Making Decisions in Unity

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Ever have difficulty with harmonious decision-making in your family? You are not alone. Increasing skillfulness in this area will help your marriage mature in a healthy way and stay strong and happy. As you become skillful, it will work well to include your children and teach them the skills.

Decisions work best when you have equal voices in couple discussions, sometimes known as “consultation.” The teachings of the Bahá’í Faith say, “Consultation must have for its object the investigation of truth. He who expresses an opinion should not voice it as correct and right but set it forth as a contribution to the consensus of opinion, for the light of reality becomes apparent when two opinions coincide.” (‘Abdu’l-Bahá, The Promulgation of Universal Peace)

Including the guidelines below will help you gradually implement and improve consultation in your marriage.
 

At the Beginning

1. Prepare in Advance: Find or prepare any applicable background information. Accomplish any needed self-care, such as eating or sleeping.
    
2. Assess Timeliness and Privacy: Assess whether it is timely to address the matter. Ensure you protect your privacy during the consultation.
    
3. Focus: Agree on the purpose for the consultation and refrain from bringing up unrelated issues. Stay aware of your thoughts, views, preferences, requests, goals, beliefs, and feelings as well as any factual details.
    
4. Explore Openly: Detach from any particular outcome and be open to learn. Apply your values and beliefs to the situation. Allow the creative process to develop solutions neither of you foresaw nor planned ahead of time.
    
5. Build Love and Unity: Build your loving and unified connection in the time before consulting. Begin the consultation with prayer or another unifying action; incorporate these as needed throughout.

Throughout the Process

1. Include Others: When needed and appropriate, include other people, particularly those who will be affected by the situation and outcome or who have expert input. Involve children when appropriate for their age, maturity, and the topic. Be clear ahead of time whether they will only share their views, thoughts, and feelings, or whether they will also be part of the decision-making.
    
2. Share and Listen: Share honestly and respectfully, inviting each other’s contributions. Listen patiently, attentively, and compassionately, checking for understanding throughout.
    
3. Practice Equality and Respect: Participate equally, with all contributions worthy of respect. Avoid domination, blame, constant complaints, abuse, or threats that would sabotage the process or force a decision to go a certain way.
    
4. Search for Solutions: Share in an honest, calm, and loving way that welcomes both agreement and clashes of differing opinions, which can spark the truth and keep you focused on finding solutions. Avoid a clash of feelings, which can obscure or hide the truth and cause hurt.
    
5. Monitor the Quality: Encourage and affirm positive participation and progress. Pause as needed if disunity appears, and do what is needed to calm down and rebalance. Avoid rushing decisions that need more time.
    
6. Release After Sharing: Express opinions and ideas, releasing them into an imaginary central area so neither of you “owns” them. Contributions to the consultation belong to both of you. This helps you flexibly change them as needed, and you can more easily create mutual solutions. [Hint: You may find it helpful to actually put a bowl or other container between you to “receive” your words.]

Making a Decision

1. Make a Unified Decision: Settle matters in harmony and love, and conclude with a unified decision. Aim for the best possible decision, not perfection.
    
2. Defer As Needed: At times you may struggle to find an agreed solution, or alternatively one of you may have more expertise or not have a strong opinion about an issue. One of you may choose to defer to the other’s opinion, which is still a unified decision. You then carry the decision out together.
    
3. Seek Additional Help: If you find it impossible to reach a unified decision, and this is causing disunity between you, seek out sincere, trustworthy people whose judgment and wisdom you respect. Ask for their input on the issue as a means of helping preserve the well-being of your marriage and family.

Carrying Out the Decision

1. Share Responsibility: Commit to carrying out the decision in unity together. Agree on the best ways to carry out the decision, such as what will be done together and what will be left up to individual initiative and judgment. Proceed with agreed actions with a learning-in-action mindset to discover the merits of the decision.
    
2. Set up Support Systems: Put in place any system of reminders or accountability that you both agree will assist the decision to be carried out smoothly. Examples: calendar notations, cell phone reminders, notes on a bedroom mirror, specific goals with dates.
    
3. Pause for Assessment: Reflect on what is happening and assess any confirmations, progress, or difficulties. Determine the next stage in carrying out the decision or whether a new one is needed instead. Capture any learning that occurred, but avoid criticism or blame about what happened. Focus on the next best actions to take.

Most couples can make a determined effort to find new ways of reaching harmonious decisions. Consultation skills will help.

Susanne M. Alexander is a Relationship and Marriage Educator with Marriage Transformation® (www.marriagetransformation.com and www.bahaimarriage.net). She is the author of Deciding in Unity: A Practical Process for Married Couples to Agree on Practically Everything and Pure Gold: Encouraging Character Qualities in Marriage among other books.

Updated on 6.20.13