Getting Your Ideas Across

How to Disagree with Someone More Powerful than You

Your boss proposes a new initiative you think won’t work. Your senior colleague outlines a project timeline you think is unrealistic. What do you say when you disagree with someone who has more power than you do? How do you decide whether it’s worth speaking up? And if you do, what exactly should you say?

What the Experts Say
It’s a natural human reaction to shy away from disagreeing with a superior. “Our bodies specialize in survival, so we have a natural bias to avoid situations that might harm us,” says Joseph Grenny, the coauthor of Crucial Conversationsand the cofounder of VitalSmarts, a corporate training company. “The heart of the anxiety is that there will be negative implications,” adds Holly Weeks, the author of Failure to Communicate. We immediately think, “He’s not going to like me,” “She’s going to think I’m a pain,” or maybe even “I’ll get fired.” Although “it’s just plain easier to agree,” Weeks says that’s not always the right thing to do. Here’s how to disagree with someone more powerful than you.

Be realistic about the risks
Most people tend to overplay the risks involved in speaking up. “Our natural bias is to start by imagining all the things that will go horribly wrong,” Grenny says. Yes, your counterpart might be surprised and a little upset at first. But chances are you’re not going to get fired or make a lifelong enemy. He suggests you first consider “the risks of not speaking up” — perhaps the project will be derailed or you’ll lose the team’s trust — then realistically weigh those against the potential consequences of taking action.

Decide whether to wait
After this risk assessment, you may decide it’s best to hold off on voicing your opinion. Maybe “you haven’t finished thinking the problem through, the whole discussion was a surprise to you, or you want to get a clearer sense of what the group thinks,” says Weeks. “If you think other people are going to disagree too, you might want to gather your army first. People can contribute experience or information to your thinking — all the things that would make the disagreement stronger or more valid.” It’s also a good idea to delay the conversation if you’re in a meeting or other public space. Discussing the issue in private will make the powerful person feel less threatened.

Identify a shared goal
Before you share your thoughts, think about what the powerful person cares about — it may be “the credibility of their team or getting a project done on time,” says Grenny. You’re more likely to be heard if you can connect your disagreement to a “higher purpose.” When you do speak up, don’t assume the link will be clear. You’ll want to state it overtly, contextualizing your statements so that you’re seen not as a disagreeable underling but as a colleague who’s trying to advance a shared goal. The discussion will then become “more like a chess game than a boxing match,” says Weeks.

Ask permission to disagree
This step may sound overly deferential, but, according to Grenny, it’s a smart way to give the powerful person “psychological safety” and control. You can say something like, “I know we seem to be moving toward a first-quarter commitment here. I have reasons to think that won’t work. I’d like to lay out my reasoning. Would that be OK?” This gives the person a choice, “allowing them to verbally opt in,” says Grenny. And, assuming they say yes, it will make you feel more confident about voicing your disagreement.

Stay calm
You might feel your heart racing or your face turning red, but do whatever you can to remain neutral in both your words and actions. When your body language communicates reluctance or anxiety, it undercuts the message, Weeks says. It sends “a mixed message, and your counterpart gets to choose what to read,” she explains. Deep breaths can help, as can speaking more slowly and deliberately. “When we feel panicky we tend to talk louder and faster. You don’t want to be mousey or talk in a whisper, but simply slowing the pace and talking in an even tone helps calm the other person down and does the same for you,” says Grenny. It also makes you seem confident, even if you aren’t.

Validate the original point
After you’ve gotten permission, articulate the other person’s point of view. What is the idea, opinion, or proposal that you’re disagreeing with? Stating that clearly, possibly even better than your counterpart did, lays a strong foundation for the discussion. “You want your counterpart to say, ‘She understands.’ You don’t want to get in a fight about whether you get her point,” Weeks explains.

Don’t make judgments
When you move on to expressing your concerns, watch your language carefully. Grenny says to avoid any “judgment words” such as “short-sighted,” “foolish,” or “hasty” that might set off your counterpart; one of his tips is to cut out all adjectives, since “they have the potential to be misinterpreted or taken personally.” Share only facts. For example, instead of saying, “I think that first-quarter deadline is naïve,” you can say, “We’ve tried four projects like this in the past, and we were able to do two in a similar time period, but those were special circumstances.” Weeks also recommends staying neutral and focused: “Lay off the players and be vivid about the problem. Try to make it an honest disagreement, a worthwhile advancement of thought.”

