If you’re on a team with people you respect and have a leader you admire, you may find agreement comes easy. Quick consensus may seem positive, but to make your good team even better, I suggest you do something different. Try these 3 powerful ways to disagree even when you actually agree.
Consensus without conflict is a warning sign
Are you on a good team? Maybe even a great team?
I hope you are. But, even if you aren’t, I’d like you to do a quick mental exercise.
Take a moment to consider some dynamics of this great team you’re a part of. Or would like to be on.
This team could be any size. It could be 30 people in a large corporation or just you and the only other employee in your small business.
You may be the formal leader or a team member without a position of authority.
Everyone on the team respects each other. You communicate well. Everybody gets along.
You identify challenges and find agreed-upon solutions. And, you do it quickly.
You’re tight as teammates. The team chemistry is amazing. It’s almost as if you know what your teammates are thinking. How they are going to respond.
You all know how things should be done. They think like you think. You think like they think.
It’s a perfect team, right?
Wrong.
Far from it.
A team that reaches consensus quickly and without conflict could be in serious danger.
To be a great team member and build a successful team you have to learn to disagree even when you agree.
This skill doesn’t come naturally. It has to be learned and practiced.
This is especially true when the team is led by an admired leader who is leading people well.
Another hidden danger of being a respected leader
In my blog post, “A Hidden Danger Of Being A Respected Leader. How To Avoid This Trap.” I raised the red flag to signal the dangers associated with being a leader people respect. I wrote about the trap of getting comfortable.
The post, “How to Keep Your Team From Being Just Like You.” explored ways to prevent simply cloning an admired leader which is another pitfall to avoid.
As with those dangers, lack of conflict and easy consensus is a subtle trap for leaders and the teams they’re on.
Quick agreement can come naturally to teams who are led by a person the team members really want to follow.
Why?
When teams are formed intentionally through hiring or selecting team members from existing employees, it’s natural to choose people who have similar views of how things should be done.
Common values. Shared goals. One vision. Everyone moving the same direction.
These are all good things, but the agreement on these overarching principles can prevent us from embracing diversity of thought and inviting dissenting views.
So, if you find you and your teammates agreeing quickly and often, pay attention to this warning sign. Take action to avoid the dangers ahead of you. As a starting point, try out these 3 ways to disagree even when you initially agree.
3 actions to help you disagree when you agree
Depending on your starting point, these actions may be difficult for you or for those on your team.
I get it. These steps aren’t always easy for me to take either.
So, I’ll start with the action that will probably be the least uncomfortable. We’ll work our way up to the one that will take some courage.
We’ll begin where you can have the quickest impact. With you and your own team.
1. Challenge yourself and your team
Let’s go back to how I described your team in the introduction.
You reach agreement quickly.
We also said that may not be a good thing.
With that in mind, try challenging your team to get better by making one of these statements the next time you quickly reach a consensus without much debate or conflict.
Discussion starters
We all seem to agree on the best way to solve this problem. But, I’m wondering if we’ve missed something. If we were forced to pick a different solution, what path might we take?
As I think about the comments we’ve each made to get us to this decision, they all sounded basically the same. It’s good that we’re aligned. But, let’s challenge our thinking. Would someone be willing to share a thought you don’t really agree with but crossed your mind as we were talking? You don’t have to defend the idea. Just tell us what it was so we can discuss it.
Okay. We’ve all agreed on our next steps. But, surely we don’t all agree 100% on every part of the actions we should take. Let’s each take a turn sharing one thing we don’t like about one of these steps. This doesn’t mean we aren’t committed to the plan, but let’s force ourselves to think about seeing things in a different way.
Creating an environment of openness and curiosity
Statements like this invite each team member to challenge themselves and, therefore, the entire team to entertain a different perspective.
These discussion starters force each person to disagree when they agree at first.
These invitations for dialogue create an environment of openness and curiosity to explore new ideas and solutions.
Based on my experience, you will find that those who quickly agreed initially may realize they aren’t fully aligned after a deeper conversation.
When invited or challenged to provide an opposing or different perspective, they may open up with their unspoken views. This may lead to healthy debate which can produce an even better solution than was originally agreed upon by the team.
But, the team’s opinion really isn’t the most important perspective to consider.
What matters more is the opinion of your customer.
2. Seek input from your customer
Wait.
Don’t skip this part because you think you don’t have customers.
You do.
You may be thinking this section doesn’t apply to you because you aren’t selling a product to someone. Or you aren’t running a business. You don’t have customers.
I disagree.
Everyone who produces something has at least one customer and likely many more.
For example, if you write emails, you have customers. The people you want to read your emails are your customers.
I write about this in my post, “The Most Important Thing To Get Right With Emails“.
No, the recipients of your emails aren’t paying for your product. But, when you view them as customers you are seeking to serve, you will produce better products, emails in this case. Emails they want to read.
This applies to everything we do as leaders and teammates.
We must seek the input of our customers to be successful.
This is especially important when our team is in complete agreement. It’s good that we’ve reached consensus, but if our customers don’t agree with the decision we’ve made, our “complete agreement” doesn’t matter.
Countless business owners have learned this lesson the hard way. The solution their teams agreed their customers wanted and needed was rejected. And, their business failed.
How could they have prevent these failures.?
The same way you can prevent the catastrophe that awaits your team when you are in agreement with one another but not with your customer.
You need to ask your customers for their input. And, listen to them. Then, do what they say.
Just three easy steps, right?
Not really. The first step is actually pretty easy. But those last two, they take some work.
Step 1. The easy part – asking for customer input
Contacting your customers and asking for their opinion on an idea your team has is not hard.
