Why We Should Be Disagreeing More at Work

This could possibly be my most unpopular episode yet, but it needs to be said. Disagreeing has so many positive benefits. If you want healthier relationships, to build trust, to create opportunities, to learn, and to move the business forward, I invite you to disagree more. 

Let me know if you disagree with the content of this episode! I invite difficult conversations, in fact, I eat difficult conversations for breakfast.  

How do you make the right decisions, if you don’t know where you are going? Work with me, and I will get your on the right path.
https://jadawillis.com/work-with-me/

Follow Jada and the B2B Podcast:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_ceo_mentor
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/theceomentor/

Follow the Grow Forward Community:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/growforwardcommunity
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/grow-forward-community/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/growforwardcommunity/

Transcript

0:00

I'm Jada Willis and this is the Back to Business podcast made for business owners, CEOs and high achievers that are ready to leave their BS excuses behind, get more out of life and see business growth like never before. Let's take the road less traveled and tackle the hard. Are you ready to get back to business? All right, B2B'ers, welcome back. Back to business. All right, so I want to talk to you about a topic today that you may not agree with, but it's more about why we should be disagreeing more at work. And that may come as a shock to you, especially with my longstanding career as an HR professional, but hear me out on this. And I have to share that originally this idea came up because this weekend the Steelers and the 49ers play and it is going to be a house divided, right? And I started thinking about just, you know, the fun conflict that I'm gonna have with my partner and she's a 49ers fan and I mean like diehard fan and I am a Steelers fan and it's just in my blood. I'm from Pittsburgh area and it's just really important to me that I bleed black and gold. So anyway, I want to talk to you today more about this whole idea of disagreement and conflict in the workplace, but even this can go into relationships. Generally we shy away from giving someone our honest opinion or maybe someone has upset us and we don't want to confront them about the issue or share our opinion. We think that we may make them upset or they make it angry. We can't control their response. So in your mind it is conflict and I know a ton of conflict avoiders. I'm going to tell you that I'm not one of those people. I actually said this to one of my bonus kids the other night. I was like, I eat difficult conversations for breakfast. I eat hard conversations for breakfast. And what I really mean by that is the fact that it doesn't mean that I enjoy the conflict by any means, but what I do enjoy is active, transparent communication. What I do enjoy is strengthening my relationships and being able to be with myself and my own integrity, but I actually think that if I'm willing to share maybe a difficult message in the appropriate way, then I really think the other person, even they have to control their own reaction, but they're going to at least trust me more or know that I'm going to communicate with them in an appropriate way, but I'm also going to be honest and have honest, candid conversations. So even, and then there's so many opportunities to have conflict in life every day. So whether it be a co-worker or, you know, a spouse or anyone else, like there's just going to be an opportunity to have difficult conversations. But I also choose the timing and I also pick my battles, right? And so it doesn't mean that everything I don't like, I share my opposing opinion. And I think that, and I'm not gonna get on the sit-box, but I think that as a culture, we have gotten to a place where, you know, we don't like it when someone disagrees with us. And there's just, there's so much benefit in having another person disagree. And that there are disagreements. And I want to share this particularly about the workplace and how I'm not saying HR should say, hey, we're going to get a mosh pit or a ring, and you're going to go at it. We're going to put two employees out there and be like, go. No, that's not the way to do it by any means. But I do think that there's a healthy way to manage team and employee conflict. And I also was inspired by this article. Now, this article is in 2018. A lot has happened since 2018. But it's on the Harvard Business Review. And it's why we should disagree more at work. And the author uses an example, actually, of himself. And I know that we all can relate to this, because I hate to admit that I've done it myself as well. But this is early on in his career where he actually deemed one of his coworkers, or I think it was a client, one of the clients they worked with as difficult. Now listen, we've all worked with some difficult people on a variety of settings, variety of ways. And this person in particular was difficult and challenging. He really didn't understand this person. But every time he would get an email from this client, he would actually forward it to a coworker and complain. One day, he actually accidentally sent this email right back to the client. And he was like, this is it. I'm about to get fired. And holy bones. So, I'm pretty sure he said that. So he immediately went to his boss and said, hey, this is what happened. Here are the