15 Tips for Successful Disagreement at Work

15 Tips for Successful Disagreement at Work15 Tips for Successful Disagreement at WorkDisagreement can happen in any setting. You can disagree with your neighbor in cubicleville. You can disagree with your boss or initiate a discussion with a coworker over lunch. But, many disagreements occur during meetings- or they should. The reason organizations hold meetings is so that employees can engage each other in discussion. Otherwise, why hold a meeting? Meetings are for discussion, decisions, and commitments. If you dont state your opinion, whether you agree or disagree, you are notlage part of the discussion. You have no reason to attend the meeting or participate on the team if you are unwilling to discuss your opinions and agree or disagree with the opinions of your fellow attendees. If youre afraid to disagree with your boss, why does he or she need you? To do what youre told? To work on tasks and action items? Or, to think, innovate, plan, and disagree? In fact, healthy disagreemen t is one of the hallmarks of a successful team. When constructive discussion and disagreement is absent, and apathy is the norm, you have a dysfunctional team or meeting. Keeping all of this in mind plus the discussion about workplace culture that was discussed in an earlier article about ?how to disagree, here are the fifteen best tips for successful disagreement. Tips for Successful Disagreement With a Colleague 1. Pick your battles wisely. If you disagree about everything, your coworkers will see you as argumentative and disagreeable. Youll develop the reputation of always disagreeing, and your reasonable disagreement will be viewed as same old, same old. So, pick areas that affect outcomes and that are substantial, meaningful, and important. 2. Dont hold a conflict when youre angry, emotional, or upset. You dont want your emotions to affect your professionalism, arguments or data presentation. Above all, you dont want your emotions to cause you to attack, name-call, or demea n your coworkers. When speaking, at any point in a disagreement, stay calm. Your successful disagreement depends on it. 3. Disagreement should not be personal. You do not disagree with your coworker because there is something wrong with her or you dont like her. You are disagreeing based on facts, experience, intuition, prior team successes and failures, your coworkers track record on similar projects, and your organizations culture. Keep the discussion impersonal by not you-ing your colleague as in you just dont understand the ramifications of what youre suggesting. No personal attacks allowed. 4. You want to validate your coworkers opinion. Identify the components with which you agree and acknowledge that you can understand or see why she might feel the way she does. Open your disagreement by repeating what the other party said rather than launching into your areas of disagreement first. Help the person feel as if he was listened to, heard out, and understood. 5. Maintain your pro fessionalism. Be respectful of your coworkers. Disagreement can be cordial, yet candid and effective. Dont try to manipulate the situation as one former coworker did- She cried. Another was always on the attack. He saved up his ammunition and hit his coworkers with everything he had in his arsenal on occasion. Neither employee was successful, and their professional reputations suffered. 6. Understand what your coworker needs, fears, and hopes to obtain from the solution. If you identify what is at stake in the issue, the problem solving, the recommendation, or project, you are more likely to connect with your coworker to successfully disagree.Ask questions like these Whats your real concern about the project? Whats bothering you about this current solution? What has to occur for you to comfortably stab und sttze a solution? Are you comfortable with any aspects of my suggestion? 7. Only speak for yourself. In a small company, freelance writers interact on a forum. Members were regula rly annoyed by one colleague who posts frequently. It took a while to figure out the problem with this particular persons posts, but her fatal action is that she consistently tries to speak for all of the freelancers. She uses statements like We all feel this way. This is the change wed all like to see. When coworkers speak this way, they think that they are putting weight behind their thoughts but all it does usually is make people angry. Or, in the case of a coworker, the individual might see it as ganging up on her. Your coworker may also become distracted from the actual topic of the discussion as she pursues asking about who we is. So, using the word we or any equivalent is unlikely to help with your disagreement. 8. Step back from your job and how you perform a particular activity. To effectively disagree, you must be able to look at the situation from your coworkers functional point of view. The further up the organizations hierarchy your job is, the more important it becomes to look at each issue from a total organizational view. You must be open to new ideas and different ways of approaching problems. Why is your way the best way when other ways to obtain the same, or even better result, exist? In organizations, employees who can think about optimizing for the whole organization are the people who are promoted. 9. Avoid interrogating your coworker. Asking questions to understand your coworkers viewpoint is appropriate. Throwing out an unending stream of questions to trip him up, confuse the issue, make him look silly or uninformed is not. It is also insulting and childish. 10. State the facts (if you have any) and share your knowledge. You can bring your experience, expertise, knowledge, and any data that you have that might support a direction to the table. You may talk about them to move your team forward. But, the opposite must be avoided.Just because something was tried, and didnt work in the past, doesnt mean that it wont this time. The problem i s different. The players are different. Even the will to make the solution work may have changed. 11. Speak to common interests and needs. Just as you started out the discussion by identifying what you and your coworker agree on, focus your discussion on shared interests and desired outcomes. If your coworker thinks that the two of you are headed in the same direction or have a shared outcome in mind, disagreement about how to get there is less scary and contentious. 12. Listen to try to see your coworkers point of view. In a successful disagreement setting, both coworkers can state clearly the other partys position on the issue. If you cant, examine your listening. Use the technique of feeding back to your colleague what you believe he said. For example, say, John, I believe that your position is this ___. That tells your colleague that you are listening to what he has to say. People waste a lot of time in arguments that could have been avoided if they just understood the other per sons position better. They argue over ostensible disagreements and details. 13. Avoid putting down your coworkers beliefs, interests, and ideas. You can have a disagreement with coworkers without making them feel like what they value or think is wrong. In fact, check your judgmental self at the door when you attend a meeting. Showing disrespect for a colleagues ideas or position is inappropriate anywhere but especially at work. Making fun of them is even worse. Be careful of gentle teasing, too. Many of your coworkers were raised by mothers who taught them that behind every bit of teasing is a grain of truth. 14. The goal is not to win but to clear the air in any disagreement at work. You want to know that the issues have been carefully discussed and thought about deeply. You want to make sure that your relationship with your colleague is intact.If you win, you also lose, because your co-worker lost. That loss will hang heavy in your relationship, and it will affect your ability to disagree in the future. It is also important that your coworker and you are clear about your areas of agreement and disagreement. 15. Compromise when necessary. You may not agree on everything, but dont let that fact keep you from reaching a general agreement on a direction or a solution. In an organization, you cant freeze in place and do nothing just because you havent found a perfect solution that all parties own. You will need to agree to disagree on aspects of the solution or problem-solving. In a compromise, you need to make sure that the conceded items are ones that you can live with following the meeting. At the same time, you want to avoid consensus decision making in which the lowest common denominator determines the course of action. Consensus decision making can cause low-quality decisions and solutions as a team struggles to come up with a solution that is acceptable to all. Disagreement can be difficult, and many people find it scary. But, if you practice these fiftee n approaches to conflict, youll find that most of what you worry about wont happen. The majority of your coworkers want to reach agreement on solutions and solve problems. They want to maintain positive relationships with their coworkers. They want to be thought of favorably, and they seek a seat on the list of good employees. The key to conflict and disagreement is that following all of the talking all players must support and own the decisions reached. It is injurious to your organization to have employees pulling in different directions, second-guessing decisions, and sending mixed messages to coworkers and customers. This is not to suggest that you cant relook at decisions as time and experience bring you more information. But to start, your job is to make the current decisions work.