of connectedness; the upside is the opportunity for consensus.
Well, I'm inclined to say that all sounds like
the Harper Valley PTA,
but I'll go for the more wholesome comparison and say the Handforth Parish Council.
And thanks for the details. The reason I was asking is because I've been hearing people talk about "consensus politics" or "consensus decision making" for decades now, with the implication that it's the best way to do things. But I think it really makes a difference how a given consensus is achieved. There's a pretty big difference between, at one end of the spectrum, "They explained the proposal in clearer terms and I then understood why it was the better one" and at the other "Well, Uncle Josh supports the proposal, and he's been patronizing my business for years now, so I guess I should return the favour."
(Not commenting about which methods are applied in any particular venue, most places probably fall in the middle somewhere.)
To be clear, I'm not myself saying that consensus decision-making is the one true way to do politics or whatever. I'm simply saying that I've seen it in action, and it can work. I would not attempt to impose it on a culture that isn't set up for it, that sounds like a recipe for coercion. But coercion is very much NOT the vibe that I'm getting off the Vietnamese, to whom it is native.
But since we're here, you might consider the possibility that someone does make the decision on account of Uncle Josh simply because they judge the benefit to the family or community relationship to be of more importance on this occasion than the benefit of having the church carpet be blue instead of green. I mean, I do that sort of thing when it's straight ordinary voting and not a consensus situation. If Uncle Josh has his heart completely set on the green, and I have a very minimal inclination toward the blue, I could very well decide to give Uncle Josh the desire of his heart, without being in any way illogical. I've simply chosen the emotional / social benefit over the personal individual one.
IME, consensus decision making has three distinctives compared to how politics usually works in the UK (and, I assume the US and other nations with similar adversarial party systems).
1. The aim is to identify whether a proposal has strong support in a given community by involvement of as much of that community as possible in the decision making. The process is very communal in nature, the aim isn't to try and convince the majority of individuals within the community that you are right but to bring the whole community along with you.
2. The process involves a lot of discussion, in many different forms and places, almost always with cross over from one discussion to another. That, of course, meshes with involving as many people as possible - not everyone will be able to make a two hour meeting scheduled for Tuesday evening, and those who can make the meeting are not all going to be comfortable about speaking in front of a large group of people. But, give a community a month to talk things through over the breakfast table in families, informal meeting up with people in the street, (depending on the community) over lunch breaks at work, coffee after church, in the pub after choir practice etc and most people who have something to contribute will have a good chance to do so. A good test of whether you're doing consensus decision making is, when a topic is announced at a meeting for a decision do you talk about it at the time but it's not mentioned over coffee after the meeting? If you keep all your decision making within designated spaces for that then you aren't seeking consensus.
3. There may not be a vote, or a vote is a mere formality, or if when the time put aside for a vote arrives and people still haven't reached a consensus then the vote is postponed. A community consensus is known without the need for the formality of a vote (there may be good reasons to numerate the support through a vote, but there won't be people who don't know which way it's going). If there's a vote that's close then it's likely that the decision is postponed too allow further discussion to reach a consensus.
Harper Valley PTA is an old novelty song about the titular organization, where everybody is in everybody else's business.
The Handforth Parish Council is a bit of unintentional comedy from the pandemic, still viewable on YouTube. Maybe more applicable to the one non-consensus, schismatic incident you reference as taking place in your church.
To be clear, I'm not myself saying that consensus decision-making is the one true way to do politics or whatever. I'm simply saying that I've seen it in action, and it can work. I would not attempt to impose it on a culture that isn't set up for it, that sounds like a recipe for coercion. But coercion is very much NOT the vibe that I'm getting off the Vietnamese, to whom it is native.
Oh, sure. If it works, it works. I've just been hearing about the whole concept of consensus politics for a while now, and, as I say, I'm curious about how it actually works in practice.
But since we're here, you might consider the possibility that someone does make the decision on account of Uncle Josh simply because they judge the benefit to the family or community relationship to be of more importance on this occasion than the benefit of having the church carpet be blue instead of green. I mean, I do that sort of thing when it's straight ordinary voting and not a consensus situation. If Uncle Josh has his heart completely set on the green, and I have a very minimal inclination toward the blue, I could very well decide to give Uncle Josh the desire of his heart, without being in any way illogical. I've simply chosen the emotional / social benefit over the personal individual one.
Well, two things there...
1. Blue carpets vs. green carpets is a pretty inconsequential issue, and I probably wouldn't care if someone just voted for a colour I hated to impress their Uncle Josh.
OTOH, if the question was "Should we ban nuts from the premises in order to prevent dangerous allergic reactions?", I'd prefer that such trivial considerations be removed from the decision-making process.
2. I also think it makes a difference whether the vote is being undertaken by a select committee, or by the membership as a whole. If it's the former, I might expect higher standards of evidence and analysis than if it's the latter. To go back to my original example...
If the head of the city's traffic committee votes to close the road because he wants to impress his anti-road girlfriend, the pro-road people probably have a right to complain. Not so much if Joe Schmuck on the north side votes anti-road for similar reasons, because they KNOW the average voter is not obliged to follow any particular criterion in making decisions.
The process is very communal in nature, the aim isn't to try and convince the majority of individuals within the community that you are right but to bring the whole community along with you.
Sorry, but I'm not sure I understand the difference between convincing the majority that you are right, and bringing the whole community along with you.
Do you mean that we might not have everyone totally in agreement with a proposal, but that even those who are in disagreement will agree not to make an issue of it, so the proposal can go forward without rancor?
2. The process involves a lot of discussion, in many different forms and places, almost always with cross over from one discussion to another. That, of course, meshes with involving as many people as possible - not everyone will be able to make a two hour meeting scheduled for Tuesday evening, and those who can make the meeting are not all going to be comfortable about speaking in front of a large group of people. But, give a community a month to talk things through over the breakfast table in families, informal meeting up with people in the street, (depending on the community) over lunch breaks at work, coffee after church, in the pub after choir practice etc and most people who have something to contribute will have a good chance to do so. A good test of whether you're doing consensus decision making is, when a topic is announced at a meeting for a decision do you talk about it at the time but it's not mentioned over coffee after the meeting? If you keep all your decision making within designated spaces for that then you aren't seeking consensus.
