Fist to Five Voting, Upgraded as a Visual Collaboration Tool
Helping groups reach consensus and alignment can be a difficult challenge. I’ve found this revamped version of ‘fist to five voting’ activity to be an invaluable tool for driving critical conversations and rallying support for potentially contentious proposals.
There were 17 people in the executive meeting, each representing different parts of the organization and different perspectives; we even had a board member joining with an outsider perspective. Weeks earlier, I had been asked by the CEO to create THE (singular) customer journey that all these groups could align to. The ONE customer journey to rule them all!
Despite plenty of 1-off meetings, asynchronous communications, dozens of iterations, loom updates, and frequent attempts to understand and address concerns, we were still far from aligned. It was time for a meeting.
But… How might we all leave aligned, supportive of, and — my secret hope — actually excited by a shared, singular artifact?
One thing I’ve learned is to welcome dissent and diverse perspectives. If there’s an objection to something, especially from someone in a leadership position or close to the problem, then it’s prudent to understand those objections. It’s all to too easy — in the name of consensus and alignment — to make an executive decision; or just as bad, put some divisive issue to a vote. Problems don’t get voted away. And there’s often a reason for dissenting opinions. As a consultant and facilitator, it’s more fruitful to listen, and sift through the various perspectives; it’s healthy to understand these concerns, and then factor these concerns into a problem-solving response.
But how would I facilitate this…?
I was already familiar with the “fist to five voting” activity used in facilitation. Rather than the usual thumbs up/ thumbs down response, fist to five voting allows for a range of nuanced responses.
By holding up a hand with fingers numbering 0–5, you can express one of six opinions, from strong objection (fist) to enthusiastic support (five fingers). For in-person workshops and trainings, it’s a quick, ad-hoc activity that requires no materials or preparation ahead of time. [Note, fist to five can also be used for more than just consensus, e.g. checking for understanding or to checking for feelings.]
I love this concept, as difficult decisions are rarely binary decisions.
- Yes/No
- A/B
- Stay/Leave
- On/Off
- etc.
These binary distinctions often do not apply to the kinds of difficult decisions that leaders and teams have to make. Things tend to be more complex than this or that!
More often, there’s a host of unique concerns, some minor, some major.
Fist to five voting recognizes this spectrum of concerns and asks people to indicate where, on this spectrum, they fall. And — most critically — WHY?
But… While this is a natural offshoot of the classic thumbs up/down, the challenge with fist to five voting is the real time nature of this. While it’s one thing to count ‘yeas and nays’ in a meeting, keeping tally of six possible responses is something altogether more challenging. Keep your fingers and fists raised while I record this… Keep them up, please! 😳
Enter visual collaboration.
Fist to Five, as a Visual Collaboration Activity
Because this was a remote meeting and we were working in a Mural board, it was easy to combine the fist to five concept with that of dot voting. I used a simple image search to find a fist to five visual that would work for my needs.
There are many different images available for fist to five, but I found this one (from this Lucid post) especially useful for two reasons:
- The labels here make it clear exactly what you’re voting for
- There’s a clear and crucial distinction made between lack of consensus and consensus
Next, I dropped in a bunch of round circles with spots to add names (something I have on hand in my ‘content library’ to save time).
I added a few columns, to clarify the voting zones, and… voila! I had my template ready to go:
And much later, after voting, the results looked something like this:
The point of most activities we do (and artifacts we create) is the dialogue this opens up. For this workshop, everyone was, or should have been, familiar with the the proposed customer journey being discussed. What I needed was (a) everyone in one room at the same time and (b) talking to each other. By opening the meeting with a visual fist to five activity, this kickstarted the group conversation that followed. Prompting from me was minimal:
Carl, I noticed you have strong opposition to this. What are the problems you see with this, in it’s current state?
[Conversation ensues!]
For the rest of the meeting, I took notes in real time (in the canvas for all to see), made changes to the journey with all eyes watching, and made sure the concerns of everyone who had voted ‘I cannot support this’ (whether major or minimal changes were needed), were listened to and addressed, by me or anyone else. I just facilitated the conversation. As it turned out, while there were a few minor updates we needed to make; much of the resistance was to very specific labels (easily changed) or not understanding how this journey was going to be used, and whether it was supposed to replace the various ones already in use (no).
So, conversations flowed. But, there’s more — we didn’t stop there.
