[crdoconnor]

>That's now how deadlocks work. You can't just vote your way out of them, if you could, you wouldn't be in a deadlock to begin with. You'd just be at the point where a decision needs to be made.

I've seen a number of different scenarios:

1) Consensus after a short discussion (vast majority of cases).

2) Consensus after a drawn out discussion (occasional, usually the discussion is valuable even if it takes a while).

3) Consensus after a drawn out discussion with one or two holdouts who agree to go with the majority opinion under protest (not common).

4) A drawn out discussion where it becomes clear that further discussion is fruitless and a (close) vote makes the decision (very, very rare but it has happened).

I'd say that that most of the time the decisions made in one of these 4 scenarios are better than the decisions made unilaterally by a team lead.

Whatever you're referring to as 'deadlock' I'm not sure I've ever seen it - as a team lead or otherwise. What is it?