But isn't this basically just how regular elections and referenda work? The vote is scheduled for a certain date, and the discussion takes place in myriad venues, eg. candidate debates, TV news panels, suburban dinner tables, bus stop chitchat etc etc, with crossover between all of the discussions, eg. the people at the bus stop discuss ideas they heard at the candidates' debate. It doesn't usually result in an overwhelming consensus, however.
One thing that consensus does is allow people to make up their minds, and even change them, without having to do so on public display. There are people who have no trouble with public debate, and speaking out publicly, and then being seen to change their minds publicly. But there are a lot more who will stick to an original bad position if they feel they have publicly committed themselves (for instance, by speaking out during the discussion part of a meeting prior to any vote).
The other good thing about consensus is that, as Alan says, you can often postpone the official decision (the formality vote, or whatever it is) if you reach the appointed time and it's clear that the community is still having significant conflict about it. We've done that, though not often.
The third good thing about consensus in my experience is that, by the time we finally do reach the official decision, people are generally so tired of the subject that they're more likely to compromise. That would be a problem if the issue at hand were a dangerous, high stakes thing--but in such a case, people tend to stay energetic longer anyway. When the issues at hand are the relatively minor things we encounter all the time, tiredness is a real blessing, as it shuts up the overly caffeinated who enjoy making mountains out of molehills.
I'm going to add that I'm not aware of anyone using consensus to handle committee votes. That's an entirely different matter, where those on the committee are charged to vote not in their own interests (as normal community consensus stuff is) but on behalf of others, as wisely and with as much information as they can gather. It's a higher level of functioning, it tends to deal with more technical or high stakes issues, and it's just a different beastie.
Thanks. You're filling in a lot of the blanks for me, at least about how things work at your place(and I'm thinking would MAYBE apply to consensus-based decision making in general).
I will confess my biases here and say that I think I am not so much anti-ConsensuDec, but rather somewhat skeptical as to its existence as a method distinct from others. From what I'm gleaning, the main differences seem to be that a) there are no officially sponsored debating forums, b) there is a more open time-window for reaching the final decision, and c) there is no formal vote held at the end.
But I think much of the rest of it, both the positive(room for private discussion away from authority figures and crowds) and the not-so positive(Uncle Josh's pork-barreling) are pretty typical of most broadly democratic decision-making systems.
And would I be correct in observing that if the non-consensus faction(in your instance, the German Americans) wanted to avail themselves of the same kinda informal conversational networks as the consensus-faction does, there'd be nothing to stop them?
I'm going to add that I'm not aware of anyone using consensus to handle committee votes. That's an entirely different matter, where those on the committee are charged to vote not in their own interests (as normal community consensus stuff is) but on behalf of others, as wisely and with as much information as they can gather. It's a higher level of functioning, it tends to deal with more technical or high stakes issues, and it's just a different beastie.
Cool. I think this gives some good context to reading your other posts.
When asked how they would have voted, people eligible to vote who did not do so were fairly evenly split in their preferences: 44% said they would have supported Trump, while 40% said they would have backed Harris.
This is from the Council on Foreign Policy:
The Popular Vote
Trump won 77,284,118 votes, or 49.8 percent of the votes cast for president. That is the second highest vote total in U.S. history, trailing only the 81,284,666 votes that Joe Biden won in 2020. Trump won 3,059,799 more popular votes in 2024 than he won in 2020 and 14,299,293 more than he won in 2016. He now holds the record for the most cumulative popular votes won by any presidential candidate in U.S. history, surpassing Barack Obama. Running three times for the White House obviously helps.
Kamala Harris won 74,999,166 votes or 48.3 percent of the votes cast. That was 6,285,500 fewer popular votes than Biden won in 2020, but 774,847 more than Trump won in 2020.
More than 155 million Americans voted in 2024: 156,302,318 to be exact. That’s the second largest total voter turnout in U.S. history in absolute terms. It is also just the second time that more than 140 million people voted in a presidential election.
In relative terms, voter turnout nationally in 2024 was 63.9 percent. That is below the 66.6 percent voter turnout recorded in 2020, which was the highest voter turnout rate in a U.S. presidential election since 1900. Nonetheless, turnout in 2024 was still high by modern standards. The 1960 election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon (63.8 percent) is the only other election in the last 112 years to exceed 63 percent voter turnout.
Thanks. You're filling in a lot of the blanks for me, at least about how things work at your place(and I'm thinking would MAYBE apply to consensus-based decision making in general).
I will confess my biases here and say that I think I am not so much anti-ConsensuDec, but rather somewhat skeptical as to its existence as a method distinct from others. From what I'm gleaning, the main differences seem to be that a) there are no officially sponsored debating forums, b) there is a more open time-window for reaching the final decision, and c) there is no formal vote held at the end.
But I think much of the rest of it, both the positive(room for private discussion away from authority figures and crowds) and the not-so positive(Uncle Josh's pork-barreling) are pretty typical of most broadly democratic decision-making systems.
And would I be correct in observing that if the non-consensus faction(in your instance, the German Americans) wanted to avail themselves of the same kinda informal conversational networks as the consensus-faction does, there'd be nothing to stop them?
Well, on a very practical level, our German-Americans did not come from a culture that practiced consensus, and did not speak Vietnamese, which meant they were highly unlikely to learn how to do it by example. Nobody wanted it that way, it was just the facts of the situation. And truly, I'm not at all sure what they would have said if you had somehow figured out a way to offer them an open doorway into the consensus-activity of the Vietnamese part of the church. I suspect they would have said a hasty "no, thank you," as it was just that foreign to them--they were very much the kind of people who kept careful minutes and records of everything, who felt at home with Robert's Rules of Order, and tended to see the world in a hierarchical way ("Herr Pastor" and all that).
The Vietnamese had the same response in reverse--they couldn't understand why anyone would want to hang around church after service was over to have meetings any longer than absolutely necessary, they thought it a huge waste of time to follow complicated reporting, documenting, and voting procedures, and if they could possibly delegate a task they didn't care about (which was most of them, frankly), they would do so--and so twenty people would try to dump the decision-making responsibility for something boring, like choosing the new software for accounting, on one person while everybody else went home. (Frankly, I had a lot of sympathy for this, I hate meetings too.)
For a while there I wondered whether our German-Americans liked long daytime meetings because they were one of the only forms of socializing they had left, given the fact that they were very elderly and living in neighborhoods that had changed a great deal over the years, both in terms of ethnicity and in terms of safety. The Vietnamese, being both younger and more mobile (driving at night, that sort of thing), could get their social needs met by visiting around--and they did.
