Can I Offer You Some Feedback? - Episode #66

Show Notes:

This week Sara shares a decision making tool called, Fist to Five. This technique is a way to get consensus or quickly gain feedback from others in a meeting or a group setting. Using hands and fingers to show a level of agreement or disagreement to a statement. This is easy to implement, while giving the opportunity for clarity on what needs to be resolved. Subscribe today so you never miss an episode!

Below we are offering a transcript of the podcast for accessibility and reference.

Episode #66: Business Bites: fist to five

Welcome to Business Bites. My name is Sara. This is the podcast for busy professionals who want the quick hits of business terminology, historical context, and strategies for integration. This week we're going to be talking about a decision-making tool called Fist to Five.

Fist to Five is a decision-making strategy where you can gain consensus or quickly get feedback from others in a meeting or group setting. For example, a leader would make a statement and then everyone will show their level of agreement or disagreement using up their hands and showing a certain number of fingers to indicate how enthusiastic they are about the idea or if they've got certain opposition to it.

So for example, again, someone would put out a question saying, do you think we should move forward with this proposal? If someone puts up all five fingers, they're saying, yes, great idea, ready to go forward, how can I assist and help? If they put up four fingers instead, they're saying, you know, I'm fine with it as it is, but not quite as enthusiastic as a five.

If they put up three fingers, this is an indication that there are some minor issues that they might be seeing, but we can resolve those later. I'm not going to hold up the decision-making because again, they're really minor different pieces and parts. If someone puts up two fingers, there are some minor issues, but we need to talk about them now, such as thinking about the timing or perhaps the budget or how that process would work.

If someone indicates one, that they have one finger forward, this is we've got a major issue that we need to talk about and resolve now, perhaps thinking about who's on the project team or the purpose of the project or why we might be doing it at this juncture and our organization. When someone puts up a fist, which would again, be equivalent of a zero, there is absolutely not, I'm not proceeding with this and I do not consent and or agree to this activity.

What you can see really quickly then is, with this fist to five strategy is that we can get a gauge around the room of who has questions, who has concerns, and we can address them specifically to understand are there people that have twos and ones and or complete blocks with a fist that we need to talk about or is a majority of people in that three or above? Yeah, we've got some minor questions and concerns or we're 100% there ready to go.

This is a great technique when you're thinking about decision-making because it's pretty easy to implement with most groups and it's clear that there may be some issues we need to talk about, but we don't need to hold up the decision-making for that to take place. As a tool to be able to use this in your organization, first introducing the idea, but second having a discussion about what are the types of things that would fall into either the minor issues that we could resolve later, the minor issues that we need to talk about now, or the major issues that we need to discuss.

It's important to get clarity from your team about which items are in which different category to ensure that you're all using the numbers similarly. It's not going to be exactly the same because again, it's your perspective, but it is an opportunity to get clarity about where everyone's sitting when you are going through a decision-making process.

This has been Sara with Business Bites. You can reach me at podcast@mod.network. We would love to hear from you on what other terminology you'd like bite-sized. As always, give us a quick rating on your platform of choice and share this podcast with a friend. We'll see you next time.