Managing Conflict 43

about the people in a group who end up on the losing end of the
vote? They may become powerful resisters to whatever decision is
made in this way.
A second possibility is consensus, the preferred method for
group decision making most of the time. Consensus, or talking out
the alternatives until everybody decides on a best solution, pro-
duces a decision with a high degree of member support. However,
consensus does take time, as many readers who have served on
juries may know. If time is important, consensus may not be pos-
sible.
The third method is a hybrid decision-making method some-
times called the nominal group technique (NGT), in which all
members involved in a problem individually rank order their pref-
erences. The rankings are then averaged. The group agrees ahead
of time that the alternative that receives the highest average ranking
will be the group decision. Use NGT when your group becomes
deadlocked. It’s not as good as consensus but it’s better than voting
because it yields a higher degree of commitment from group mem-
bers than voting. A drawback of NGT is that it is time-consuming,
although less so than consensus.
5. Monitor the results of the chosen solution. This is a cru-
cial step in group decision making. The tendency for some groups,
especially groups that have fought in the past, is to skip this step.
They are so often relieved that they made a decision without fight-
ing and yelling that they forget to do it! Monitoring begins with
planning. How will the group monitor the result? Should it check
every month, every quarter, every year? Who will do what when,
where, and how? Make sure the group agrees ahead of time how to
monitor the solution chosen. This bit of preplanning will save time
and disagreement down the road.

The reflective thinking method is very effective in most cases.

Framing the conflict as ‘‘us versus the problem’’ instead of ‘‘us ver-
sus them’’ leads to a win-win outcome. However, there are some

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