ETA: Oh, I should add that we DID have formal votes just to tie a bow on the decision that had already been made by consensus. We pretty much had to, because churches in our state are generally nonprofit corporations and have to meet certain minimal standards by law. But in practice that meant voters' meetings of five to ten minutes, except maybe once a year when new officers had to be installed and a budget ratified. You can see how a five minute meeting might shock your average German-American type!
It should also be noted that true consensus decision making can really only work in a relatively small community where people are invested in the decision to be made. An individual congregation reaching a decision is always going to be a different dynamic from a city making a decision simply because the residents of a city don't form a community in the same way as a church. If the community is so large that it's effectively a collection of communities with very limited overlap then the informal consensus reaching activities will have very limited effect.
Add in the example from the OP, and the dynamics of a decision about something like routing of a road that directly affects only a minority of the community will be different again. When a majority in a community are not invested in the decision, I struggle to see how consensus in the whole community can be reached unless the majority who are not invested simply agree to go with the consensus of those who are.
When asked how they would have voted, people eligible to vote who did not do so were fairly evenly split in their preferences: 44% said they would have supported Trump, while 40% said they would have backed Harris.
This is from the Council on Foreign Policy:
The Popular Vote
Trump won 77,284,118 votes, or 49.8 percent of the votes cast for president. That is the second highest vote total in U.S. history, trailing only the 81,284,666 votes that Joe Biden won in 2020. Trump won 3,059,799 more popular votes in 2024 than he won in 2020 and 14,299,293 more than he won in 2016. He now holds the record for the most cumulative popular votes won by any presidential candidate in U.S. history, surpassing Barack Obama. Running three times for the White House obviously helps.
Kamala Harris won 74,999,166 votes or 48.3 percent of the votes cast. That was 6,285,500 fewer popular votes than Biden won in 2020, but 774,847 more than Trump won in 2020.
More than 155 million Americans voted in 2024: 156,302,318 to be exact. That’s the second largest total voter turnout in U.S. history in absolute terms. It is also just the second time that more than 140 million people voted in a presidential election.
In relative terms, voter turnout nationally in 2024 was 63.9 percent. That is below the 66.6 percent voter turnout recorded in 2020, which was the highest voter turnout rate in a U.S. presidential election since 1900. Nonetheless, turnout in 2024 was still high by modern standards. The 1960 election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon (63.8 percent) is the only other election in the last 112 years to exceed 63 percent voter turnout.
I will argue that 3 percent difference in the voter turnout would have broken more for Harris than Trump in the battleground states.
You can argue it, but without data to back up your argument, you’re argument is really based on nothing more than your assumption, which may or may not be valid. @Ruth, on the other hand, has provided data that undercuts your assumption.
Well, on a very practical level, our German-Americans did not come from a culture that practiced consensus, and did not speak Vietnamese, which meant they were highly unlikely to learn how to do it by example. Nobody wanted it that way, it was just the facts of the situation. And truly, I'm not at all sure what they would have said if you had somehow figured out a way to offer them an open doorway into the consensus-activity of the Vietnamese part of the church. I suspect they would have said a hasty "no, thank you," as it was just that foreign to them--
Just to clarify, I didn't neccessarily mean the Germans getting involved in the same informal consensus-activity groups as the Vietnamese, but instead create their own informal consenus-activity groups parallel to the Vietnamese groups.
IOW if a German family don't like it that the Vietnamese family are debating church decisions over dinner at their grandmother's restaurant, the German family are free to hold their own unofficial, off-site debates at their brother's coffee shop.
But I gather from what you've written that it would be a bit of a cultural leap for the German family to get into something like that, even if they were at total liberty to do so.
Well, I think the Germans could have done so, if they could even have conceived of the concept--but then, that's what makes them (us) Germans, at least in heritage! Methodical, following procedures, more on the intellectual side than the emotional/social... at least, that's what the Germanic heritage LCMS Lutherans of the Midwest are/were like, in my experience. It's not a bad thing, it's just a different thing.
So sure, they could have done this, but it's kind of like saying they could go water-skiing at age 85. They could, but the idea isn't likely to occur.
I should probably reiterate what I said before, which is that they DID NOT KNOW that what the Vietnamese were doing was consensus decision-making. From their point of view as non-Vietnamese speakers, all they saw was a large group of people showing up for the voters' meetings, voting all the exact same way, every single time, and then heading out the door within five to ten minutes, tops. They tried to account for these observations, and couldn't, except by supposing that someone was being a dictator and forcing everyone to vote the same way--because from within their own cultural context, that was the only logical explanation. I don't know if they'd ever heard of consensus decision-making before I tried to explain it to them. And I really can't blame them for disbelieving me.
It should also be noted that true consensus decision making can really only work in a relatively small community where people are invested in the decision to be made. An individual congregation reaching a decision is always going to be a different dynamic from a city making a decision simply because the residents of a city don't form a community in the same way as a church. If the community is so large that it's effectively a collection of communities with very limited overlap then the informal consensus reaching activities will have very limited effect.
I suppose a useful test might be: "Has any given member of this community consciously been in the same room with every other member of the community at least once?" The closer to "yes" the answer is, the more likely that consensus decision-making, as understood on this thread, will work.
Add in the example from the OP, and the dynamics of a decision about something like routing of a road that directly affects only a minority of the community will be different again. When a majority in a community are not invested in the decision, I struggle to see how consensus in the whole community can be reached unless the majority who are not invested simply agree to go with the consensus of those who are.
And, actually, since the final vote on the road revealed a majority AGAINST the road(56%), in the unlikely event of a consensus-based solution being pursued, it would be more practical to get the pro-road people to abandon their stance. However, IIRC, they seemed to be the ones with the more passionate commitment to their side(*).
(*) If I had to guess, I would think it was the pro-road people who likely came closest to the consensus-based practices exemplified in @Lamb Chopped's recollections. THEY were the ones who woulda been kvetching about the matter at the dinner tables and the donut shops, with the anti-road people getting the story more through establishment conduits like politicians and the media.
I suppose a useful test might be: "Has any given member of this community consciously been in the same room with every other member of the community at least once?" The closer to "yes" the answer is, the more likely that consensus decision-making, as understood on this thread, will work.
