Você se depara com opiniões conflitantes em uma reunião de grande grupo. Como você garante o progresso em meio ao caos?

Indeed, active listening is key to reaching consensus in situations where there are conflicting ideas. My role as a leader in such situation would be to acknowledge the different perspectives that the group has and go beyond in commending those unique ideas. I would then remind the team of the essence of the discussion and that it is okay to have different opinions. This will result to a deep reflection on the right direction to take leading to the objectivity and building consensus as a team.

For example listening actively includes note taking to ensure precise reference on what you are about to deliver. This also provides on what to provide balance between to what to skip and what to emphasize as a leader. Note taking provides an escalation of ideas and discussion from the one who delivered the idea to the audience. In the middle of the heated argument listening to everyone, note taking can be chaotic so the note taker must be precise to have proper communication and understanding skills which will provide hearing chance to everyone and the audience by letting them be aware of the procedure and increase credibility to those who will share critical information and thoughts.

There is need to segment the group into smaller subsets of like minded people normally bringing their backgrounds, expertise etc into consideration when allocating a group and appoint able group leaders. Also break the discussion topic into small sets of the whole discussion. Encourage group leaders to note down all contributions and prepare a robust presentation in simple powerpoint format. Bring all to present and note down additions or subtractions from other members. Bring together all presentations and synchronise them into one discussion output that is most representative of the whole group. Depending on time, you can go through the discussion output as a whole group. Mostly consensus will be reached as this will be all representing.

Es importante que el consenso vaya dirigido hacia un punto común por parte de todos los asistentes y es que se defina cuál es el objetivo de la reunión o de la discusión Muchas veces se enfrentan muchas opiniones porque al final se buscan cosas distintas. La clave es en definir el objetivo, después definir por parte de todos las alternativas y evaluar cuáles van an al línea de conseguir el objetivo de forma más óptima