Describe it to Defuse it When Smart People Disagree
So you’ve encountered a disagreement. Wonderful! Great ideas usually don’t emerge fully formed and without controversy. They’re honed through debate and testing. But a lot of time the reaction to an honest disagreement is to
- Ignore it. We’re uncomfortable so let’s pretend we didn’t see it. In a meeting people might voice opinions that are in conflict, but no one says “well Bob and Maria can’t both be right.”
- Immediately cave in to one party. “Oh, you probably know best/have been here longer/outrank us/are a giant pain in the ass to deal with. We’ll just do it your way.”
- Escalate with anger. The disagreement quickly becomes heated, possibly personal, and soon people are dragging up past issues to throw into the fire as well. The actual issue gets lost in the turmoil.
All of these reactions are between you and a productive decision and path forward. So what can you do?
There’s one technique that often improves the situation and leads to a more productive discussion. That is to neutrally describe what it is going on and ask for a path forward.
Sounds so simple right? But doing this does two things. First, it normalizes disagreement and presents it as a neutral or even positive thing. And, it brings the disagreers and any other involved people into a bigger discussion: how are we going to make this decision?
It might sound like this: “Hey it looks like Bob and Maria have very different opinions. Bob thinks we should implement every database release as they come out and Maria thinks we should we just do the major releases and no more than once a quarter. It makes sense that we might not start out agreeing because there are a lot of approaches to this. I’m sure they both have good reasons and we can learn from understanding how each of them are thinking about this. It’s important for us to get this resolved so it doesn’t hold us up. So first can we talk about how we’re going to make the decision?”
By simply describing what’s going on in a curious and thoughtful way, you’ve taken the dynamic from conflict and discomfort to one that invites the broader team in to the meta conversation: how are we going to work this out? You’ve changed the tone from conflict is bad to conflict is part of work, so let’s get on with it.
I see some of you in the front row raising your hands! Yep, this could open up lots of other questions, like “what are our goals and how do these approaches support them?” and “who on our team makes decisions like these?” But for this specific skill, your goal is is to take an unproductive, emotionally overwrought discussion and make it productive. With your neutral description, you’ve made it harder for the team to ignore the disagreement, harder for either Bob or Maria to just go off and do it their way because no one told them not to, and defused some unproductive emotions by accepting or even celebrating that two smart people are working to make things better for your team.
Remember we want to defuse the negative emotions like pride, apathy, fear, or discomfort, that get in the way of the real and productive conversation. We’re not trying to disarm the disagreement itself. Think of it like we have two lengths of rope knotted together that we want to untangle, but a lot of leaves and moss and other unwanted gunk has gotten itself stuck to the rope. By clearing off the gunk, we can see to work more easily on the knot itself.
Every team’s level of comfort with that gunk is different. Some teams tolerate a lot, and a fair amount of conflict is comfortable. Other teams go to ground at the first sign of it. The key is to listen for whether the conflict is getting resolved, or whether it’s disappearing under the gunk.
And, hey, if you’re thinking, Nadya, this sounds like a lot of emotional labor, I’m not going to lie, it is! You are showing up as calm, neutral, and curious amongst people who are not. But, it’s also exhausting being in a group that gets stuck in a disagreement and doesn’t move forward, or that swirls around constantly changing direction, or that spends its energy building alliances and politicking instead of doing the work you want to do. By spending down some of your energy on this, you’re increasing the odds of getting to do the work you want, and building a fundamental skill that will help you have more influence and impact.
Your Dot Release: Listen for disagreements that are being treated poorly, whether ignored, personalized, or apathetically conceded. Take a beat to describe it and ask the group how you’ll resolve the disagreement. If you’re not ready yet to do that in a group setting, try doing it later, one-on-one with someone who can be an ally in reframing things.
This article is part 3 of 4 in a mini series on Alignment 101: Smart People Disagree. The others are:
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