Deep Democracy: the power of diversity

How do you organize sustainable decision-making? // How do you create buy-in? // How do you deal most fruitfully with diversity and multicultural dynamics?

Deep Democracy offers a new perspective on decision-making, issues around diversity, and conflict resolution, and was developed in the business community of Johannesburg in the period after the abolition of apartheid. During the sudden transition of many years of violence and exclusion to peaceful and ‘instantly’ equivalent collaboration, this method helped create new human relations between employees. Since then, it has been successfully applied as an instrument for decision-making and conflict resolution in groups with a large diversity.

Deep Democracy revolves around the wisdom of the minority. In the current democratic system (majority vote), it is possible for a 51% majority to make a decision which harms the rights of a 49% minority. Usually, the consequence is that the minority goes into resistance, which leads to the devaluation of the majority decision. The Deep Democracy method gives voice to the minority, allowing its wisdom to be integrated into the majority decision, so that the group as a whole can buy into the decision.

Contact and more information

Realize! uses Deep Democracy directly and indirectly in its Team development services. If you're interested in hearing more, or in a workshop on Deep Democracy, contact us at info@realize.nl.

Myrna Lewis is an organizational psychologist from South-Africa, who developed Deep Democracy as a practical application of Arnold Mindell’s Deep Democracy theory. It is now being used around the world in organizations as large as CAP Gemini and Nedbank.