Lead Better - Less Forceful Ways of Expressing Disagreement

0:00Well, good afternoon, Sierra. And Scott, good to see you both. Great to see you too. All right. Here we go. It's Thursday, March 12, 3PM Eastern time. We're alive. Thanks to everybody joining us for lead better time to talk about today's field note from admired leadership and the title of today's field note is less forceful ways of expressing disagreement, less forceful ways of expressing disagreement. And you know, they're obviously on Thursdays when Sierra joins us, we have some real knockdown dragouts, a lot of insults, you know, a lot of invective. I'm hoping that we have a lot of that today, actually. And just to think that I was going to start and compliment your, your story. Look today, Scott. Yeah. Yeah. Now I'm disarmed. And so that is threw off my entire rhythm. So well, here's the question. Like when, and this is particularly about a leader who has disagreement and how they can frame that to someone.

1:07But this applies, I think to everybody. There's a lot in this field note that can help all of us and how we express disagreement a way that's actually productive. But I don't know. Where do you guys want to start? I mean, have you seen the things where disagreement went totally off the rails? Sure. Maybe we should start with the idea of a green that by way of disagreement, it is typical to get a better answer. Is that it? Is that a true statement? Are we say that one more time? But through disagreement, we are typically getting a better answer than we would have had otherwise. If we have a wrestling with the question. Yeah. So if we think that's true, then of course we want to wrestle. And then the question becomes, how do we wrestle better? But if we don't actually think that disagreement produces better outcomes in a process wise, then we're not talking about the right thing. But so I don't know if I loaded the question in a way that I'm expecting the right kind of answer or the kind of answer that you should give.

2:10But but I have an opinion on that and you probably can already guess what it is. I almost want to get so meta about it and use a less forceful way of disagreeing with you because I may I might not see it as such a binary choice that it always produces a better outcome to disagree. Because I'd say I've seen leaders that push and they disagree and they get, you know, say they might even use one of the indirect ways of disagreeing with their team of, you know, tell me some of the evidence behind that. And then their team goes out to find that evidence. And if the leaders might has already made up of what the solution might be, that was them disagreeing, getting them to go out and get more evidence to come back with is actually just busy work. And counterproductive. Yeah, so I'm not sure it's quite as binary as to disagree is to improve the outcome because sometimes that results in busy work. But I would say the quest to get to the bottom of a problem or to get people to think as deeply as possible about a problem is always worth doing.

3:17Except for when it's the most obvious answer because you can also think of if somebody's putting something on the table that's a no brainer that everybody agrees with. And you need to put her about and get as many other thoughts on the table if it's an easy answer, but I do want to get into the importance of finding indirect ways to share your disagreement at some point. Yeah, right. So one more clarification of the question that got do you think that if we reach consensus too quickly that that's actually a red flag. And then shouldn't we like infect some disagreement in there in a case where we've agreed to quickly? I don't know that you do it artificially. I think one of the questions would be that when it when does discussion or deep discussion cross the threshold into disagreement. And sometimes we've talked about the idea that when I'm giving feedback, if I'm giving you a compliment or if I'm giving you criticism that you need to have those things in balance.

4:22And one of the interesting sub points in a lot of our content in that area from our research is that that's actually true in relationships. Meaning if you're artificially weighted that you're always at each other's throats, things are probably not going to go very well. But if you're always like everything's great, honey, everything's fine. Then you're also creating sort of a saccharine artificial harmony that's not really there. And that oftentimes the best relationships have a teeter totter of agreement and disagreement and you're kind of pushing and challenging and also supporting. And maybe there's a bit of that that crosses into this. I don't know if that answers it, Mikey. But I think that in saying if we're always agreeing that that's a sign that we're really not truly exploring and thus we're missing potential factors that could really help us solve the problem. Right. So if we're not going to think of it as a binary as Sierra encourages us to do, we probably can agree that whether we're doing it on purpose or not, whether we're injecting disagreement artificially or it comes up organically.

5:29There probably is better ways that we lower the temperature on every single way that we do it, whether it's on purpose or not. Primarily because then the resistance to the ideas is lower, right. So Sierra, what's your favorite way of lowering resistance this way? Yeah, it's funny when I was going through this list of there's there's three on the list. Curiosity, so help me understand. There's ask for more options. What other ideas do you have? What's another way that we could look at this or exploring the why? Tell me how you arrived at that conclusion. I am way overusing one of those three and not using the other two at all. So this field note really gave me a new repertoire to start to bring into my conversations when I do disagree. I use the curiosity one, I overuse it. That's what this field note told me because I'm often going to, okay, help me understand your thinking behind that.

