Consensus is the Absence of Leadership

When Reed Hastings proposed the idea of Netflix, not everyone was on board. He could not build a consensus and was told that idea wouldn't work.    

When Steve Jobs wanted Apple to sell both hardware and software, he was unable to build a consensus. 

When technology allowed actors to talk in movies, the head of Warner Brothers, H.M. Warner, said: “Who in the hell wants to hear actors talk?” Talking in movies was unable to build a consensus.

When Chester Carlson attempted to sell his idea for copying documents, people laughed at the idea of Xerox. Even the National Inventors Council dismissed the idea.  Carlson could not build a consensus. 

When Fred Smith submitted his idea for FedEx to his Yale professor, the professor wrote back, “The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible.” Smith had a hard time building consensus. 

You get the point — great ideas rarely build consensus. Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom once said: “The process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner 'I stand for consensus?”

As coaches and leaders, we are not always going to be able to build a consensus. Not everyone has every necessary piece of information at their disposal. Only you do. Only you, as the leader, know that doing the right thing is always right, even if you don't have a consensus. You earn the job based on your ability to make intelligent decisions, to bridge gaps, to unify when consensus doesn’t exist. We must lead, we must forge ahead and always know people will follow you if you give them a direction and a plan, even if it’s not their own.

Thatcher believed in doing what she thought was right based on her principles, beliefs, and assessment of the situation — not what the media or polls suggested. She was placed in charge to lead, not to build a consensus for a decision. She worried about consensus after she made the right choice. 

We must lead, we must not wait, and most of all, we must unify after we decide. That's what leaders do.

P.S. If you are in search of a book recommendation, our team at The Daily Coach highly recommends The Best in Us: People, Profit, and the Remaking of Modern Leadership by Cleve Stevens. This book offers a daring and radical new take on leading that emphasizes the rigorous development of leaders and followers. It's the people-centric organizations, the ones fueled by a drive for excellence, that will be the most profitable in the coming decades. The new approach, called transforming integrative leadership, or simply transformative leadership, is a compelling, highly effective step-by-step process. 

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