Manage Tension by Framing the Argument

In Ms. Susan’s fourth-grade class, one of her principles for when she has students debate a topic collaboratively is to “have reasons.” This is her way of bringing her charges back to the root of what is being debated and teaching them how to depersonalize their commentary, especially when they might have naturally emotional responses to what a fellow student is saying. She scaffolds the behavior she wants to instill by having prompts for “Academic Discussions” posted on the wall (Figure 8-2), and she refers back to them frequently to help students frame and reframe personal arguments.

She also points out that by setting up the prompts as “academic” ways to speak, she is signaling to the class that this isn’t just about being nice. Teams that promote and use the correct framing for discussion—that it’s about being a more capable, respected professional—will benefit more than if they simply emphasized “getting along” because, remember, we want friction and conflict. We just want it to be at a higher level than what you find in the comments of a YouTube video. The sidebars “Compare and Contrast” and “Model Success Criteria” offer some tips for achieving this level of discourse.

Figure 8-2. Ms. Susan’s prompt to guide healthier discussions about ideas in her fourth-grade classroom

Manage Tension by Trading Perspectives

Teams also conflict when they don’t understand or value each other’s contribution to the effort equally, especially under stress. Vanessa Cho, now of Google Ventures, led a team developing software for the GoPro product line, while Wesley Yun led the hardware team. The two of them knew that success depended on those things being designed and developed together, rather than in silos. But they found that across the hardware and software, and even across subgroups working on the television versus the on-device features, each thought they had the hardest job on the team. Her solution was to bring the two groups together and have them all rotate through each other’s area during a sprint to understand the other group’s constraints and come up with solutions to key challenges. This helped them all see and respect what the other group was dealing with, and in some cases, bring insights that made things easier overall.

Dan Brown also suggests helping teams adopt each other’s perspective, or mashing up competing ideas to reach a new harmonious solution, as ways to make tension productive. I refer to this as making Neapolitan ice cream or Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, where two great tastes taste even better together.

Manage Tension with a “Disagree and Commit” Approach

Clear roles and facilitation can help groups have richer discussions and make decisions together. But there are still times when teams just can’t agree and get stuck, unsure how to move forward. When arbitrating such disagreements about a decision, you may find it useful to take a “disagree and commit” approach. Patrick Lencioni’s book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (Jossey-Bass) describes this idea as helping people say, “We may not agree here, but in the interests of moving on, let’s commit to this direction until we learn more.” At this point, the best thing to do is to try the decision out and test it to see if it holds water.

Disagree and commit requires that everyone actually have what Matt LeMay, author of Agile for Everybody (O’Reilly), calls “look-me-in-the-eyes-and-tell-me-you-commit” commitment. In this situation, silence signals a lack of agreement, so getting people to explicitly get on board is necessary. The advantage of embracing a “disagree and commit” approach for contentious decisions is that it allows the team to air their perspectives, but ultimately asks that they remain unified in their pursuit of a direction. It can also be useful to remind the team that, should evidence arise that shows that their decision is a bad one, they must be willing to shift accordingly. Disagree and commit is a way to end debate at an appropriate point so that the group doesn’t become sidetracked by the tension, or dissolve under it.

Chad Jennings says it’s useful to help people pick their battles, rather than turning every difference of opinion into a “do or die” moment. Disagreements that are based solely on opinions are rarely productive. Help the team pick a direction, almost any direction, to move forward so that they can start gathering actual information about what works and break the stalemate. Jennings brought up one of my favorite phrases to use when differing opinions get in the way: “If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.” Again, the team can always change direction if the decision proves to be wrong or suboptimal, but sitting around a table arguing without any real-world data is rarely productive for very long. Getting them to agree on a direction, with the understanding that it can be altered if necessary, can alleviate unproductive tension.

Satisficing Versus Optimizing

The first tendency to be aware of is that, especially in complex domains, people tend not to look for the most optimal choice given all possible information, but instead look for the options that meet several of the most important criteria, or “satisfice.” Information is often incomplete about all aspects of a choice, so we make do. Not all criteria are of equal importance, so we prioritize.