6:30And sometimes it's not actually because I disagree, it's because I need to understand where they're coming from. And I want to understand how they think so I can help develop them. But the curiosity one comes most naturally to me, whereas asking for more options, I have not tried nearly enough. What about you one? They all have a little bit of curiosity in them, right? I mean, the first one kind of is the clear one where you're kind of just saying right out of the gate, help me understand. But even when you say, are there more options? You're being curious. You're trying to find out the extent of their thinking. And then if you're saying, well, give me the reasons why you came, get all curiosity. So I think it supports your relational endeavor to really be interested in what the other party brings to the table. So I think that the thing you're underlying to me, which is, there's two things which are really important, which is one. The wider a palette that you have is a leader to paint with this phrase or that phrase. The less you're likely to be seen as a robot. And that you're actually taken for somebody who really is interested.

7:32But I do think we don't have to come back to it right now. But what you said at the very beginning, which is when you use these as an artificial chore, like are there other options? And then you send the team out there. If you've already made up your mind, then that's a problem. Yeah. Pascal points out in the comments, I should say that it's interesting that this tendency to disagree is something that we do with other humans. But he's noticing that in his own use of AI, he doesn't disagree with it very much. And so I wonder if there is a natural approach in our way of using AI that should be like, should we not intentionally like disagree with AI? And it's got I know that you had a recent disagreement with AI here where you intentionally went down the road of asking for its thinking, right? You you basically had this type of thing. And you didn't have to worry about like taking the temperature down, but you went through the same process. Yeah, you know, that's a good way actually to maybe even think about how you would drill this.

8:37I am thinking about the fact that like one of our engineers on a prior call, you know, somebody was saying, well, I kind of feel like I really get connected to this particular, you know, chatbot or LLM. And the engineer, very bright person was saying, oh, you can definitely get attached. They cannot get attached to you. Just because you like your pet rock doesn't mean that that rock likes you. Yes. But you could, and I think you can get too deep into this trying to talk to an LLM like it's a person, but it's not a bad way to do it. Because in this case, I'll give the quick scenario. There was a breaking news event over a couple of days. There's a piece of video. In fact, when I first saw it, I thought this is this is AI. And my wife said, no, it's not. And I went and I looked, I was like, actually, this does seem to be real video. And what was interesting was I asked two LLMs. And they were like, no, it's real video. And here's why. And then I asked another one. I'm not going to indict any particular one, one of the major ones.

9:39And I said, and it, and it spent about 20, 30 minutes, not only just telling me that it was not real, but then lecturing me about why I was had been fooled and befuddled. And making me feel bad. But I kept asking the question. And in some ways, I could have been saying, I should have been disagreeing, you know, agreeably here and saying, well, tell me how did you come to that conclusion? Or tell me more about the reason behind that. And that's kind of what I did. And ultimately, after a half an hour, the LLM said, oh, you're right. And then I, you know, just because I had time on my hands, no, I didn't have time. And I was like, I'm going to just grind this thing to make sure that I understand this. Well, what in your programming made you decide that even though I kept giving you more information, more validation, more questions about this that you were like, I'm going to fully ignore you and keep sticking to my position. Now, we could say it's pointless to have a fight with an LLM, but it's pointless to have disagreement with people where we're not actually engaged in the idea of like what brings about change in my thinking, change in their thinking.

10:47And this idea of lowering the temperature isn't a bad idea. Like I probably should have been less mad at the LLM, not that it cares. I think that it could be a good practice. You might be thinking you're getting less mad at the LLM and that might be a waste of time. But to have that conversation, it comes from the idea of like we want to make people better. So we have the tendency to like go beyond the surface layer. We've even talked about people door-to-door salesmen come to our door. And we don't want to like listen to their pitch as much as we want to help them with their pitch, right? And they go on their way. And so that's not necessarily a waste of time, but it would be with an LLM. I think it's taking me up until now to realize that I shouldn't spend my time. I'm not actually improving the LLM by getting it to admit that it's life to me. But we can improve each other. Yeah, but the method that I'm using to get the AI to admit that it's life to me is not something that I would deploy on any human.

