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March 2015: “Master the Art of Polite Disagreement”

Most of us have experienced the power of social influence. Think about a time when you’ve been in a meeting and when asked to respond to an issue, you have gone along with the rest of the group instead of staying true to your feelings and thoughts on the matter. In the field of Psychology, the Asch Paradigm were a series of experiments that demonstrated the degree to which one’s own opinions were influenced by others in a majority group. Many times in these experiments participants would go along with obviously poor choices or bad decisions even if the consequences of doing so might diminish their social status as a result. Social influence is tough to offload but there is good news. David Maxfield and Joseph Grenney, authors of Crucial Conversations, recently found that learning the skill of polite disagreement provided the courage for participants to speak their truth and as they did, others followed suit: http://www.crucialskills.com/2015/03/one-simple-skill-to-overcome-peer-pressure/?elqTrackId=4e224ac95af44e74892829fceeb2666b&elqaid=3122&elqat=1

Here’s how to do it. In the next month, as you find yourself engaged in group conversations where your opinion is different from the majority, try one of the following sentence stems to politely disagree. For a situation that requires one answer: “I might have seen it differently. I think it’s X.” For a situation where there is no one answer and more complexity exists: “I can see how your solution might work AND I have another to suggest since we’re on the topic.” One of the keys to doing this skillfully is to check your attitude beforehand and find out your intention. If you intend to make others wrong or show that your answer is the obvious only solution, this will come across loud and clear. Even if you feel this way, try to think spaciously and see multiple solutions as legitimate. The more you deliver your solution as only one possibility of 10,000, the more likely people are to listen and your suggestion and still see you as a team player. So, this month’s practice is really two-fold: 1) detaching from the idea of you have the one right answer; and 2) delivering our suggestion in language that disagrees politely, in a way that doesn’t make anyone else wrong. Try this practice in the next month and notice how it changes the dynamic of the group conversation and the outcome of the meeting as a result.

Posted on March 9, 2015 10:57 AM Permalink