 Looking to grow another leadership skill this April? We've got a good one for you. Stay tuned. Welcome back, and congratulations on taking one more step towards becoming one of the great leaders of tomorrow. We're continuing our theme of April for growth and revitalization here at Evil Genius Leadership, and we're working hard at developing our leadership skills while we help you develop yours. One great skill that you can cultivate is building consensus. Building consensus among a group is a great skill to have because it helps solve problems and builds strong professional relationships at the same time. Consensus is a general agreement on something or more specifically an idea that is shared by all members of a group. And notice I said all members. It can be really difficult to get everyone and even a small group to agree on something, and that's why building consensus is such a valuable leadership skill. It's really important to recognize that building consensus is not getting a majority of the people to agree, or just most of the people to agree. It's getting everyone to agree. And this can be much harder to do upfront, but it pays dividends down the road when it comes time to execute the plan. There are a few tools you can put in your leadership toolbox to help build consensus when you need to. First, try to find areas of the discussion that everyone or mostly everyone agrees upon. If you can get everyone to agree to certain ideas or facts, no matter how small, you have something to build upon when more contentious issues arrive. Next, try to separate people's interest from their positions. By understanding what a person is truly trying to accomplish or their interest, you can distinguish that from their position, which might be to arrive at a predetermined solution. When different positions in the group conflict, it can be difficult to build consensus. Understanding everyone's interests can help you propose solutions that will meet all the interests while reducing resistance to a certain position. As always, using active listening will help you understand why people might be holding back from being part of the consensus. Ask thorough, thoughtful, open-ended questions to really get to the roots of what the disagreement might be. And finally, give people in the group an opportunity to speak about what the impacts of the solution you are trying to gain consensus are might be. For example, if one individual is reluctant to agree to a solution because it will create a lot of new work his team isn't staffed for, maybe the solution can be retooled to distribute that work and you can gain consensus from the group that way. Building consensus among any group of people takes time, so don't get frustrated and give up if you aren't successful right away. To get to a truly strong consensus often takes multiple meetings, side discussions, adjusting solutions, and lots of conversations. So after all this, it probably sounds like building consensus is a lot of work, and it is, but there are some advantages. The first is that by bringing people to consensus position, you demonstrate strong leadership and that will certainly be noticed by your boss. Secondly, by putting together people in a consensus instead of just a majority opinion or top-down direction, you build a group of people who is invested in seeing the solution come about. And finally, building consensus helps you be a connector of people and build strong professional relationships and that will give you a reputation as a skilled problem solver. If you found this useful, don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter and join us every Friday at 10 a.m. Pacific Time for a live interactive leadership discussion on BLAD. If you can't make it, click off on that globe to the right. That'll get you subscribed to our email list and that'll bring all of our content direct to your inbox. Thanks for watching. I appreciate it as always. And remember, the future is out there. Lead the way.