We're discussing problem solving and decision making, brought to you by the University of California, Irvine, and I'm Rob Stone. It can be done wrong, done badly, people can have confusion about it, or it can be done very well and be a very good group decision making method. Sometimes there are people out in the organization that have no clue what to do in a certain situation, not because they're not smart enough, they don't have all the information available to them to make a good decision.

If you walked into a room, you wouldn't have any idea which decision making method was being used, if you saw a group of people using either of these. Advantages, group members are consulted, they are listened to, their thoughts and ideas are part of this whole decision process. Advantages, group members are all involved, so we get a lot of good buy in and support for this thing.

But they could not, when they sat down together, hear and understand what each other was saying, and at one point they divided into three subgroups that simply would not even listen to the other groups anymore. So sometimes we can't even understand what the other person's saying because we're having a hard time finding any common ground, our values and beliefs are so different. If you can't refocus the disagreement because of number three, because of the emotion or the past history, do not attempt to reach consensus to resolve the issue.