Agreeing To Agree

How do you overcome the difficulties in reaching a team agreement, it seems that most companies, in team building South Africa, will battle with this every now and then.

One reason we fail to reach an agreement is that much of the discussions are based on opinions rather than facts.

It is much easier to offer an opinion than to do the work of uncovering facts. People's opinions are important in shaping how they feel about something, but hard cold facts will help us move to a conclusion faster because they leave less room for dispute.

Opinions are shaped by our values. Our values tell us what should be right and what is wrong, nevertheless these values can be open to interpretation.

The point is not to debate the issue, but simply to show that very different beliefs may be acquired by people that then serve as flashpoints during discussions later in life.

Experts say that people will usually agree that much of what they say is just their opinion, but once an issue becomes important then their opinion suddenly becomes the truth. When people are taking part in a discussion, their self-esteem is polished when everybody agrees with them, but when challenged to authenticate what they are saying, it is human nature to go into a defensive attitude.

To alleviate these situations have everyone on the team learning more about values and beliefs of their fellow team members. Team members will begin to see that beliefs that vary from their own are not always wrong, they are just different; this will then become a realisation that team members must think first about the other point of view before deciding to argue the point. This way reaching an agreement is greatly simplified.

Many value based obstructions to reaching an agreement can be reduced by direct knowledge. Teams should discuss how to make decisions and what they will do when an impasse occurs. It is a good idea to write down some ground rules for handling these team building South Africa situations.