No, I’m not going to mention Nicolas Sarkozy or Mitt Romney or Nigel Farage. Pass to the Right is a great technique in the workplace to ensure that everyone gets their say.

You know the scene. The chairman is a wily old bird. He hasn’t been able to pack the board, not completely anyway, so he always selects the person to speak first whom he knows has views he supports. And the next person. And the next. The human zoo being what it is, it takes a really confident or stroppy person to disagree. The answer comes easily, consensus rules, and the meeting can move on.

But very often, with the wrong answer.

Move to the right starts with one person, selected at random, who speaks for as long as he or she wants. Nobody can interrupt. When the first person finishes, they pass to the person sitting on the immediate right, who has their turn.

And so on until everyone has spoken. The leader is last. Their role is to listen, distil, and then, when allowed to speak, to answer each person in their own terms. Then, only then, to give his or her own opinion.

It’s a great technique to give weight to the still, small voice, often silent or ignored in groups where the loudest, most articulate or most confident people monopolize the airwaves. It also makes disagreement calm and controlled. Even if you disagree vehemently with the speaker, you can’t railroad them. You have to wait your turn.

In this setting, people tend to speak from the heart. The idea is that everyone has some wisdom, a piece of the puzzle, and the right to be heard.

The leader must acknowledge each participant’s views. The leader summarizes it to the satisfaction of each speaker, to show that it has been listened to and absorbed – though of course not necessarily agreed with.

People are not stupid or unrealistic. They know that they may not win the day, that they may need to surrender their deeply held views. But if they are to lose the issue, it helps enormously that they’ve been listened to and their viewpoint aired and respected.

This is not a technique for compromise. It is not touchy-feely or intellectually infirm. It is perfectly OK for anyone to say, “that viewpoint is a pile of do-do – this is why.” It is enough that the view is played back accurately to the proponent’s satisfaction.

Could anything be simpler or more fair? Or more likely to lead to a carefully considered, realistic outcome, with full support from everyone?

Yet, why has this technique, pioneered in the early 1990s, not taken off? I think it is because we have a false view of leadership. Leaders are supposed to lead, to manipulate, to get their way, to impose certainty. But that is the leadership of the zoo. It is not the leadership we so desperately need today, when the answers are so elusive, and the great solution is never the one advanced by the noisy, the superficial, and those who are most skilled in the arts of persuasion.

When you really want the right answer, try pass to the right. Social democrats may instead pass to the left. Either way, let wisdom emerge from the still, small voice of calm.

Pass to the Right originated with Dr I. Adizes of the eponymous Institute in Santa Monica, California. See his 1992 book, “Mastering Change”. I was introduced to the technique by the best leadership coach in the world, Jonathan Yudelowitz, based in Johannesburg.