Stay humble
Emphasize that you’re offering your opinion, not “gospel truth,” says Grenny. “It may be a well-informed, well-researched opinion, but it’s still an opinion, [so] talk tentatively and slightly understate your confidence.” Instead of saying something like, “If we set an end-of-quarter deadline, we’ll never make it,” say, “This is just my opinion, but I don’t see how we will make that deadline.” Weeks suggests adding a lot of “guiding phrases” like “I’m thinking aloud here.” This will leave room for dialogue. Having asserted your position (as a position, not as a fact), “demonstrate equal curiosity about other views,” says Grenny. Remind the person that this is your point of view, and then invite critique. Weeks suggests trying something like, “Tell me where I’m wrong with this.” Be genuinely open to hearing other opinions.

Acknowledge their authority
Ultimately, the person in power is probably going to make the final decision, so acknowledge that. You might say, “I know you’ll make the call here. This is up to you.” That will not only show that you know your place but also remind them that they have choices, Grenny says. Don’t backtrack on your opinion or give false praise, though. “You want to show respect to the person while maintaining your own self-respect,” says Weeks.

Principles to Remember

Do:

  • Explain that you have a different opinion and ask if you can voice it.
  • Restate the original point of view or decision so it’s clear you understand it.
  • Speak slowly — talking in an even tone calms you and the other person down.

Don’t:

  • Assume that disagreeing is going to damage your relationship or career — the consequences are often less dramatic than we think.
  • State your opinions as facts; simply express your point of view and be open to dialogue.
  • Use judgment words, such as “hasty,” “foolish,” or “wrong,” that might upset or incite your counterpart.

Case Study #1: Show respect for the idea
Victor Chiu, a business development manager at Centaria Properties, in Vancouver, was concerned that his boss, Patrick, was making a hasty decision. Weak Canadian oil prices had created favorable economic conditions for snatching up real estate, and there was a small plot of land with an operations warehouse in Alberta that Patrick thought the company should buy. At the time, Victor says, “Alberta’s economy was just starting to feel the pinch. Oil was at $45 a barrel and was still on its way down — without any signs of stabilization.” He was worried that the company would be overextended if it made the purchase, so he decided to speak up.

Victor looked his boss in the eye, spoke in a “smooth, casual tone,” and asked Patrick to keep an open mind about the proposal. He said, “I think it’s a great idea, but with oil just starting to slide and with no bottoming out in sight, bigger and better opportunities should present themselves in the near future.” He knew it was important to show respect for Patrick and his idea and to emphasize that he wanted the best for the company. He also made sure to propose a solution: “Let’s wait a bit to see if we can get a better deal, and then pull the trigger.”

“When you disagree with someone more powerful than you, you should always have a constructive reason to oppose. In my case, the reason was timing,” Victor says. Patrick didn’t take offense and was curious to hear more about Victor’s reasoning. Ultimately, they decided to hold off on making the investment.

Case Study #2: Make it about the company, not you
Mike McRitchie, owner of the consultancy Critical Path Action, has had reason to disagree with people more powerful than he on several occasions.

In a previous job, as the director of operations for a small consulting business, he disagreed with how his boss, the owner of the company, wanted to handle a health insurance decision. The boss wanted to survey the staff about two different options, letting them make the final choice on which one to adopt. But “as leaders, this was a decision I felt we should be making rather than delegating it to the whole staff,” Mike explains. “I’m all for getting feedback, but when it comes time to make a tough call, it isn’t fair to put that responsibility on the staff’s shoulders.”

Mike decided to share his opinion, emphasizing his commitment to the firm and making sure that his body language was not “at all unsure or tentative.” His boss was shocked at first; Mike had a reputation for being reserved, so open disagreement was “out of character” for him. But his boss could see that “I cared for the company and our leaders and staff,” Mike says. “I had no personal agenda.”

The boss agreed to abandon the staff poll idea, and “he’s respected me to this day,” Mike adds. “If you make it about the company’s best interests, instead of about you, then you have the best opportunity to win.”

This post originally appeared on Harvard Business Review. This article is republished here with permission.
from:     https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-to-disagree-with-someone-more-powerful-than-you

Lessons fr/Drill Sergeants

Paula Davis-Laack Headshot

7 Things Drill Sergeants Taught Me About Life

Posted:
DRILL SERGEANT

Four years ago, I began a professional journey that profoundly changed me. Having burned out after spending seven years as a commercial real estate lawyer, I decided to change careers and study stress, burnout and how people can build their own resilience reserves. I never in a million years thought that part of that journey would include working with drill sergeants, soldiers and their spouses in the U.S. Army.