While I was feeling positive about the improvements we were making, I am all too aware of our brain’s tendency toward confirmation bias. I didn’t want to leave this meeting with a false belief that there was consensus.
As we neared the end of the meeting, I had a spur-of-the-moment thought— let’s do the fist to five voting again! Let’s have everyone adjust their votes if their position has shifted (🤞). After the lengthy conversation that we’d had, I wanted to know exactly where everyone stood, and if this meeting had changed minds; if this was the case, then there would be a shift of votes in the rightward direction. So, we voted again (rather, moved the votes), and …yep. There was one voice that still had minor concerns, but everyone else had moved to the side of “I can support this”. We mostly had agreement. We had listened to each other. We had shared our understanding (most critical). And, I knew exactly who to reach out to for the lingering major and minor concerns.
Without planning to, I used this visual version of the fist to five as a both a check-in and check-out activity — something that’s hard to replicate with the hands raised version.
Let’s get meta for a moment.
Why this activity works:
- Precision — The labels are simple yet precise enough to make it clear exactly how people feel and where they stand on this issue. Knowing there is only slight or strong opposition is helpful, as is knowing there is only weak support.
- Pattern Recognition — As a visual exercise, it’s very easy to see the distribution of responses. No counting or holding of hands is necessary. The voting is the tally.
- Attribution — Because each person votes with their name, you know WHO stands where on this topic [Note: You could run a version of this where votes are anonymous, though I feel that for most contexts, something would be lost].
- Persistence — Unlike the in-person version of this activity, the votes persist long after to voting activity. This is important to the discussion that follows.
- Validation — Using this as both a check-in and check-out activity allows you validate any impressions you may have as to people’s position.
Given the effectiveness of this tool, it has quickly shot to the top of my go to methods. A visual fist-to-five check in (and check out, if needed).
. . .
But wait, there’s more…
While I’ve described one very specific way of using a visual version of fist to five voting, the beauty of methods like this one is seeing how others take, and modify them, to suit their needs…
Not long after this meeting, there was another project going on, led by my colleague Jeremy Burton.
He had identified about 16 provocations — each a proposed change to the menu system and toolbars in our software — for which he was seeking feedback. This included things like:
What if we moved [x button] under [y]
Or,
What if removed [x] altogether?
Where my version of the visual fist-to-five was singular in focus and facilitated synchronously, this version was repeated across 20 provocations with a 2-week time-frame in which to respond.
Each provocation — after an explanation, examples, a space to explain the rationale, and proposed next steps — was followed by a space to cast your fist to five vote (actually, no ‘fist‘ in this version), and add any comments and questions:
I was blown away, by the thought and presentation.
Here, in each proposed change, were the kinds of nuanced recommendations that require a lot of thought… and feedback. Each was like a mini-presentation. A short description. A visual rendering. Justification for the proposal (this could also be a pros/cons list!). But rather than end with open feedback, or fall back on lightly structured feedback using something like rose, thorn, bud, by choosing to add fist to five voting to each proposal, you could quickly ‘read the room,’ and see which ideas where being hotly debated, or not:
And that speaks to a sort of hidden agenda baked into this version of the activity. Jeremy didn’t necessarily want to discuss every item, with every person, but rather to identify which were the top 2–3 most contentious ideas — which provocations merited discussion.
Jeremy also had this to add:
When I set up that activity, anyone was ultimately free to review and vote on any of the proposals, but there were also specific teams that I was prompting and directing to review specific ones. For example, tagging the team responsible for Mural’s facilitation tools and directing them to the decisions they had the greatest stake in. Because all together it’s very info dense and theoretically should’ve collapsed under its own weight … but with the right wayfinding, people were able to both focus on what mattered to them while also gaining big-picture awareness of tangential agreements/disagreements.
All in all, this was a brilliant way to quickly gather feedback on a lot of nuanced, but critical, decisions. And, keep feedback open to anyone who cared about these details, while also directing specific teams to the relevant proposals.
Since then, I’ve explored other ways to bring the fist to five method to life, including a version adapted for virtual reality, that’s mix of live body polling with fist to five ‘zones’ into which you place your body:
Needless to say, this has quickly become on of my favorite go to methods. Fist to five voting, especially as a visual collaboration activity where the votes are persistent, is a flexible method that allows for nuanced disagreement and dialogue. This dialogue, mediated by a simple tool, makes it easier to address both latent and clear concerns. The result? Groups work through their concerns and become more authentically aligned.
