Getting everyone on the same page can be a daunting task. If you work in public relations, you know people often see the world in different ways, which can make it hard to agree on a strategy.

Talking can help, of course. But according to scientists, certain types of conversations may hold the key to achieving group consensus.

A recent New York Times article highlighted new research that shows robust conversations free of “blowhards” not only help build group consensus, but those conversations can also actually synchronize group members’ brain activity.

A recent example comes to mind: A client was facing a crisis, and I had a clear idea of how I thought the company should respond. But I knew that the legal team might have another perspective.

With that in mind, we scheduled a Zoom call and aligned on a game plan. The call itself lasted about an hour, and it began with a discussion of a reminder of the goals we wanted to achieve. We then moved on to strategy, the pros and cons of implementing it, and discussed how it might help us achieve the goals.

Given this recent experience, I was interested in the article highlighting Dr. Beau Sievers’s research showing why talking helps, how groups achieve consensus, and how it impacts our brains.

Dr. Sievers’s study “showed that a robust conversation that results in consensus synchronizes the talkers’ brains – not only when thinking about the topic that was explicitly discussed, but related situations that were not.”

There is one important caveat, however. If a participant is so strident or opinionated that they don’t let others talk, coming to a consensus is much more difficult, if not impossible. Conversely, groups with mediators who encouraged others to articulate their ideas and then shifted their own were more neurally aligned.

While the study didn’t research the effectiveness of this approach in high-stakes situations, it has some helpful reminders for people looking to drive consensus, especially if they share a common goal. I recommend reading it and practicing drawing out others’ perspectives. You might devise your own  informal experiment to see if you can reach a consensus on the next steps within a certain number of discussions.

Finally, you can find the comprehensive research here if you’re interested.