I wanted to be part of the team working to train soldiers in resilience because of my grandpa. He was in the D-Day Normandy invasion and was forever changed by his experience fighting in WWII. Getting “help” wasn’t what he chose to do after the war, and instead his demons got the better of him on many occasions. I wanted something different for other families.

Part of my training included learning how to speak Army, figuring out the rank structure, and understanding a vast alphabet of acronyms. It was all worth it because I learned so much from the soldiers with whom I worked. Here are just a few of the biggest lessons I learned:

Authenticity is cool. I started this work with my guard up. I vowed not to let people see who I really was or know the full extent of my story (the trips to the ER because of stress, the weekly panic attacks during my burnout and more), because if people knew who I really was, the perfect veneer I had spent years trying to build and maintain might shatter. Instead of connecting with the soldiers heart to heart, I connected with them through facts, figures, and knowledge — I wasn’t about to take the risk to expose the flaws.

But then the soldiers started to tell their stories, and I got to witness their “aha” moments. They talked about the mistakes they had made both personally and professionally, friends and loves lost, and regrets they had. That made me think, “If the toughest men and women on the planet could open up a little, maybe I could too.” And then it all changed for me. Thanks to the soldiers and their spouses, I had the courage to finally step into the fullest version of my story. As a result, my mission became clearer, my writing became richer and my connections with others deeper. I learned that vulnerability is not weakness; rather, it is courage in its purest form.

Take good risks. I realized that seven years of practicing law caused me to play it safe in life. I got comfortable in my little corner of the world and stopped taking good risks. Being part of this training team required me to get outside of my comfort zone on a number of occasions. I traveled to the Middle East and rode a camel in the middle of the desert (I never imagined that this sentence would ever have come out of my mouth), acted out skits to illustrate teaching concepts, and danced in front of rooms full of soldiers (considering I dance like Elaine from Seinfeld, I nearly gave myself a panic attack the first time I had to do this — no joke). When you push your boundaries and succeed, your brain says, “I can do more.” Thanks to the push I got in this program, taking good risks has become a fundamental part of my life.

Have a battle buddy. Connection is a fundamental tenet of resilience. In the military, a battle buddy, or battle, is the person a soldier assists both in and out of combat. In the military, a soldier always has someone to count on for assistance, and I think it’s a concept civilians should adopt. My battle, Lorrie, has helped me in countless ways both personally and professionally, and it’s so comforting to know that this “bestie” exists in my life.

Don’t sweat the small stuff. When you put your life on the line for a cause, as soldiers do on a daily basis, things like waiting in a long line at the grocery store become less of a big deal. When you get deployed multiple times in a few short years and miss family events and births of kids, a little traffic jam isn’t so stressful. Getting the wrong order at Starbucks isn’t the end of the world. I gained a new appreciation of what it means to sacrifice.

Humor is a survival strategy. When I first started this work, I was taken aback at how many soldiers cited “humor” or “laughing” as a resilience strategy. Given the intensity and seriousness of the situations they often encounter, using humor as a coping mechanism seemed misplaced to me, but I was wrong. Humor is often the very thing that gets them through the intensity and the seriousness. I try to find the funny in stress now.

Lead like a solider. One of my colleagues said that we should create a hotline for civilians to call a solider in times of adversity because they are that good at solving problems (she called it “Dial an NCO”). Whether it’s creating a mobile hospital in the desert from scratch, securing a forward operating base, or organizing the mass exodus of 200+ people from the basement of the Sheraton in Philly during a fire drill (which actually happened), soldiers understand the core of what it means to be a good leader.

Connect with something bigger than yourself. For some soldiers this means God, for others, it’s a sense of spirituality. For others still, their “something bigger” is their service in the military. The Army soldiers we train live and lead by a specific set of values: loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage.

I helped teach resilience skills to thousands of soldiers and their spouses, and every time I said goodbye to a class, I got choked up because I saw my grandpa in every one of their faces. He would have been so proud of this work, and I thank these men and women for changing my life in the best possible way.

