17/11/2024

Gradients of agreement

"Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making"1 by Sam Kaner with Lenny Lind, Catherine Toldi, Sarah Fisk and Duane Berger is probably my favourite resource for anyone who wants to bring their facilitation skills to the next level.

One of the concepts shown in it, that made a significant impact on my approach to cooperation is definitely gradients of agreement.

Gradients of agreement

While the whole concept is probably worth it's own post, today I would like to focus on the part of the scale that changed my approach to communicating while working on a project.

Some say that "done is better than perfect" but it's not easy to let go of our vision, of our built-in rules and expectations, especially in a world that is highly polarized - you have to be for or against, zero or one, no middle ground.

And this is where "Don't Like But Will Support" position comes in. Just think about it - do we always have to have the perfect agreement? Will the end result of a discussion or code review by any better if we continue to dig deeper? Maybe it's already good enough? Maybe it's a matter of personal preference? Is it worth the time spent for further discussions?