In politics, consensus is often judged by the outcome. In leadership, it should be judged by the groundwork you lay before it’s even required.
Too often, leaders wait until an issue is urgent before rallying support. The better path? Build trust, understanding, and alignment long before you need to call on them.
Think of it like building a house: the strength isn’t in the paint color or fixtures—it’s in the foundation. And the time to pour that foundation isn’t when the storm clouds gather.
Here are three ways to build consensus before it’s really needed:
Invest in relationships and build trust now (not when you need them). Eighty percent (80%) of consensus is built through the level of trust and investment people have in you before you actively need to call on it. The 20% around the specific issue or change will be more easily smoothed if there’s equity and trust already in the tank. Investing time and interest in people—understanding their needs, empathizing with their position, and seeking how to influence them—pays rich dividends in the long run.
Identify potential fires before they start (and limit their impact if they already have). Easier said than done, of course, but understanding how and where (and, importantly, why) things get testy ahead of time is always beneficial. Take the temperature of an organization, understand the contentious topics, see who the main players and influencers are, and the relationship dynamics that underpin them. Do all this, and you’ll have a crash course in how to avoid, navigate, propose, or quell – whichever tool is required.
Drip-feed and manage the vision before it becomes a ‘campaignable’ element. Warming people up to buy into anything is key. Take peoples’ input carefully and sensitively, and work to understand where resentment and hostility lie. Have hard and sensitive conversations before they become tricky, and work to establish compromises along the way. While this may seem like hard work, operating in relative silence away from forensic glare ensures your thinking and agenda remain clear. And then, when it matters, the pathway is clearer.
As a former advertising man, we were always told to ‘sell the idea before you get in the room.’ The sentiment and lesson here are no different or less important. Rarely has consensus been built and progress made from a standing start. Working backward and looking at the walk-up to anything is crucial. The path to achieving anything approaching consensus is rarely straightforward or lacking nuance, but you can get a head start on controlling the inputs to make it possible.