Paula Davis-Laack, JD MAPP, is the Founder and CEO of the Davis Laack Stress & Resilience Institute, a practice devoted to helping busy professionals prevent burnout.

from:    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paula-davislaack/7-things-drill-sergeants-taught-me-about-life_b_5679897.html?utm_hp_ref=gps-for-the-soul&ir=GPS%20for%20the%20Soul

Heroes, Risks, and Myths

 

Lloyd Glauberman, Ph.D.

Clinical Psychologist, Hypno-technologist

 Steve Jobs, Joseph Campbell and the Myth of the Hero
Posted: 10/17/11 03:22 PM ET

It’s easy to get caught up in the frenzy of praising the accomplishments of Steve Jobs since his death. In fact, it’s virtually impossible to overstate his importance. His is the first face on technology’s Mount Rushmore. With a computer chip in hand, he was Jordan with the ball, Baryshnikov in flight, Da Vinci with a brush. His work epitomized perfection. But it wasn’t always that way. The path of success was strewn with failure. And it was out of the ashes of epic failure that Steve Jobs’ life took a turn toward the mythic.

But first, a bit of mythology.

In his book “The Hero With a Thousand Faces,” Joseph Campbell describes the archetypal narrative that transforms an everyday man into a hero. Based on Carl Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious — a shared storage of images and themes that transcends culture — the hero myth reflects a story of a man either being pulled out of his ordinary life or choosing to leave and begin a great journey, whose ending is unknown. During his mythic journey he encounters great difficulties but eventually understands what his purpose in life is. He is tested to his limits, what Campbell calls a “supreme ordeal,” and is forever changed. With his new powers and a renewed sense of purpose, he returns to his society and makes a tremendous impact.

I think it’s safe to say that the life of Steve Jobs clearly fits the structure of the hero myth. If we substitute the Apple Corporation for society, we have a near perfect fit. Let’s review a few key moments in the formation of his mythic narrative.

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple and attempted to build an alternative to the PC world of Microsoft. Their first two computers, Apple I and II, did not initially sell very well. Later, Jobs developed the first computer with a graphical user interface, the Lisa, named after his daughter. It was way too costly and bombed. By that time former PepsiCo CEO John Sculley was in charge at Apple, and he fired Jobs because of the Lisa debacle. Our hero was banished from the kingdom. Having failed on a huge scale — the Lisa cost tens of millions of dollars to develop — he was now unemployed.

In order to prove he was still relevant in the computer world, Jobs started a new computer company, NeXT. Again, he failed. The NeXT computer barely sold. And worse, while he was gone, Apple had success with the Macintosh, which became the first successful computer with a graphical user interface. Jobs clearly was facing his “supreme ordeal.” You don’t fail twice on a stage this large and not a have a crisis of confidence. Jobs’ ego must have been teetering on the edge of an abyss. Yet, as the gods would have it, a series of events occurred which afforded him an opportunity for redemption. Apple began to falter, and they asked him back. The kingdom was in trouble and needed the old king to return and save the day. Jobs took back his throne. But it wasn’t immediate glory. Apple continued to flounder for a while, even needing to borrow $150 million from Bill Gates and Microsoft in 1997. Imagine how difficult that must have been to borrow money from Darth and the evil empire.

But then the magic started. First came the iMac and then the flood of handheld devices that catapulted Apple from death’s door to the most dominant technology company in the world. The hero’s journey was complete.

It’s easy to look at Steve Jobs and think only of success, especially if you were born after 1990. By the time you were a teenager Apple products had transformed the culture. They had so many successes that it felt like Motown during the 60s. Hit after hit. But if you look at his life just through the lens of the past 10 years, you miss the point completely. For it was the early years — the years of failure and suffering — which taught him how to sustain a vision and never give up.

So when you talk to your children about Steve Jobs and want to give them a gift — a bit of wisdom they can use when things don’t go as planned — tell them about Steve Jobs’ life, all of it. Tell them how the early Apple computers sold in the hundreds, not the millions. Tell them about the failures with Lisa and NeXT and that Apple was once a desperate company struggling to survive. Tell them that Jobs himself said these very same things at his 2005 commencement address at Stanford.

Then, and only then, can one understand and fully appreciate Steve Jobs’ accomplishments. Risk taking and resilience — the core characteristics of the mythic hero — allow success to emerge out of failure. Steve Jobs didn’t succeed in spite of his failures, he succeeded because of his failures.

Steve Jobs is the quintessential American hero.

 

from:    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lloyd-glauberman-phd/steve-jobs-american-hero_b_1014063.html