emails. I'm so sorry. This is what I've done. And the boss responded, instead of firing him or launching some sort of investigation, the boss said, you know what, this person's 34 blocks away, I want you to go and apologize and to face this, to confront it. And he was like, wait a second, what? Maybe I should just quit. No, it actually took more, it was an easier path to just be like, hey, just fire me. It was much harder to face the wrong thing, face the thing that you've done that's wrong, and have that confrontation and have that difficult, challenging type of dialogue. So, what he did was actually go down, apologize, and start talking through. But what it did do is open up a door of trying to understand that other person's perspective. Similarly, a long time ago, I used to think, so if you've ever taken the DISC profile, so I'm a high DI, if you don't know what that is, I'm very dominant and social. I'm sure you can definitely pick up on that. But the complete opposite of me are really the S's and the C's, and C's in particular, they're slow moving, and this isn't a bad thing. Methodical, I am not. So the C's are very thoughtful, analytical, need tons of information before making a decision, and I mean, they would drive me crazy. But as I've gotten older, and as I have experienced more of business and life and all that good stuff, I have realized that my C counterparts are really the ying to my yang. And honestly, I typically surround myself with like high DCs. That means pretty dominant individuals, so that means that they're comfortable with with disagreement, but they're also very focused on the details. Very focused. I realized that we have to... I didn't understand who they were, why they made certain decisions, why did they respond so slowly, why couldn't they just make an immediate decision. But I had to really truly see what was on the other side of that. What do they bring to the table? And sometimes that's what you have to do whenever there also are disagreements and helping each person, whether it's two people on two sides of the table, understand the other side's perspective and how can that message, that issue be perceived in that way. And I had a lot of conflict with my C counterpart because I just, I didn't understand them, but I didn't also give enough credit to the other side of the value. What the beautiful part is, is whenever we can come together and we can form this awesome team, even though I'm moving so fast and I'm having these innovative ideas and too many of them typically. And then also I have my C, I have my other counterpart saying, hey, let's think through this and how much data have we collected? And it's really helped to hone in on my skills. Now, if you do want to not cultivate more disagreement at work, but let's just say, let's handle it. Let's handle the disagreement in the workplace. Then we have to think through some of the benefits. If we allow our employees and our leaders to have professional, and I'll get back to that, but professional candid conversations where we don't do finger-pointing, but we start talking about, hey, this is how I perceive this. What do you think about that? Maybe that likely wasn't your intention. However, this is how the message impacted me. This is how your lack of response impacting me. This is how I perceive that and what I think about that. And honestly, be okay that the fact that communication is happening, then you're gonna realize that more trust and more communication will occur. You'll also realize that people will work together more if they feel like they can not have to walk on eggshells. If they don't have to think or be so guarded in their interactions, then more teamwork will happen and reduce the fact that we have these silos. So, I mean, so many benefits can come out of just that situation and that particular point. But you're also going to see that every part of your business will flourish because people will feel that they have more autonomy to use their skill set, use their voice. But again, there has to be that professionalism. There have to be those parameters around how do you articulate a certain opinion. At Verizon, we called it constructive dissent. And it was a positive thing that you're disagreeing in a professional way, but it's ultimately to move the mission forward, to move the team forward. It's about your intent and how you're approaching that disagreement. So just again, some of the other benefits that come from disagreements is really innovation. I want someone to pick apart my idea. It doesn't feel good because you're like, you've invested so much emotion into it, you've just spent so much time, it's like you feel really attached to your idea or your project, but in all honesty, it's really good to get those differing opinions and allow someone to sit with those because it can actually produce a, how can we make this better? How can we have more of an impact to my teammates or to the client? So especially if this is something like a new service offering, a new product that is coming out, well, oh my goodness, yes, maybe there's one developer or one particular team that has worked on this, but man, we need so much feedback from others. Doesn't mean that we take it, but it means that we need to consider why are they perceiving it in this way? How could, and can someone else, like our clients, perceive it in this way? Can it cause any sort of problems? So we're removing the emotion and looking at it objectively to say, all right, this is how this message, this product landed on that person. Is this going to