What are the best methods for making decisions in meetings

What you'll learn

The meeting owner decides

Majority vote from the group

Unanimous agreement

General consensus

One of the hardest parts of running an effective meeting is successfully reaching a conclusion to that meeting’s agenda.   In this article we want to share several different approaches to reaching a conclusion, along with showing their strengths and weaknesses.

Generally speaking there are four different ways to reach a conclusion to a meetings topic.

1. The meeting owner decides
2. Majority vote from the group
3. Unanimous agreement
4. General consensus

Each of the above approaches has various strengths and weaknesses and should be understood before there are employed in your meeting. Let’s spend some time now to evaluate each one.

The meeting owner decides

In this format the meeting owner is responsible for making a decision either before or after the meeting. It is up to the meeting owner to gather input from the meeting participants, process that feedback and decide upon the best course of action.

Benefit: The main benefit to this approach is that the decision can be reached upon quickly. As soon as the meeting owner has all the information that it needs, it can make its final decision.

Weakness:  There may be times when the meeting owner is not empowered to make a decision for the group. In addition, group members may disagree with the meeting owner’s decision.

Majority vote from the group

This format takes a group vote from all the participants. Whichever decision has the most votes at the end of the meeting is the decision that is agreed upon.

Benefit:  This decision-making process is very easy to do and always ensures that at least more than half of the participants are in agreement.

Weakness: In sensitive or heated topics, a large portion of the group may feel resentment towards the decision.

Unanimous agreement

In this format of decision-making, the entire group is polled and a final decision is not arrived out until all members agree on the same decision.

Benefit: Participants feel very powerful and invested in the decision and its outcome. The group shares responsibility and ownership of the outcome.

Weakness:  this methodology can be very time-consuming as everyone must reach the same agreement. There is also high risk of the decision never been reached for problems that have very different outcomes and viewpoints.

General consensus

For this format each individual has to believe that the decision is one that they can support and live with even though they might not fully agree with it.

Benefit: This methodology enhances teamwork and the feeling of personal power within the problem while also conveying a feeling of ownership by the members of the team.

Weakness:  This method can be time-consuming although not as time-consuming as unanimous agreement. It requires open minds and good communication skills amongst the members of the team.