FWIW, my experience of consensus decision-making in small- to medium-sized groups has emphasized not having side conversations, separate from the whole group.
Conversations can be had in smaller groups in contexts like lunch breaks where the whole group is eating together but at tables of 6 or 8. But even then, there’s an expectation of sharing highlights and takeaways from each table with the larger group. The expectation is that members of the group, as decision-makers, should have the opportunity to hear everyone else and be heard by everyone else.
There’s generally an understanding and acceptance that true side conversations will happen, even if they’re not desirable. But there’s still an expectation that actual decision-making only happens among the whole group, as well as an understanding that too much side conversation threatens the ability to achieve true consensus.
Again, a great deal depends on culture. I don't believe in the Vietnamese context it was ever possible for every member of the group to speak to every other member--age, gender, and relative status in that culture put real constraints on whom you're socially "allowed to" talk with. And that's true of large group conversations as well--some people are not supposed to speak up in public, however active they may be in private.
So people automatically flow to their own personal areas of power. If they are among the non-public speakers (like most women are, and young people), then they express their opinions vigorously in the private side conversations that are allowed to them--and often these are with high-ranking community leaders, such as one's father, husband, or pastor. Surprisingly often that person goes on to publicly voice the concerns of the people who aren't speaking publicly. It's a kind of dance, and when it's working properly, everyone gets heard, though not necessarily out of their own mouths in public.
This might be the place to mention that indirect communication through third parties is considered a positive good in many Asian cultures--people automatically seek out a mediator to convey messages that might be a bit awkward or unwelcome if they were handled face to face. Nobody wants to have to say a flat "no" to another person's face in public! All the worse if it's in a public meeting. So the side conversations aren't examples of triangulation here, or undermining. They are rather examples of mediation (and here we get a real interesting light on the role of Christ as mediator, but I digress).
The side conversations in THIS kind of culture are crucial, because they flow directly into whatever public or large group conversations there might be. The side conversations allow those who have little public voice to recruit others who do, to serve as their mouthpieces. And it seemed to work pretty well in the only community I have experience of. Those who were "recruited" knew they'd better listen up, and more often than you'd expect, they did go on to voice the concerns of the less-voiced.
Sure. I was simply pointing out the approach that I’ve experienced for finding consensus, which differs from other approaches that have been described.
I suppose a useful test might be: "Has any given member of this community consciously been in the same room with every other member of the community at least once?" The closer to "yes" the answer is, the more likely that consensus decision-making, as understood on this thread, will work.
FWIW, my experience of consensus decision-making in small- to medium-sized groups has emphasized not having side conversations, separate from the whole group.
Conversations can be had in smaller groups in contexts like lunch breaks where the whole group is eating together but at tables of 6 or 8. But even then, there’s an expectation of sharing highlights and takeaways from each table with the larger group. The expectation is that members of the group, as decision-makers, should have the opportunity to hear everyone else and be heard by everyone else.
There’s generally an understanding and acceptance that true side conversations will happen, even if they’re not desirable. But there’s still an expectation that actual decision-making only happens among the whole group, as well as an understanding that too much side conversation threatens the ability to achieve true consensus.
Did these consensus-based usually eschew a formal vote at the end?
Congregational voting can be the pits. I learned that early on in my ministry. At the first church I pastored, they had an old electronic organ that actually caught fire during a service. Fortunately, some quick thinking men put it out before there was any serious damage to the building. Destroyed the organ, though. So we set out to find another organ, something to replace the old one. At the time the old electronic organs were giving way to digital organs. The organist actually found a very decent organ, well within our price range. But, we had to bring the purchase to a vote. The salesperson set up the instrument and allowed us to use it for a couple of Sundays. No one seemed to have any problem with it, so we called a special meeting of the voters to approve it. At the meeting, there was no objection. The only vote we heard was "aye." No "nays" at the vote. You would think we had a consensus. But right after the meeting, you guessed it, there were a group that complained to high heaven how the vote was rammed through. Actually, the whole process took about a month from the time the old organ caught fire, the gathering of information, and two weeks of using it on loan. The vote was according to the constitutional requirements. And we rammed it through.
That is a bunch of German Lutherans for you.
NOTE: I know full well how pipe organs are the best, if the congregation prefers an organ, but so many congregations have to settle for something less than full pipes.
At the first church I pastored, they had an old electronic organ that actually caught fire during a service. Fortunately, some quick thinking men put it out before there was any serious damage to the building. Destroyed the organ, though. So we set out to find another organ, something to replace the old one. At the time the old electronic organs were giving way to digital organs. The organist actually found a very decent organ, well within our price range. But, we had to bring the purchase to a vote. The salesperson set up the instrument and allowed us to use it for a couple of Sundays. No one seemed to have any problem with it, so we called a special meeting of the voters to approve it. At the meeting, there was no objection. The only vote we heard was "aye." No "nays" at the vote. You would think we had a consensus. But right after the meeting, you guessed it, there were a group that complained to high heaven how the vote was rammed through. Actually, the whole process took about a month from the time the old organ caught fire, the gathering of information, and two weeks of using it on loan. The vote was according to the constitutional requirements. And we rammed it through.
So had the complainants been present during the vote, but remained silent for some reason?
I may be totally off base, but this informal consensus forming seems like a nightmare for the neurodiverse - it seems to depend on knowing a whole unwritten code of interaction.
To be honest, most formal decision making and discussion has it's own share of unwritten codes of interaction. And, in much larger settings with dozens or hundreds of people present, accommodation for the needs of all present are going to be much harder than having those discussions in small groups, especially where those with additional needs are known and loved and people automatically accommodate those needs because that's how they always interact. I find it much easier to contribute to discussions in small break-out groups of half a dozen people than in a hall of hundreds (especially where there are formal rules about behaviour - time limits for those speaking, chair inviting people speaking for or against in turn, conventions on how to introduce yourself, statements of potential conflict of interest etc), especially when those small groups are people I know well.
To be honest, most formal decision making and discussion has it's own share of unwritten codes of interaction. And, in much larger settings with dozens or hundreds of people present, accommodation for the needs of all present are going to be much harder than having those discussions in small groups, especially where those with additional needs are known and loved and people automatically accommodate those needs because that's how they always interact. I find it much easier to contribute to discussions in small break-out groups of half a dozen people than in a hall of hundreds (especially where there are formal rules about behaviour - time limits for those speaking, chair inviting people speaking for or against in turn, conventions on how to introduce yourself, statements of potential conflict of interest etc), especially when those small groups are people I know well.
