Don't Assume Consensus In The Absence of Objection - Candost Dagdeviren

This resource first appeared in issue #112 on 05 Mar 2022 and has tags Managing A Team: Other, Becoming A Manager: Conflict/Difficult Discussions, Strategy: Alignment

Don’t Assume Consensus In The Absence of Objection - Candost Dagdeviren

Most people don’t like the conflict that comes with disagreement, and people especially don’t like disagreeing with their boss. Not hearing objections, particularly objections to something you’ve said, does not mean there’s no disagreement. It just means there’s no voiced disagreement.

So as Dagdeviren points out, you have to go out of your way to elicit disagreement. “What are things that could go wrong with this approach”, “what things does this miss”, “what are other things we could try” are all questions I tend to ask.

The good news is, it gets easier! As you continue to solicit (and react positively to) disagreement, after weeks and months of doing the same thing it will take less and less effort. People will be more comfortable raising issues. But in most teams, especially academic teams, you have to put the work in first to get there.