10 Goals and Practices for Leading Teams: No 7. Agree on how to disagree

Introduction

A team has to trust. Trust is tested when the team is in disagreement. We often find it difficult to disagree in teams because our level of trust isn’t higher than our fear of conflict. Fear wins and trust is weakened.

Yet disagreements are vital if teams are genuinely going to combine together to achieve more than the sum of their parts. It’s a key part of the additive process. I love it when I work through a really tricky issue with a team and get to a result that no-one had thought would be the outcome - yet everyone (finally) agrees it’s the best thing to do. It’s evidence of hard-worked, trusting, collaboration.

It’s much easier to disagree if you know it’s beneficial and you’ve agreed how to do it.

The Goal

To agree how to disagree well as a team. 

The Practice

All teams need to have an agreement for working together - a team charter for instance. Add “how we agree to disagree” to that charter. Discuss together what’s important about disagreeing, and the value that the team desires to create from it. Keep the team’s purpose and stakeholders in mind. Ask questions such as: how will we invite disagreement? What topics are we most likely to disagree on? What’s important to each of us about how we find agreement? What will help us find agreement? How will we help each other to trust each other to disagree? 

Two additional areas that make a big difference in teams before you get to disagreement are: 1) routinely providing feedback between team members 2) routinely reflecting together on the way the team is, or has been, working together. Do both of these things at the earliest time possible, and when the team is working well together, and it becomes a constructive team “norm”. Both practices can really help during disagreements.

Links to the other nine Goals and Practices for Leading Teams:

No 1. Be clearer on the team's purpose

No 2. Appreciate team dynamics - and use them to team better

No 3. Let's ditch SMART objectives and replace them with OKRs

No 4. Empathise with our stakeholders - more, with skill

No 5. Don't motivate your team - create the conditions for them to motivate themselves

No 6. Make performance a team game

No 7. Agree on how to disagree

No 8. Don't delegate, or empower - coach

No 9. Let the team engage with uncertainty

No 10. Learn to self-manage - together