be replicated to anyone else? And will others perceive it this way? So I think that there are major benefits to having disagreements in the workplace and even disagreements in your personal life. But let's go back to when I say professionalism. What that means is, it's all the things of you can't roll your eyes, you have to have that solid tone, that very consistent tone of voice. You can't kind of chime in from a passive aggressive standpoint. I mean, come on, it's all about when you enter into a conflict and it's helping your employees see this too, you enter into a conflict or a conversation that you know is going to be challenging, then what's the intent? What's our goal here? Start with the end in mind. At the end of the conversation, what is our best-case scenario? Our best-case scenario is we shake hands, we say, well, I'm so glad we were able to have this conversation. I really can understand your point, and it does produce all the benefits that we've just talked about, right? Now, a worst case scenario is that it is, you know, really those negative behaviors and someone feels as if you're being antagonistic and you're not really working towards a solution. And it's really, it's important to focus on tone, facial expressions, delivery, and your overall intent, and then what you're saying. What you're saying has to match your tone and also your facial expressions. So it's making eye contact and it's being intentional in your body language. But what you're saying matters. What you're saying are not, you did this, you impacted me in this way, I hated your message, and I can't believe you did this. It's very accusatory and tacky. Listen, if someone approaches you that way, you know that you're going to get angry, defensive, feel like you have to protect yourself, and whatever they're talking about. This is not, this is the solution. We're trying to come to a common ground. We're trying to understand the other person's opinion, the other person's side of the story, right? So, with that being the case, it's, hey, this is how it landed on me, this is how I'm perceiving this. And again, I don't know what your intent was, I don't know your perspective, I'm hoping to get that, but I really wanted to give an opportunity for you to understand my perspective on this and so we can have some dialogue about what exactly occurred, right? Honestly, I even had this conversation with a colleague earlier this week where I really felt as if, now we're not in a employer-employee relationship, we're peers, and from a contractor perspective, but I felt as if their behavior had changed and they're actually, they were being a little bit micromanaging in regards to the work that was my sandbox. And I've already mentioned earlier that I'm a bit of a D, so I'm pretty dominant, I'm very protective of my sandbox, and I've worked really hard to start playing nice in the sandbox, really focus on teamwork and things of that nature. That's all over time, but at least I'm admitting it, right? That being the case, it was just how it was making me feel, and I saw patterns of behavior. So it wasn't just one time that I, you know, saw that this was happening. It was multiple times. I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna have to have a strong conversation. But I had to pick the best time to do this because, you know, she was having some personal problems that I was aware of, so I waited, and until some of those, you know, events decided and she already reached out again, so the situation was occurring again, and so it was real time. So as she was calling me to check on what I perceived to be my work, I wanted to pause. And I said, you know, I really want to have a transparent conversation with you. I think it's important, and I don't know any other way to be, also. I'm not very good at being fake, and also just not talking about something that's pretty big on my mind, but I want to make sure that you have the time to really just hear me out and hopefully we can talk through some things. So I got her buy-in and I also gave her a heads up that this is going to be a transparent conversation. Implied, it could be a difficult conversation. So with that, I just let her know, hey, this is how your behavior has impacted me, but I really want to understand what's been happening. What's going on because I see a shift. So I explained everything I just told you in regards to behavior change, tone of voice change, and then also following up on certain pieces. After she gave me an explanation and also the fact that she's overwhelmed with work and totally disorganized and just trying to be helpful and listen absolutely I'm giving absolutely grace to the benefit of the doubt but what I've also done is we were able to have a really open conversation about how I was perceiving her behavior and her actions and then she was able to tell me even asking me some clarifying questions about my role and and what it allowed was us to have clarity. Clarity and dialogue without all this fighting or yelling or swearing or anything of that nature. My goal and my intent wasn't to make her feel bad or to make her feel as if, to actually even not call me about following up on my work. My goal was really to understand. So I think if we start disagreements with an opportunity to try to understand the other person's perspective, that we also have an idea of what the end looks like. If we end this conversation, if I walk away from this, what's my best-case scenario, what's my hope, then we can tailor our tone, our emotions, and also just our facial expressions