But at least there you've explicitly enabled discussion. The consensus forming @Lamb Chopped describes seems to have no explicit statement that it's taking place. Everyone "just knows". I've lost count of the number of "everyone knows" situations that have tripped me up.
Keep in mind I’m describing a culture foreign to yourself. Of course its rules are tripping you up! You weren’t born into it the way you were to your own. But those rules are very clear to the people born into them, just as your own culture’s rules are to you.
The difference here has nothing to do with consensus itself, but with the fact that I’m using a foreign example. It would have been better for me to use an example of consensus building from your own culture—except I haven’t got one.
The consensus forming @Lamb Chopped describes seems to have no explicit statement that it's taking place. Everyone "just knows". I've lost count of the number of "everyone knows" situations that have tripped me up.
Well, @Lamb Chopped's outline of the process seems to indicate that the issue is announced from the pulpit, which presumably signals the start of the period where discussion is supposed to begin.
That's because the way the Vietnamese do things is, someone explains the issue we need to decide from up front--often during the morning church announcements. We then hold off from making any decisions so that the church can yak about it--in gossip, over coffee, on the phone, whatever. We let that go on for about a month, or until there's a pretty good sense that everyone has made up their mind together. And then we call a vote (to pacify the German Americans!), in which all the Vietnamese inevitably vote the same way--because they've already hashed out their differences. So, five minute voters' meetings with no discussion and no contention. (Everyone wants to get home to lunch.)
Though, personally, I think it might be better if the date of the final vote were also announced at the outset, to avoid any subjectivity about when exactly the consensus needs to be finished. Or if not an actual vote, "We need to have the decision made by [whatever specific date in the near future]."
“Subjective” is pretty much the name of the game with this. Or did you mean “I think the community is done yakking, even if you don’t” ?
In practice, if there’s a disagreement on whether consensus has been reached, that means it has not.
To be sure, external pressures might cut the process short. Can’t tell the government “Go away for another month, we’re still working through our process.”
Keep in mind I’m describing a culture foreign to yourself. Of course its rules are tripping you up! You weren’t born into it the way you were to your own. But those rules are very clear to the people born into them, just as your own culture’s rules are to you.
Well, just as a general observation, but I wouldn't say that a culture's unwritten rules are always very clear to everybody born into them. And @KarlLB was specifically speculating about how the neurodivergent would react.
Of course. And yet the bulk of such rules do get through to almost everybody, or they’d not be functioning at all in that society (as opposed to being a bit impaired in their functioning).
Keep in mind I’m describing a culture foreign to yourself. Of course its rules are tripping you up! You weren’t born into it the way you were to your own. But those rules are very clear to the people born into them, just as your own culture’s rules are to you.
Except as a neurodivergent individual my own culture's rules are not aways clear to me. Additionally, because of the socialisation difficulties neurodivergence brings, we're often excluded from social networks, often without anyone being really aware that it's happening - except us, that is.
My own culture's unspoken rules frequently trip me up.
I suppose a useful test might be: "Has any given member of this community consciously been in the same room with every other member of the community at least once?" The closer to "yes" the answer is, the more likely that consensus decision-making, as understood on this thread, will work.
FWIW, my experience of consensus decision-making in small- to medium-sized groups has emphasized not having side conversations, separate from the whole group.
Conversations can be had in smaller groups in contexts like lunch breaks where the whole group is eating together but at tables of 6 or 8. But even then, there’s an expectation of sharing highlights and takeaways from each table with the larger group. The expectation is that members of the group, as decision-makers, should have the opportunity to hear everyone else and be heard by everyone else.
There’s generally an understanding and acceptance that true side conversations will happen, even if they’re not desirable. But there’s still an expectation that actual decision-making only happens among the whole group, as well as an understanding that too much side conversation threatens the ability to achieve true consensus.
Did these consensus-based [processes (per @stetson’s follow-up post)] usually eschew a formal vote at the end?
Often, yes. The goal of the process is either agreement from all participants, or agreement from most participants with the relative few who still do not agree being willing not to insist on their objection and stand in the way of a decision. Often, particularly in a smaller group, a vote isn’t needed to establish that that point has been reached. A vote has been taken if other rules, such as of a larger organization, require a vote.
Obviously, this is a model that can be abused if used to browbeat or wear down those holding a minority opinion. Competent leadership of the process is crucial, as is mutual trust among all participating. And the bigger the group, the more difficult it is to make the process work well, in my experience.
Keep in mind I’m describing a culture foreign to yourself. Of course its rules are tripping you up! You weren’t born into it the way you were to your own. But those rules are very clear to the people born into them, just as your own culture’s rules are to you.
Except as a neurodivergent individual my own culture's rules are not aways clear to me. Additionally, because of the socialisation difficulties neurodivergence brings, we're often excluded from social networks, often without anyone being really aware that it's happening - except us, that is.
My own culture's unspoken rules frequently trip me up.
I think we're agreeing with each other, really. The only reason I got off on this tangent was pointing out that the foreign nature of my example was adding to the difficulty.
I served on a commission that approved people going forward to seek ordination. The group was required to form a consensus of yes or no to move the person forward. We would move around the circle with each person saying one reason they felt called to vote one way or another. This continued until a consensus was reached. It could be a bit tiresome, but I always felt happy with the final decision.
The goal of the process is either agreement from all participants, or agreement from most participants with the relative few who still do not agree being willing not to insist on their objection and stand in the way of a decision. Often, particularly in a smaller group, a vote isn’t needed to establish that that point has been reached. A vote has been taken if other rules, such as of a larger organization, require a vote.
Obviously, this is a model that can be abused if used to browbeat or wear down those holding a minority opinion. Competent leadership of the process is crucial, as is mutual trust among all participating. And the bigger the group, the more difficult it is to make the process work well, in my experience.
Thanks. And, may I ask, did these consensus-based processes result in legally-binding decisions(*)?
(*) As opposed to stuff like what flavour of donuts to put in the coffee room.
Same question for @Graven Image. Did approving someone's road to ordination involve signing enforceable documents?
No, we gave our decision to the Bishop and the Standing Committee. They could follow it or not. They would also have other information about the person that was not available to us.
