And you need to remember that when the situation is flip-flopped and you're the one with the position and pull. Margaret A. Neale is a professor of organization behavior at Stanford University Graduate School of Business and the director of the Negotiation and Influence Strategies and Advanced Negotiation Program at Stanford University. A n option might get the most votes and still not be the best choice Like working in a kitchen with too many cooks, trying to negotiate with a lot of people who have divergent views can lead to some bad soup outcomes. The more views mixed in to spice up the negotiation, the harder it is to agree on the flavor of anything. Even determining when an agreement has been reached is can be difficult.
Groups usually rely on majority rule to make decisions in such situations.
Once enough people vote for one side, listening to the reasoning of those who voted the other way seems unnecessary. But without airing that information, it's harder to forge an agreement that integrates differences instead of dismissing them. The better way to go is to require consensus. To reach a unanimous agreement, each party has to make trade-offs. While it can be time-consuming, the outcome should be a lot tastier.