#4 💪 Committing
In today's blindspot: the folly of the 😈 devil's advocate, a different view of ⨺ Maslow's Hierarchy of Need and a ✍️ Brief template.
Disagreement is powerful. When we disagree, we can take a small step in asking others to come up with a new perspective, or we can go so far as to present our own perspective. We ask that the pool of ideas be filled up further.
"The best solutions come from disagreement"
Some leaders struggle to facilitate debate within their teams; however, former founders like me often find dissent easy to come by. You don't need to be a certified MBTI practitioner to figure out my personality type gravitates around The Debater.
While debaters often struggle to surface other opinions than their own, even healthy debate is only half of the handshake required to achieve outsized outcomes as a team. I respect initiative owners enough not just to disagree when asked, but also to stop when asked. That doesn't mean that I committed to the solution they decided on.
Commitment is a tricky blindspot. Modern leaders rise through the ranks through tenacity and a general ability to be right more often than they are wrong. Being right is a hard tool to put away when you become a leader, but as leaders we need to trade out control over the means to achieve control of the impact. That's a hard pill to swallow for many of us, which is why there are so many well-intentioned, smart micro-managers out there: we believe that we know best.
Over the years, my reactions to solutions I disagreed with ranged from sandbagging the initiative.
"I know it’s not great, gang, but this is the way it has to be."
to sandbagging the owner of the initiative
"I know it's not ideal, but they're in charge so let's put our game faces on and push through"
Each time, I sent a clear signal to my team that I don't value the work they do for this initiative or its owner, impeding their commitment & undercutting the need for accountability.
Sometimes, I continued to challenge the owner as their initiative progressed, but I was never able to provide real feedback and support to them on how to achieve the desired outcome that I wanted to control. I let my belief about the means impede my ability to coach my team on the impact.
🤔 Disagreeing without Committing
"This is a terrible idea but we don't have a choice. So I guess we should at least pretend to try."
What it looks like:
Disagreeing and then not committing.
Not communicating disagreement and then not committing.
What it does to teams:
Undercuts trust.
Impedes commitment, accountability & being results-driven.
How it looks in situations:
I disagree with my N+1: Dissent. Undermining. Sandbagging.
I disagree with my N-1: Micromanaging. Distrust. Judgment. Criticism.
I disagree with an initiative owner: Being uncooperative. Dragging feet. Stalling.
What symptoms you should look for:
Holding the meeting after the meeting: debriefing a decision and sharing disagreement afterwards.
Challenging decisions that were already made.
Soft & ambiguous commitments without any disagreement.
📚 Five Dysfunctions of a Team
A lot of blindspots around team dynamics can be hard to address because they are so interlocked: I want everyone to drop their ego, but I can't confront them about it because there is an artificial harmony that no one feels comfortable breaking. Knowing where to start can feel like playing whack-a-mole, where every team-building initiative you undertake just uncovers another blindspot.
While I'm not a big fan of the judgmental use of the term dysfunction by the author, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team lays out a pyramidal organization around these types of blindspots that helps understand what they look like, see how they relate to each other, and plan out how to solve them. Here are some aspects that I find most valuable:
You can't conquer blindspots that are higher up on the pyramid unless everything underneath is solved - that is, you can't create accountability without commitment, and you can't become results-driven without conflict.
Oftentimes, the solutions to dysfunctions are less about addressing the dysfunction, and more about creating an environment that naturally combats the dysfunction.
Team effectiveness, as defined by the pyramid, is pretty universal: teams that function well focus on results, leave ego at the door, disagree & commit, and are vulnerable with each other.
Because disagreement often comes with emotional attachment to one's point of view, I found Crucial Conversations to also be a great read if you're struggling with team members who shut down or get defensive around conflict or commitment.
Something I come back to often in this book is the notion of Rejecting the Fool’s Choice, namely either/or decisions that we find ourselves in where both choices are suboptimal. The archetypal example is either I say something we’re all thinking and everyone gets angry or I say nothing and we make the wrong decision.
The book advocates for breaking this habit by finding the third option that is always present, whereby you can share your differing opinions without pushing others to silence or violence.
🖊 Write a Brief
Creatives deal with disagreement more than almost any other team. When I first started managing designers, I wanted to create breathing room for their creative opinions while making it clear what success looks like.
I've since taken this model and applied it to every initiative. A great brief has only five parts:
Context: Why are we doing this? What's the status quo today and why doesn't that work for us? Where is the initiative coming from (who's commissioning it) and who is involved?
User Story: Write a short story from the perspective of the end-user of the output of this initiative. How will they discover this? What will they do with it? How will it impact them? How will they feel before, during, and after?
Input/Output: What is being provided in the brief (copy/content/wireframe/spreadsheet) and what is expected as an output? What's the metric for success?
Inspiration: Who has done something similar or that we'd like to borrow from? What do we like about what they've done? What don't we like?
Restrictions: What's non-negotiable? Must-haves? Dependencies?
As leaders, once we gain commitment to the frame, we can give up ownership over what the final output is as long as it meets the brief conditions, which are structured in a way that we can ensure impact.
I've never received disagreement on the brief structure, because there isn't a lot of subjectivity to it. I am militant about what goes into what sections by asking explicit questions like "is that a requirement (i.e: restriction) or is that an example of success (i.e: inspiration)?"
Start / Stop / Continue
🟢 Start asking for commitment explicitly at the end of a discussion: "will we all stand behind this decision?"
🟢 Start ensuring that dissenting opinions are heard and acknowledged.
🔴 Stop allowing people to "go along" with decisions without getting behind them.
🔴 Stop participating in or allowing gossip to happen.
🟡 Continue including the right people in the decision-making process.
🟡 Continue communicating transparently about decision-making processes.
🟡 Continue empowering ownership by ensuring the final decision rests with whoever is accountable for the impact of a decision.