Comments
Certainly, that's a fair thing to say. Unfortunately, I myself (the only one who really could have said anything to them) was still just learning what it meant to operate that way, and was not far enough along to be explaining stuff. I just knew that their accusations of Mr. Lamb being dictatorial were wildly off the mark. All this time later, I can see what was going on much more clearly.
Well, that kinda raises the question, "designed by whom?" I mean, it's a way that one culture has worked out the challenge of decision making among large groups. My own home culture has found a different way to do that, namely by following Robert's rules of order and having public debate and voting. So in a sense, any method a given culture uses to reach a decision is "designed" to reach that goal--and generally with the least amount of conflict they can manage. Consensus method works for Vietnamese almost certainly because they have a communal culture, where the group's needs tend to take precedence over individual wants. All the customs and norms reinforce this. If we had fully understood at the time what was happening, AND made the attempt to transplant the consensus method to the German American group, I suspect we would have failed. That culture is far more individualistic, and probably could not have made it work. (For that matter, I wonder whether any Vietnamese ethnic churches that survive 100 years in America will still be practicing consensus method; I rather doubt it. People get Americanized pretty quickly.)
"Designed" was probably the wrong word, in kinda the way that it is also wrong in a phrase like "Nature designed cats' eyes for easy night vision."
Maybe more like "suits this purpose well". Anyway, to keep things both epiphanic and applicable, I'm gonna switch from talking about ethnicities in churches and switch to the concepts implied by @Ruth's last post, ie. smaller speech community(SSC) eg. the German Americans at Lambchop's church, larger speech community(LSC) eg. the Vietnamese at Lambchop's church, and their decision making processes in what I will call "organizations".
So, for Lambchop or anyone else who has experience with these things...
If there are 100 people in the LSC, and ninety wanted to vote for Option A, and 10 wanted to vote for Option B, would it be considered a failure by that community if the 10 dissenters were unconverted by the time of the overall organization's general vote?
And if so, how do they use the time between the announcement and the vote to garner a unanimous consensus for Option A? Do they just keep repeating the original arguments until the 10 holdouts have been convinced into sincere belief?
(And I suppose you could also have the 10 converting the 90 over to Option B. Probably a bit more work, but I think the same questions would apply.)
Personally, I find that consensus tends to evolve naturally from open discussion on most topics (assuming vaguely reasonable people and excluding irrational political-type prejudices). Thinking back to my church warden days, almost all the discussions that started off as somewhat contentious were resolved by consensus, following frank discussion. To me, the chief difference with the way you describe your Vietnamese community operating is not the seeking of consensus, but the fact that the discussion happens in a an assortment of side channels. To me, that means that not everyone is operating with the same information, although I suppose if you have enough reconnection points in your small conversations, then the important information held by one person will eventually get circulated around the whole community.
Did these consensuses sometimes involve compromise, ie. one group wants one thing, the other group wants another thing, so someone proposes a third option that gives both sides a little but not all of what they want, and that third option carries the day?
My impression is that there is a substantial amount of yakking going on at all times; it's no joke, really, when I say that the Vietnamese community probably knows the color of my underwear. The gossip in the community is the downside of that level of connectedness; the upside is the opportunity for consensus.
Now certainly there are occasions when consensus fails. The big one I remember is when the church split, and the direct cause of the split was the fact that our adversaries were carrying out acts of violence (breaking car windows, following women home at midnight, etc.) and threatening more (kidnapping, arson). There were those who were willing to stand up to that sort of pressure, and there were those who didn't feel able, and we couldn't blame them. So the greater part of the church did stand up to the pressure, and our adversaries used the unannounced meetings, an absurdly low quorum number, and the ignorance of our English-speaking members to force through a mass excommunication of over 60% of the church, including babies. The handful of Vietnamese speakers who knuckled under called us the week this all went down, in tears, to say they couldn't cope, and we told them not to worry. But of course, you can't have consensus when a number of people fear for their lives, and the rest of the group is saying "Fuck that."
But that's the only case of consensus failure I can remember.
According to Pew Research, this is not the case.
Well, I'm inclined to say that all sounds like
And thanks for the details. The reason I was asking is because I've been hearing people talk about "consensus politics" or "consensus decision making" for decades now, with the implication that it's the best way to do things. But I think it really makes a difference how a given consensus is achieved. There's a pretty big difference between, at one end of the spectrum, "They explained the proposal in clearer terms and I then understood why it was the better one" and at the other "Well, Uncle Josh supports the proposal, and he's been patronizing my business for years now, so I guess I should return the favour."
(Not commenting about which methods are applied in any particular venue, most places probably fall in the middle somewhere.)
To be clear, I'm not myself saying that consensus decision-making is the one true way to do politics or whatever. I'm simply saying that I've seen it in action, and it can work. I would not attempt to impose it on a culture that isn't set up for it, that sounds like a recipe for coercion. But coercion is very much NOT the vibe that I'm getting off the Vietnamese, to whom it is native.
But since we're here, you might consider the possibility that someone does make the decision on account of Uncle Josh simply because they judge the benefit to the family or community relationship to be of more importance on this occasion than the benefit of having the church carpet be blue instead of green. I mean, I do that sort of thing when it's straight ordinary voting and not a consensus situation. If Uncle Josh has his heart completely set on the green, and I have a very minimal inclination toward the blue, I could very well decide to give Uncle Josh the desire of his heart, without being in any way illogical. I've simply chosen the emotional / social benefit over the personal individual one.
1. The aim is to identify whether a proposal has strong support in a given community by involvement of as much of that community as possible in the decision making. The process is very communal in nature, the aim isn't to try and convince the majority of individuals within the community that you are right but to bring the whole community along with you.
2. The process involves a lot of discussion, in many different forms and places, almost always with cross over from one discussion to another. That, of course, meshes with involving as many people as possible - not everyone will be able to make a two hour meeting scheduled for Tuesday evening, and those who can make the meeting are not all going to be comfortable about speaking in front of a large group of people. But, give a community a month to talk things through over the breakfast table in families, informal meeting up with people in the street, (depending on the community) over lunch breaks at work, coffee after church, in the pub after choir practice etc and most people who have something to contribute will have a good chance to do so. A good test of whether you're doing consensus decision making is, when a topic is announced at a meeting for a decision do you talk about it at the time but it's not mentioned over coffee after the meeting? If you keep all your decision making within designated spaces for that then you aren't seeking consensus.