It doesn’t have to be a formal data gathering session with fancy tools and techniques. Sure, those are helpful and appropriate at times.
But, all you really need is a conversation, a pen, and a notepad.
That’s it.
Just pick up the phone or your computer mouse and set up a time on their calendar. Tell them you would like to get their opinion on an idea your team has that might impact them.
Most people will be eager to tell you what they think.
All you have to do is ask.
Step 2. The harder part – listening to the customer
We’ve covered listening in this blog before. Listening well is not easy for most of us. We have to work at it.
And, it is especially difficult when we are asking for input on an idea our team has already labeled as “great”. Or maybe even “amazing”. “Life changing” perhaps?
Whatever adjective we’ve selected, all of our team has agreed that our customer is going to love it.
Here’s where listening gets hard.
You’ve explained your idea to the customer you’re talking with and they don’t share your enthusiasm.
As you’re taking notes, you’re writing down quotes. And, they don’t confirm your team’s opinion. Instead of jotting down, “Best thing since sliced bread”, you find yourself writing, “Yeah. This won’t work.”
What?
They must need you to explain your amazing idea to them again.
So you interrupt to clarify the many benefits of your team’s brilliant idea. To correct them. Your customer.
See why listening is so hard?
You want them to affirm what your team so quickly agreed upon, but they might not. If that’s the case, you still need to listen to them disagree with you.
This is where the true learning begins for you and your team. The hardest input to hear is often the most valuable.
But, asking for input from your customer and listening to what they say isn’t enough.
You have to take the next really hard step.
Step 3. The hardest part – doing what the customer says
Before I go on, let me address a point you may be wanting to make with me if you’ve studied innovation.
I know the customer isn’t always right. I agree.
Yes. I have heard the quote.
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said ‘faster horses’.”
Attributed to Henry Ford
(If you’re interesting another perspective on that quote, this Entrepreneur article has some valuable insight.)
I get the point of that quote.
We don’t want to limit ourselves to only giving our customers what they say they want.
But, in general, if your customer tells you something isn’t a good idea, they are probably right.
This is true even if your entire team agreed it was an awesome idea.
This is why listening to our customers is so difficult. Their honest input might hurt our pride.
It takes humility to admit that the idea our great team thought was exactly what the customer would want isn’t what they wanted at all. If we’re not careful, our personal ego or the collective ego of our talented team could derail our success.
We need to humble ourselves, admit we’re not perfect, and take our customer’s input into account and refine our idea.
This may mean more work for our team. We may have to scrap what we’ve already created.
But, the time invested now to better satisfy our customers we are trying to serve is a wise investment.
Sincerely seeking input from our customers may test our humility.
It may be a bit uncomfortable to request honest input from someone who might disagree with you.
But, how uncomfortable would it be to get feedback from someone you know will disagree with your recommendations?
Your critics.
3. Get feedback from your critics
Stay with me. Don’t turn back now. I told you this last one would take some courage. And, more humility.
We’ve all got critics. People who are going to find fault with whatever we do.
Whether it’s our personal work or the work of our teams critics will pick it apart. They will point out everything they consider to be a flaw in what our team has agreed is a near-perfect approach.
You know you’re going to hear the criticism from them. You can’t stop the people who want to tear you down.
So why not take advantage of their input and make use of their cutting comments to get better?
If you have the right mindset, your harshest critic can unknowingly become an extremely helpful ally.
This is perhaps the most powerful way to disagree when you and your team agree.
Go on the offensive and ask your most stringent critic to tell you what’s wrong with your team’s proposal.
Here’s what I recommend.
5 steps to use with your harshest critic
- Schedule an appointment with your critic.
- Prior to your meeting send the person your idea or proposal. Give them plenty of time to empty their red pen critiquing your work.
- During your meeting, listen to learn and understand. Take detailed notes just as if you were listening to your most valuable customer.
- Do not defend or explain your proposal except to answer specific questions.
- When they’re done, thank your critic for their input and end the meeting.
I guarantee you will learn something using this technique if you have the right mindset.
Mindset tips for turning your critic’s input into useful feedback
- Expect unfair or unfounded negative comments. Prepare your mind to hear them so you don’t feel compelled to respond.
- Believe that somewhere in all the non-helpful rhetoric your critic has some valid criticism your team needs to hear.
- Focus on accurately recording what your critic is saying. A video or audio recording of the dialogue is ideal.
- Wait to process the feedback until after the emotion of the encounter with your critic is gone.
- Entertain the possibility that your critic’s views might be shared by a customer you want to serve.
- Be willing to take useful input from your critic back to your team and disagree with what you originally supported.
If you can take this action one critic, you can do it with another. And another.
I suggest you repeat this process with every critic who will share their comments with you.
Their input is as helpful as the feedback you receive from your customers. Possibly even more valuable.
Protect your team from hidden danger. Disagree with them.
When you’re on a great team with great people, agreeing is almost always the easiest and most comfortable approach. And, it usually produces good results.
But, if you want your team to get even better, try something new. Disagree with them.
Don’t settle for first idea everyone agrees with. You and your team can do better.
Try these 3 powerful ways to disagree even when you initially agree.
- Challenge yourself and your team
- Seek input from our customer
- Get feedback from your critics
I am confident you will learn something new.
You will become a more informed and effective leader and your team will benefit as a result.
Let’s lead with kindness and confidence.
Greg
Discussion Questions
- Does your team tend to reach consensus quickly and easily? Have you seen any negative effects of this?
- What techniques do you suggest for leaders to disagree when they actually agree with the team’s conclusion?
I’m interested to know if you agree or disagree with my recommendations. Please share your perspective in the comments section so we can learn together.