to hopefully meet those goals. And if you can't do that, it's okay if you're too emotional in that moment and you have the opportunity to just step away and try to remove yourself. I used to tell my clients, hey, we need to go to the balcony on this. What that means is, hey, of course you're gonna have emotion around it, you're frustrated, you're annoyed, but think about what is the ultimate end goal. Think about objectively trying to get this data, trying to get this information from the other person, and then applying that to whatever situation. Now, I'm not saying that there aren't, you know, going to be co-workers or individuals in your work life that have ill intent or they don't have the best positive interactions with you. They're angry, they're defensive. I will tell you this, and this is one of my secrets in being an HR professional, anytime that an employee walked in and they were angry or just really had just so much emotion, instead of matching that emotion, guess what I did? I slowed down my tone and I was very thoughtful about how I communicated with them. It wasn't argumentative, it wasn't sarcastic. It is so hard to fight with someone that has like a very neutral tone, neutral demeanor, and it immediately calms someone down. It's almost impossible to keep on fighting. If so, then there may be some type of mental health or emotional issue that's happening and we may need to seek help in a different way. But the overall goal of these disagreements is actually to create innovation, to create camaraderie, to foster more teamwork. And I want to ask you this. Think about the people that are closest to you in your life, like your best friends. I'll tell you what, my best friends are also the people that can say some things to me. Now, if someone that I hardly know would tell me, hey, I really need you to fix your face, or tell me something that would feel as if it was more of an attack, I probably wouldn't be too keen on it. But think about your best friends and the difficult messages that they have earned the right to give you. Well, think about how beneficial that has been for you and how you have those people in your corner that are willing to tell you, listen, if you're going to ask clients to pay you that much money, I'm going to need you to look like it. I'm going to need you to make sure you're a professional and that you show up on time. They're willing to give you that tough feedback, but it's actually for good intent. Think about what can happen if we apply that same type of logic and that same appreciation for candor to the workplace. So listen, you know every message, every podcast I always go for the underline and bold. Is it appropriate to underline and bold my own statements? I don't know, I may be too much. You decide what you should underline and bold from this podcast, but I am telling you that there's so much to gain from having candid conversations and healthy disagreements in the workplace and even healthy disagreements in your life. It may not always feel good, but if you can address your emotional state and hopefully the other person can show up in the same way, there is so much to be gained here. And it will advance you, it will advance the organization, and also just make you feel safe. Whenever we think about safety and then we think about how am I value or am I okay to use my voice, share my opinions in the workplace, that's the root of it, right? Is if you're able to communicate in the ways that you need to with the people that are around you. Another benefit, I'm gonna throw in there, I didn't plan this at all But another benefit is thinking through from a promotion perspective now if your business center You get to promote yourself, but in thinking through it if you're currently working and you have a manager. Do you know? That is such a major Major benefit like a major thing a positive To be a high performer definitely you need to be able to communicate effectively. And, oh my goodness, I'm telling you, you may even skip positions. You may even skip like two spots above you if you are able to manage conflict, diffuse conflict, and really approach and have that professional maturity. You approach situations from a place of a seek to understand. A, how can we walk out of this and better understand each other, better help each other, and ultimately disarm that conflict. I'm telling you, holy moly, your career will skyrocket. It's such a win. Now, talking back to my business owners, this is a valuable skill because you will have this, this being conflict at every turn, and I hate to say that, but conflict can be positive. And you may have it with vendors, with clients, with employees, contractors, the list goes on and on. And as you continue to learn about yourself and how you handle conflict, how you're triggered, then really it will give you an edge. It will give you such a healthy balance to your life as well, it will improve every relationship if you can handle disagreements with grace and professionalism, and you use them as a propeller, propeller to move that relationship, move the decision, and move your business forward. So I hope I've pleaded my case on why you should have more disagreements in your workplace and maybe even in your personal life. So, and I'm sure I may even get some really interesting comments off of this podcast, interesting emails, and I welcome it. You know why? I welcome healthy disagreement. All right, I'm ending this podcast like I end every podcast. It's choose your hard. Everything you want is on the other side of hard. Choose your hard.