3. There may not be a vote, or a vote is a mere formality, or if when the time put aside for a vote arrives and people still haven't reached a consensus then the vote is postponed. A community consensus is known without the need for the formality of a vote (there may be good reasons to numerate the support through a vote, but there won't be people who don't know which way it's going). If there's a vote that's close then it's likely that the decision is postponed too allow further discussion to reach a consensus.
Harper Valley PTA is an old novelty song about the titular organization, where everybody is in everybody else's business.
The Handforth Parish Council is a bit of unintentional comedy from the pandemic, still viewable on YouTube. Maybe more applicable to the one non-consensus, schismatic incident you reference as taking place in your church.
Oh, sure. If it works, it works. I've just been hearing about the whole concept of consensus politics for a while now, and, as I say, I'm curious about how it actually works in practice.
Well, two things there...
1. Blue carpets vs. green carpets is a pretty inconsequential issue, and I probably wouldn't care if someone just voted for a colour I hated to impress their Uncle Josh.
OTOH, if the question was "Should we ban nuts from the premises in order to prevent dangerous allergic reactions?", I'd prefer that such trivial considerations be removed from the decision-making process.
2. I also think it makes a difference whether the vote is being undertaken by a select committee, or by the membership as a whole. If it's the former, I might expect higher standards of evidence and analysis than if it's the latter. To go back to my original example...
If the head of the city's traffic committee votes to close the road because he wants to impress his anti-road girlfriend, the pro-road people probably have a right to complain. Not so much if Joe Schmuck on the north side votes anti-road for similar reasons, because they KNOW the average voter is not obliged to follow any particular criterion in making decisions.
Sorry, but I'm not sure I understand the difference between convincing the majority that you are right, and bringing the whole community along with you.
Do you mean that we might not have everyone totally in agreement with a proposal, but that even those who are in disagreement will agree not to make an issue of it, so the proposal can go forward without rancor?
But isn't this basically just how regular elections and referenda work? The vote is scheduled for a certain date, and the discussion takes place in myriad venues, eg. candidate debates, TV news panels, suburban dinner tables, bus stop chitchat etc etc, with crossover between all of the discussions, eg. the people at the bus stop discuss ideas they heard at the candidates' debate. It doesn't usually result in an overwhelming consensus, however.
The other good thing about consensus is that, as Alan says, you can often postpone the official decision (the formality vote, or whatever it is) if you reach the appointed time and it's clear that the community is still having significant conflict about it. We've done that, though not often.
The third good thing about consensus in my experience is that, by the time we finally do reach the official decision, people are generally so tired of the subject that they're more likely to compromise. That would be a problem if the issue at hand were a dangerous, high stakes thing--but in such a case, people tend to stay energetic longer anyway. When the issues at hand are the relatively minor things we encounter all the time, tiredness is a real blessing, as it shuts up the overly caffeinated who enjoy making mountains out of molehills.
I'm going to add that I'm not aware of anyone using consensus to handle committee votes. That's an entirely different matter, where those on the committee are charged to vote not in their own interests (as normal community consensus stuff is) but on behalf of others, as wisely and with as much information as they can gather. It's a higher level of functioning, it tends to deal with more technical or high stakes issues, and it's just a different beastie.
Thanks. You're filling in a lot of the blanks for me, at least about how things work at your place(and I'm thinking would MAYBE apply to consensus-based decision making in general).
I will confess my biases here and say that I think I am not so much anti-ConsensuDec, but rather somewhat skeptical as to its existence as a method distinct from others. From what I'm gleaning, the main differences seem to be that a) there are no officially sponsored debating forums, b) there is a more open time-window for reaching the final decision, and c) there is no formal vote held at the end.
But I think much of the rest of it, both the positive(room for private discussion away from authority figures and crowds) and the not-so positive(Uncle Josh's pork-barreling) are pretty typical of most broadly democratic decision-making systems.
And would I be correct in observing that if the non-consensus faction(in your instance, the German Americans) wanted to avail themselves of the same kinda informal conversational networks as the consensus-faction does, there'd be nothing to stop them?
Cool. I think this gives some good context to reading your other posts.
This is from the Council on Foreign Policy: https://www.cfr.org/article/2024-"election-numbers
I will argue that 3 percent difference in the voter turnout would have broken more for Harris than Trump in the battleground states.
Well, on a very practical level, our German-Americans did not come from a culture that practiced consensus, and did not speak Vietnamese, which meant they were highly unlikely to learn how to do it by example. Nobody wanted it that way, it was just the facts of the situation. And truly, I'm not at all sure what they would have said if you had somehow figured out a way to offer them an open doorway into the consensus-activity of the Vietnamese part of the church. I suspect they would have said a hasty "no, thank you," as it was just that foreign to them--they were very much the kind of people who kept careful minutes and records of everything, who felt at home with Robert's Rules of Order, and tended to see the world in a hierarchical way ("Herr Pastor" and all that).
The Vietnamese had the same response in reverse--they couldn't understand why anyone would want to hang around church after service was over to have meetings any longer than absolutely necessary, they thought it a huge waste of time to follow complicated reporting, documenting, and voting procedures, and if they could possibly delegate a task they didn't care about (which was most of them, frankly), they would do so--and so twenty people would try to dump the decision-making responsibility for something boring, like choosing the new software for accounting, on one person while everybody else went home. (Frankly, I had a lot of sympathy for this, I hate meetings too.)
For a while there I wondered whether our German-Americans liked long daytime meetings because they were one of the only forms of socializing they had left, given the fact that they were very elderly and living in neighborhoods that had changed a great deal over the years, both in terms of ethnicity and in terms of safety. The Vietnamese, being both younger and more mobile (driving at night, that sort of thing), could get their social needs met by visiting around--and they did.
ETA: Oh, I should add that we DID have formal votes just to tie a bow on the decision that had already been made by consensus. We pretty much had to, because churches in our state are generally nonprofit corporations and have to meet certain minimal standards by law. But in practice that meant voters' meetings of five to ten minutes, except maybe once a year when new officers had to be installed and a budget ratified. You can see how a five minute meeting might shock your average German-American type!
