CTO of Avalara, a cloud-based compliance solutions provider that helps businesses of all sizes get tax compliance right.
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We’ve all seen the articles, had the conversations and felt it in our day-to-day lives: The pandemic changed the way most of us work. During the height of the pandemic, teams that were previously working together day in and day out were thrust into a fully remote world overnight.
Over time, we’ve seen a gradual return to in-person work for some, while others have embraced the fully remote work lifestyle. Throughout all this time and change, teams have had to adapt nearly every aspect of how they work together, including the way meetings are held and run.
At our company, our engineering teams embraced this change head-on while we were all confined to our homes. We knew that the old way of doing meetings had to evolve to ensure that we were facilitating an equitable space for everyone’s voice to be heard. That’s when we turned to the "fist to five" technique for all our meetings, and the results were extremely positive.
Defining Fist To Five
According to Lucid Meetings, "The Fist to Five is a technique for quickly getting feedback or gauging consensus during a meeting. The leader makes a statement, then asks everyone to show their level of agreement with the statement by holding up a number of fingers, from 5 for wild enthusiasm (Jazz hands!) down to a clenched fist for vehement opposition."
Using this technique, every team member can respond by either holding up a closed fist or a number of fingers that corresponds to their level of support. If someone holds up less than three fingers, they are then given the floor to state their objections before the team responds. This process continues until a consensus is reached.
Fist to five lends itself well to collaboration and gaining consensus in a hybrid environment because everyone’s response can be clearly seen, giving everyone an equitable opportunity to weigh in. Using nonverbal communication, leaders can easily see where teams stand on a wide range of topics and decisions.
Implementing Fist To Five In Your Tech Teams
While the goal of fist to five is to reach a consensus, how you define consensus among your teams is up to you. Before you get that far, however, you need to be able to implement the process into your meetings. After giving your teams an overview of the technique and how to vote, you can kick off the process.
The first step is to present a proposal, idea or question to the team. This question or idea can be as simple as choosing a team name for a new project or as in-depth as determining the go-forward strategy for a technical implementation.
After communicating the proposal, the meeting leader requests the team to express their degree of agreement or support for it, utilizing a 1 to 5 scale via hand gestures. Once the responses have been captured, you must tally the responses to understand the overall support or opposition to the proposal.
The next step is to give an open floor to members who may have concerns, feedback or questions. This stage may create further proposals for voting.
Finally, the team must make a decision. I mentioned earlier that 100% consensus isn’t always possible. Generally, you should reconsider the proposal if more than half of the team holds up less than three fingers. If that occurs, you must rework the proposal until you reach an agreed-upon level of consensus to move forward.
The Benefits Of Fist To Five In A Hybrid Environment
At Avalara, we’ve found fist to five to be an extremely useful tool for decision-making, especially as we have team members from around the world and in different work settings participating.
My leadership team has found the technique to be especially useful. As a team of executives, each individual has ample opinions on any topic, so this approach allows us to identify areas of concern and discussion quickly and easily. The way we’ve interpreted fist to five is to allow anyone who doesn’t vote with a full five fingers to have the opportunity to share their thoughts.
On a larger scale, the practice has been helpful in giving a voice to team members who may be reluctant to speak in a large forum or wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to voice their opinions. We’ve seen tremendous success with fist to five in creating a more equitable team environment despite having team members in all corners of the globe, at varying levels of the organization and with different approaches to interpersonal communication.
One of the most unexpected benefits of using this technique has been seeing the full power of teamwork on display. Through this process, we’ve seen numerous team members change their fist to five vote after hearing what others have to say on the topic. It has strengthened our team’s ability to collaborate and consider other perspectives when making definitive decisions.
The era of hybrid work isn’t ending and will only grow as teams become more geographically dispersed. Applying the fist to five technique to decision-making in your organization can help create equity among your team members, foster teamwork and expedite quality decision-making.
How could your organization or team benefit from applying this approach to decision-making and teamwork?
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