How to disagree well
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Overcoming a fear of conflict: How to help teams move away from consensus. Relates to this blogpost: https://mcleanonline.medium.com/overcoming-a-fear-of-conflict-f1e63333b45c
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How to disagree well
- 1. Overcoming a fear of conflict: How to help teams move away from consensus
- 10. “Compromise makes bad products. “Conversations that expose fundamental tensions often uncover gaps or contradictions in strategy. Consequently, they improve not only a single decision but the entire constellation of decisions that follow.” Boz https://boz.com/articles/strong-opinions
- 11. “Teams that trust each other are not afraid to engage in passionate dialogue around issues and decisions that are key to the organization’s success. They do not hesitate to disagree with, challenge, and question one another, all in the spirit of finding the best answers, and making great decisions.” Patrick Lencioni
- 13. Yes, but… It matters how you dissent, how you disagree
- 15. How do you create an environment where all views are freely expressed, where speaking up and talking straight is encouraged, where it’s ok to disagree, because you can disagree well, and where conflicting view points are welcomed?
- 21. Who has a different view?
Editor's Notes
- Some of the reasons why consensus can be a problem Reaching a consensus when people have got different views can be slow. It can mean revisiting a subject many times, which can take an age. It can mean avoiding issues. It can mean people not saying what they think — they bite their tongue because they don’t want to rock the boat. It can mean less diversity of thought as fewer dissenting views are expressed. It can mean a lack of clarity: some teams use consensus to avoid taking a clear decision, and different people can believe different things have been decided and communicate different messages. It can mask a lack of buy-in with an artificial harmony, and people who are less bought in to a decision are less likely to implement it.
- key reasons for encouraging constructive conflict are: It helps create an inclusive culture, where everyone feels comfortable sharing your opinions. It helps break down hierarchies and avoids HiPPO decision making: the tendency for lower-paid employees to defer to higher-paid employees when a decision has to be made. HiPPO is an acronym for the “highest paid person’s opinion”. It leads to clearer decisions, which makes it easier to hold people to account. Decisions are more likely to stick. How many times have you left a meeting thinking something has been agreed only for that decision not to be implemented afterwards? When this has happened to me, I’ve often looked back and realised the decision was based on an artificial harmony. People weren’t objecting to what was being agreed, they had just stayed silent and not spoken up. They then left the meeting not having committed to the decision. They weren’t bought in to the decision, and they didn’t stick to it, they just ignored it.
- I think we’re looking for healthy conflict, a place where people disagree well.
- I’m trying not to glorify dissent. No idea is perfect, and it's easy to find ways to criticise something, an idea, a solution, or a perspective. But if we simply challenge every single idea that gets suggested, we run the very real risk of good ideas falling by the wayside, and pushing people into a state where they don't want to suggest further ideas for fear of being overly-critiqued. I'd argue that sometimes, even if you think someone's idea is flawed, if it's low-risk, let it grow. You never know what it might grow into.