How to Get Your Team to Challenge Your Ideas

This resource first appeared in issue #23 on 08 May 2020 and has tags Managing A Team: Team organization, Managing A Team: Other, Becoming A Manager: Coaching, Becoming A Manager: Feedback

How to Get Your Team to Challenge Your Ideas - Dave Bailey

We’ve talked before about the importance of having your team being comfortable to disagree with you and offer alternative suggestions. One thing I like here is two sets of suggestions, depending on whether you tend towards over- or under-assertiveness:

For the typically over-assertive

Adopt the question reflex.
Aim for balance in hearing everyone speak.
Avoid generalization.

For the typically under-assertive

Over-prepare.
Learn some facilitation techniques/helpful phrass
Be vulnerable.

Confusingly, I tend towards a bit of both — overassertive in group settings like meetings, and underassertive when speaking one-on-one with individual team members — so this breakdown that I can use contextually is helpful.