Our Obligation To Dissent

It seems both timely and ironic that I find myself talking a great deal with clients this month on the topic of disagreement. I have been reminded of an article which I first read two years ago in Harvard Business Review which explored the leadership concept of having an obligation to dissent.

What a superb phrase.

Fundamentally, it means the responsibility of leaders to create a culture that encourages candour both within and across our teams, appreciates those who ‘speak truth to power’, welcomes the challenge from others because we believe it is fundamentally a positive force, and genuinely operating from a place where we lack the hubris to believe that ‘we’re almost always right’.

Now I think that this is really easy to write down, but much harder to 'do in practice’. Why?

Because on the one hand we worry about our leadership brand, we worry about showing vulnerability and we worry about being seen as credible, current and convincing to our peers, our colleagues, our customers and our board if we invite others to dissent. If that wasn’t enough, we also worry about challenging others - especially across our horizontal leadership team and also to those who are more senior than ourselves. We worry about appearing unsupportive, creating ‘enemies’ and damaging our relationship with others on whom we might need to rely to drive results, or support our next career move.

So, what can we do? 

1. Firstly reframe what we’re talking about. The association of ‘dissent’ is negative, destructive, divisive. We’re not trying to deliberately do any of that in business. Instead we’re trying to be creative, curious, challenging and exacting of what our teams, our business and ourselves can do to move the needle.
2. In addition, we need to delete the belief that because we may not know a great deal about the expertise of a colleague or another team, we cannot therefore add value to the discussion. Wrong. It is precisely because we don’t know the detail and do not have the expertise, that we are able - if we take the leap - to more easily cut to the essence of the discussion through the power of crisp, concise and compelling questions. These are asked to expand thinking, offer support, explore possibilities, challenge ‘group think’ and ensure we make the best decisions as a leadership team.
3. Park our ‘ego’ at the door. All successful professionals have an ego (as do less successful professionals it has to be said). When we are asked questions we need to slow down, reflect, explore the question as a signal of interest and desire to help. We must resist the temptation to see it as a cue to defend our corner, become entrenched and vow to ‘get them back’ in some form later.
4. Talk to our teams - continually - about the importance of their challenge. Great leaders hire people with more expertise than themselves. Our job is to harness it, expand it and leverage it fully. That means we need to welcome - if not demand - the challenge of those who work for us.
5. Finally we should celebrate this kind of dissent, gather stories of the value of that challenge and share them around the organisation. What we talk about is what our teams will care about, so we need to do this - continually - if the behaviour is to become a positive aspect of the culture that we nurture.

My view of leadership and communication is simple: every human being comes into an interaction with the sole intent of leaving it with their self worth intact. It’s not an easy thing to do to encourage others to dissent, but we must - if we are to make the most of the talent across our business.