Add in the example from the OP, and the dynamics of a decision about something like routing of a road that directly affects only a minority of the community will be different again. When a majority in a community are not invested in the decision, I struggle to see how consensus in the whole community can be reached unless the majority who are not invested simply agree to go with the consensus of those who are.
Based on what?
Thanks. I'll give it a deeper read in a bit. For now...
Just to clarify, I didn't neccessarily mean the Germans getting involved in the same informal consensus-activity groups as the Vietnamese, but instead create their own informal consenus-activity groups parallel to the Vietnamese groups.
IOW if a German family don't like it that the Vietnamese family are debating church decisions over dinner at their grandmother's restaurant, the German family are free to hold their own unofficial, off-site debates at their brother's coffee shop.
But I gather from what you've written that it would be a bit of a cultural leap for the German family to get into something like that, even if they were at total liberty to do so.
So sure, they could have done this, but it's kind of like saying they could go water-skiing at age 85. They could, but the idea isn't likely to occur.
I should probably reiterate what I said before, which is that they DID NOT KNOW that what the Vietnamese were doing was consensus decision-making. From their point of view as non-Vietnamese speakers, all they saw was a large group of people showing up for the voters' meetings, voting all the exact same way, every single time, and then heading out the door within five to ten minutes, tops. They tried to account for these observations, and couldn't, except by supposing that someone was being a dictator and forcing everyone to vote the same way--because from within their own cultural context, that was the only logical explanation. I don't know if they'd ever heard of consensus decision-making before I tried to explain it to them. And I really can't blame them for disbelieving me.
I suppose a useful test might be: "Has any given member of this community consciously been in the same room with every other member of the community at least once?" The closer to "yes" the answer is, the more likely that consensus decision-making, as understood on this thread, will work.
And, actually, since the final vote on the road revealed a majority AGAINST the road(56%), in the unlikely event of a consensus-based solution being pursued, it would be more practical to get the pro-road people to abandon their stance. However, IIRC, they seemed to be the ones with the more passionate commitment to their side(*).
(*) If I had to guess, I would think it was the pro-road people who likely came closest to the consensus-based practices exemplified in @Lamb Chopped's recollections. THEY were the ones who woulda been kvetching about the matter at the dinner tables and the donut shops, with the anti-road people getting the story more through establishment conduits like politicians and the media.
Conversations can be had in smaller groups in contexts like lunch breaks where the whole group is eating together but at tables of 6 or 8. But even then, there’s an expectation of sharing highlights and takeaways from each table with the larger group. The expectation is that members of the group, as decision-makers, should have the opportunity to hear everyone else and be heard by everyone else.
There’s generally an understanding and acceptance that true side conversations will happen, even if they’re not desirable. But there’s still an expectation that actual decision-making only happens among the whole group, as well as an understanding that too much side conversation threatens the ability to achieve true consensus.
So people automatically flow to their own personal areas of power. If they are among the non-public speakers (like most women are, and young people), then they express their opinions vigorously in the private side conversations that are allowed to them--and often these are with high-ranking community leaders, such as one's father, husband, or pastor. Surprisingly often that person goes on to publicly voice the concerns of the people who aren't speaking publicly. It's a kind of dance, and when it's working properly, everyone gets heard, though not necessarily out of their own mouths in public.
This might be the place to mention that indirect communication through third parties is considered a positive good in many Asian cultures--people automatically seek out a mediator to convey messages that might be a bit awkward or unwelcome if they were handled face to face. Nobody wants to have to say a flat "no" to another person's face in public! All the worse if it's in a public meeting. So the side conversations aren't examples of triangulation here, or undermining. They are rather examples of mediation (and here we get a real interesting light on the role of Christ as mediator, but I digress).
The side conversations in THIS kind of culture are crucial, because they flow directly into whatever public or large group conversations there might be. The side conversations allow those who have little public voice to recruit others who do, to serve as their mouthpieces. And it seemed to work pretty well in the only community I have experience of. Those who were "recruited" knew they'd better listen up, and more often than you'd expect, they did go on to voice the concerns of the less-voiced.
Did these consensus-based usually eschew a formal vote at the end?
That is a bunch of German Lutherans for you.
NOTE: I know full well how pipe organs are the best, if the congregation prefers an organ, but so many congregations have to settle for something less than full pipes.
So had the complainants been present during the vote, but remained silent for some reason?
But at least there you've explicitly enabled discussion. The consensus forming @Lamb Chopped describes seems to have no explicit statement that it's taking place. Everyone "just knows". I've lost count of the number of "everyone knows" situations that have tripped me up.
The difference here has nothing to do with consensus itself, but with the fact that I’m using a foreign example. It would have been better for me to use an example of consensus building from your own culture—except I haven’t got one.
Well, @Lamb Chopped's outline of the process seems to indicate that the issue is announced from the pulpit, which presumably signals the start of the period where discussion is supposed to begin.
Though, personally, I think it might be better if the date of the final vote were also announced at the outset, to avoid any subjectivity about when exactly the consensus needs to be finished. Or if not an actual vote, "We need to have the decision made by [whatever specific date in the near future]."
In practice, if there’s a disagreement on whether consensus has been reached, that means it has not.
To be sure, external pressures might cut the process short. Can’t tell the government “Go away for another month, we’re still working through our process.”
Well, just as a general observation, but I wouldn't say that a culture's unwritten rules are always very clear to everybody born into them. And @KarlLB was specifically speculating about how the neurodivergent would react.
Except as a neurodivergent individual my own culture's rules are not aways clear to me. Additionally, because of the socialisation difficulties neurodivergence brings, we're often excluded from social networks, often without anyone being really aware that it's happening - except us, that is.
My own culture's unspoken rules frequently trip me up.
Obviously, this is a model that can be abused if used to browbeat or wear down those holding a minority opinion. Competent leadership of the process is crucial, as is mutual trust among all participating. And the bigger the group, the more difficult it is to make the process work well, in my experience.
This.
I think we're agreeing with each other, really. The only reason I got off on this tangent was pointing out that the foreign nature of my example was adding to the difficulty.
Thanks. And, may I ask, did these consensus-based processes result in legally-binding decisions(*)?
(*) As opposed to stuff like what flavour of donuts to put in the coffee room.
Is it legally binding?
https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/en/charity-search/-/charity-details/4043442/governing-document
No, we gave our decision to the Bishop and the Standing Committee. They could follow it or not. They would also have other information about the person that was not available to us.