Satisficing describes the case where teams seek to meet only specific criteria to complete the work, while optimizing describes the case where teams seek the best possible solution. Teams looking to compare possible solutions may approach the problem from either of these two very different lenses. Be aware which one people are using when they’re making choices based on different priorities, because conflict may actually arise based on that disconnect, rather than on any specific idea itself.

When you are generating ideas and selecting some to refine, keep in mind which of your success criteria must be met, and which describe the qualities of the “best” solution. Where possible it’s helpful to rank and prioritize your criteria as well, especially those that are interrelated. For example, if cost versus size is a tradeoff, it’s helpful to know which is more important. If you can’t or don’t know that when starting out, test with the actual audience to see if you can determine their priorities among different criteria as you go.

We Want the Best

In The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making (Temple University Press), Scott Plous brings together several studies about how we make choices and what affects our thinking. He points out that we value avoiding loss over making gains, choosing riskier options that promise rewards but choosing more conservatively if there’s a risk of loss—for example, we’d rather chance gaining $100 than losing $50. This means that we may struggle with decisions where the exact level of risk is unknown, avoiding what might be promising approaches if there’s a chance of a negative outcome.

Studies also show that we value certainty over risk, choosing things that we know will pay off at a smaller rate over taking a risk. Again, if the decision being made can’t be fully qualified, people may make choices based on a perception of risk, avoiding options that might have a great return and where risk can be mitigated if it’s understood. If you see a team taking this course of action, talk it through and see if there’s a way to de-risk more radical options and innovations.

We Want What We Can Imagine

Our decisions are also affected by the way in which they are presented. Options that are shown with more, and more vivid, detail tend to be more credible, which can translate to more appealing. If we can imagine a scenario occurring, we are more likely to find it probable than if we can’t. Plous cites the example that many people believe shark attacks are more likely than deaths from airplane parts falling from the sky. Because shark attacks receive more press than falling airplane parts, we think they will occur more frequently, even though the latter is 30 times more likely.

What this means for you is that you need to make sure that groups are evaluating options at similar levels of fidelity, and with similar attention paid to imagining how they might work. It’s worth spending time, once you’ve generated options, to refine them so they’re comparable in detail and vividness.

This also means that you can use detail and compelling scenarios to be more persuasive when you’re presenting ideas. In Chapter 11, we’ll look at techniques you can employ when you’re trying to get outside stakeholders to understand and buy in to decisions the team has made.

The Popularity Contest

Too often I’ve seen teams work hard to develop ideas and be inclusive of wide-ranging perspectives, only to give in to voting on the “favorite.” Groupthink can be a real problem in this stage, especially among teams who don’t have a ton of experience together or with constructive criticism. Unlike in the previous stage of generating ideas with no limits, what happens in this stage has consequences, and your team may not be willing to stick their neck out for an idea in case they are wrong. When asked to critique or select ideas they feel are strong, they may look to others so they don’t stand out as having poor judgment or taste. Or, they may feel that making this type of decision is “above their pay grade,” wanting someone more senior to take responsibility for it.

In most organizations, decisions are either made through a democratic process or by a monarch (or worse, by a monarch with the trappings of democracy). Many executives actually see their value as being someone who makes tough decisions based on their experience. Team members may pick up on signals from superiors and simply fall in line, even if they aren’t fully bought into the decision.

Success Criteria Aren’t Helping

Success is something felt rather than expressed explicitly among many groups. Even, or maybe especially, in cases where there are clear KPIs that solutions must meet, the connection between what makes a solution a good idea and the leading indicators of success may not be clear. Even if you thought you were diligent defining your objective (as we looked at in Chapter 6), you may find that once you’re trying to make use of them they’re just not that helpful. Sometimes this dysfunction manifests by the team allowing every idea to pass because the criteria aren’t judgmental enough, or by people twisting the criteria to defend any and all ideas.

Too Much Conflict

Every collaboration will have conflicts, but one of the worst experiences, which often leads to groups breaking up and going their own ways, is when the conflict becomes too personal or too poisonous. In Chapter 1 we looked at what happens when conflict arises because of cultural clashes on the team. But what happens when the disagreement is about specific ideas?

As a leader and facilitator, you can help keep tension productive by helping teams share perspectives.