Subject: What are the key ingredients of good leadership?

Do you think the voluntary sector suffers from an over-reliance on consensual decision making? There's some evidence to suggest that groups make poorer, riskier or less creative decisions than individual experts.

Are leaders in the voluntary sector, whether at senior manager or board level, hampered by an inability to make quick, independent decisions on areas where they are expert - because the dominant culture in the sector is one that requires endless collaboration and consensus?

Just a thought...

There’s a place for consensus but there’s certainly also a place for rapid and emphatic decision-making by individuals.  The key is to create a culture based on trust.

Two ways of doing that are firstly to give everyone sufficient understanding of the big picture so that they can see how some decisions don’t need consensus; and secondly, for each type of decision, to make very clear what degree of consultation is being used – a spectrum from “Shut up and get on with it” to “Everyone has a vote” – the latter would probably be used when deciding the date for your Christmas lunch.

What is inexcusable is to go through the motions of consulting people when you’ve already made up your mind.  Trust then flies out of the window and will take a long time to return.