Thought Leaders Listen
Over the life of this blog, I’ll frequently mention lessons I’ve learned from the Religious Society of Friends, a.k.a. Quakers.
Friends have some very peculiar ways, among them their group decision-making process. Just to begin collecting my thoughts about what this way has to teach leaders, I’m posting a short essay on the subject by an insider, a prominent Friend of Philadelphia.
This article, “When Friends Attend to Business,” is a good place to begin learning about Quaker decision-making. The place to go deep-deep is Michael Sheeran’s book Beyond Majority Rule. Although the book is out of print, abebooks.com usually lists a few copies.
A subject I’ll need to take up in an essay is how Quaker process differs from secular forms of “consensus decision-making.” The differences are subtle, and even in Quaker meetings they sometimes disappear. But they’re important, and I’ll explain them as I develop essays on social organisms.
One note here, though: what the two decision-making processes have in common is that, when they are used well, they allow the best listeners to have enhanced influence.