> Are there any books on this topic that anyone would recommend? As a manager, this is where I struggled the most - naturally i am someone who strives to be a consensus builder, but it's hard to know when to put your thumb on the scale vs not.
I cannot recommend a book about this topic (both because I don't know any and for the reason that I'll explain below), but have you considered that exactly because you are a consensus builder, this idea might not very well for you (i.e. it is simply not a good match for your leadership style)?
I, for example, am rather the opposite of a consensus builder. On the other hand, I typically immediately look through any bullshit claims that, for example, salesmen or business consultants tell about what they offer (seriously: a successful business consultant once told me that all the sales tricks that work well on C-level executives completely fail on me; I am a cruelingly hard sales target). How do I do that? Simple: I just think through all the logical implications that a claim has: if it is "too good to be true", it is nearly always fraud - and I want to call this fraud out. So I start questions about the logical implications that I found ... well, this typically does not turn out to be comfortable for the fraudster ...
In this sense (to answer your question and also answer why this answer likely won't work for you): you should put your thumb on the scale if the candidate is a fraudster (the huge majority of people are!). And this is exactly the reason why I don't believe this will fit your management style: you say you are a consensus builder. Calling out fraudsters in my opinion rather requires a deep will from inside to rather bring fraudsters/deceivers into jail, which is rather the opposite of building a consensus.
But if you nevertheless, despite my warning concerning your management style, want to read books and practice this skill:
- Read books about deeply scientific topics (e.g. how some theory was state of the art, then some cleverly designed experiments were done: in which sense did they make clear that this theory was wrong and to which new theory did this experiment lead?). After that download some arbirary slide decks or research studies from some business consulting company and find lots of locations in the text where they deceive the reader of things they won't be able to deliver.
- play/read the visual novel Umineko When They Cry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umineko_When_They_Cry) - it is in some high-level sense about thinking deeply about scientific explanations for what seemingly cannot be explained by science (which - in the story - "proves" that witches thus exist).
I cannot recommend a book about this topic (both because I don't know any and for the reason that I'll explain below), but have you considered that exactly because you are a consensus builder, this idea might not very well for you (i.e. it is simply not a good match for your leadership style)?
I, for example, am rather the opposite of a consensus builder. On the other hand, I typically immediately look through any bullshit claims that, for example, salesmen or business consultants tell about what they offer (seriously: a successful business consultant once told me that all the sales tricks that work well on C-level executives completely fail on me; I am a cruelingly hard sales target). How do I do that? Simple: I just think through all the logical implications that a claim has: if it is "too good to be true", it is nearly always fraud - and I want to call this fraud out. So I start questions about the logical implications that I found ... well, this typically does not turn out to be comfortable for the fraudster ...
In this sense (to answer your question and also answer why this answer likely won't work for you): you should put your thumb on the scale if the candidate is a fraudster (the huge majority of people are!). And this is exactly the reason why I don't believe this will fit your management style: you say you are a consensus builder. Calling out fraudsters in my opinion rather requires a deep will from inside to rather bring fraudsters/deceivers into jail, which is rather the opposite of building a consensus.
But if you nevertheless, despite my warning concerning your management style, want to read books and practice this skill:
- Read books about deeply scientific topics (e.g. how some theory was state of the art, then some cleverly designed experiments were done: in which sense did they make clear that this theory was wrong and to which new theory did this experiment lead?). After that download some arbirary slide decks or research studies from some business consulting company and find lots of locations in the text where they deceive the reader of things they won't be able to deliver.
- play/read the visual novel Umineko When They Cry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umineko_When_They_Cry) - it is in some high-level sense about thinking deeply about scientific explanations for what seemingly cannot be explained by science (which - in the story - "proves" that witches thus exist).