Your organization makes a decision. The right people are involved. Everyone agrees to move forward. And then implementation is harder than it should be. Some people engage. Others wait to see how things unfold. A few had concerns they didn’t fully voice – and those concerns show up later, in the work itself.

This is a common experience, and it isn’t a reflection of your team’s intentions. Most often, it’s about the process. When people haven’t had a genuine voice in a decision, they don’t carry the same energy for implementation – even if they’ve technically agreed. Agreement in the room and ownership of what follows are not the same thing.

Most experienced leaders, facilitators, and consultants have already tried to address this. You may have moved toward consultation approaches, open forums, or structured ways to gather input. These approaches help. But they can still leave important perspectives unspoken. And they rarely show you, before you commit to a direction, who is actually prepared to carry the decision forward and where the energy for implementation sits.

That gap – between apparent agreement and what actually happens afterward – is what this workshop addresses.

5toFold Collaborative Decision-Making is a structured process developed by Chris Weaver and is part of the Genuine Contact Way.

Instead of a yes-or-no question about a decision, 5toFold asks each person how committed they are to supporting implementation of this decision. Six response options capture not just where people stand, but how prepared they are to carry the decision forward. That question changes everything. A person with strong reservations is not a problem to manage. They are carrying information that, if heard, may make the decision stronger. And a fold – a vote that blocks a decision – is not a failure. In the 5toFold frame, a fold is an act of leadership. It is a signal that something important hasn’t yet been addressed, and an invitation to build something better.

What this process creates, at its best, is not necessarily faster decisions or smoother meetings. The conversation is often more substantive than a simple vote would require. But that investment pays back in what comes after. When people have had a genuine voice, the concerns that might otherwise become resistance during implementation have already been heard and addressed. The work that follows moves forward with more energy, less friction, and more consistent results. Implementation that might otherwise stall or generate conflict has a clearer, more grounded path.

This workshop is structured around six phases of learning that build on each other – from foundational understanding through practical facilitation capacity. When you leave, you will carry more than knowledge of this process. You will have the grounding to use it well.

As you work through this module, you will bring your own experience, questions, and wisdom about decision-making to the learning. The objectives below describe what you are working toward. They are offered not as a checklist but as a compass – a way to orient yourself at the start and return to as your understanding deepens.

This module builds both your understanding and your capability to:

1. Describe the 5toFold Collaborative Decision-Making process and its philosophical foundation, and make an informed judgment about when it is and is not the right approach for a given situation.
2. Identify the four roles in the 5toFold process – facilitator, proposal sponsor, meeting host, and participants – and describe the responsibilities of each, recognizing how each role contributes to the integrity of the whole.
3. Prepare yourself as a facilitator by examining your motivation, your relationship to neutrality, and your capacity for genuine contact with yourself and with others. Assess whether an organization or group is ready to use 5toFold, including how it fits with the collaborative values and practices already present.
4. Guide a proposal sponsor, meeting host, and participants through the preparation process, developing a robust proposal with meaningful stakeholder engagement and planning for the full range of possible voting outcomes before the meeting takes place.
5. Lead a 5toFold decision-making meeting through each of its steps – presentation, clarifying questions, talking circle, adjustments, and finger voting – while maintaining the integrity of the process and remaining genuinely open to outcome.
6. Read the full spectrum of finger votes in real time, understanding what they reveal about energy, reservations, and leadership capacity within the group. Support a group to treat a fold as an act of leadership that opens the way to a stronger decision, and conduct post-meeting debrief work that harvests learning to strengthen future facilitation.
7. Support implementation after a decision is made by identifying who carries the energy for leading it forward and working constructively with reservations expressed through lower votes.
8. Build a customized roadmap for a 5toFold process that accounts for the unique purpose, relationships, authority structures, and operating context of the organization or group.

These objectives run as a thread through all six turns of the Evolutionary Spiral that structure this module. The next section gives you an overview of what each turn involves and how they build on one another.

Registration is with our partners at Friluften. You will be redirected to their registration page. Have questions before registering? Reach out.

This workshop unfolds across six turns of the Evolutionary Spiral. You arrive with your own experience of decision-making – what has worked, what has left people disengaged, what you’ve tried. Each turn builds on the one before it. You leave with both a complete methodology and concrete tools ready for immediate use.

This workshop is designed for people who work with organizational decision-making – whether as a leader navigating complex stakeholder situations, as a facilitator or consultant supporting groups through important choices, or as a coach helping clients develop healthier organizational cultures.

No prior experience with 5toFold or the Genuine Contact Way is required. What is helpful is some familiarity with collaborative methods and a genuine curiosity about what it means for organizations to make decisions well. If you work with collaborative methods in your practice, you’ll find 5toFold a natural complement to that work.

This structure builds understanding and practical confidence no matter where you are in your development as a leader or facilitator. It is designed to be accessible to someone encountering this process for the first time and useful to someone who has used it before and wants to go deeper.

This workshop is particularly well suited for leaders, managers, and consultants working in or for mission-driven organizations, organizational development practitioners and facilitators, coaches supporting leaders through culture change, and members of boards or leadership teams facing high-stakes decisions.

This workshop is co-facilitated by three Genuine Contact Trainers who are co-creators of this learning module. Each brings depth of practice with 5toFold and with the organizations and leaders they serve.