11:50Not really. And so there's probably no case to be made for it. And there's times when I get really upset at a customer service agent who's just not hearing me, right? Where I feel like I just want I'm about to cross over on to that edge. And this is where this kind of thing would probably be very helpful. And most of the time I think I just want to get that customer service agent on a new script. This is exactly where we're going to get them on a new script. But right now for everybody not watching it for just listening. Sierra's expression and the bubble over her head is like these geeks need serious help. It's not I don't think that at all. I mean, I do think you need to disagree with your AI. And I use things that are in this field note with AI. But I think some of the points that I was thinking about in the lead up to this podcast and the importance of it is. I have two I have two real things that come to mind around this field note.

12:51How do you find a way to be to disagree that's more indirect and that's going to help people hear you because I think there are two things that I didn't want to miss in this podcast. The one is leaders who have this expectation of their team to be more innovative or that have this expectation on their team to bring up those big ideas that they have. They have to nail these three approaches of indirect disagreement. Because too often I see leaders that have this expectation that their team is going to be really innovative that they're going to be pushing the boundaries that they're going to be thinking strategically. But then they replay these conversations that they've had with their team where they've shut down the ideas or I get to sit in and watch them interact with their team. And they're quick to disagree they're quick to say well here's where you're wrong about that and here's how that doesn't apply to our strategy and here's how I don't know why you would put that idea on the table and it's too forceful. But when they can start to nail that indirect of help me understand how you're thinking about this help me understand how you got to this conclusion.

14:00To help guide them and keep them in that innovative thinking but still give them the steers that they need to stay within the leader's vision go ahead Scott. I wanted to lean in on on something that kind of ties back to what you said at the very beginning so yeah there's one thing if we're in a just a good faith open conversation where we disagree. But a lot of times a leader reading this field note does have their own beliefs they know that this is going to be a moment of disagreement in a meeting but they ultimately do know that they wanted to go the way that they're thinking right so the question is. Then is it that's not an ethical but is it is it advisable to say I'm going to go ahead and say these things tell me what you're thinking was. And even though I'm going to say well I'm still going to I'm still going to go with the decision that I had in my mind now you could be a leader who says I'm 98% here but I don't want to just come in and be like you guys are wrong this is what we're doing. So I really am going to listen right but I think that's really one of the the the deep traction points here which is what is the motive of the leader and is it still good.

15:06To use so you're not crushing people's spirits right to say even though I am going to disagree with you and I'm not going to change my mind but I'm going to use this this indirect method to at least give you a fuller ability to explain it is that's still okay. Maybe I don't know I was thinking about it if I could give you a different example so say you asked your team to plan an event and you know you have them go out they come back to you and the venues that they've looked at are all way out of the budget and you weren't clear up front or they give you all these ideas of here are the ways. We've been in some of our meetings by the way that it's but I'm not using one of our examples anyway you get them to give their ideas of what the event could look like what type of engagement is there is there extracurricular you know activities what kind of dinner are we going to they come back to you and some of the things that they've proposed are just not feasible or they're not in line with really what you hope this event has and how to evoke that I would instead of just saying well what other options do we have.

16:15You could ask a question like what options do we have that fit these parameters or have you explored ones that would give us this feeling at the end that's a way of giving them more of your vision but still giving them autonomy to come back to you with better or ideas that are closer because ultimately if you're going to say I want us to be at a rock climbing gym where we're all you know having the shared learning experience I can't just say well what other ideas do you have that are innovative I have to say. What other ideas do you have that either involve rock climbing or another physical activity where we're learning side by side and getting some of our endorphins pumping if that's the idea that you have in your mind let your team go out and find out what rock climbing gyms there are or what other physical activities we could all engage in that that's the right level of advanced physical activity that our team can probably engage in give them some autonomy if your mind is made up why are you giving the reins to them to plan.

17:15In the first place that's that's sort of what I'm trying to get at with your scenario of if your mind is made up don't waste your team's time but if there is room for them to have autonomy in the planning or in the proposal make sure that your parameters are clear and the question that you ask or the discussion that you have after they propose their options you can give more of your perspective while still preserving their autonomy if you use these examples because if you infuriate them rock climbing is soon going to be on rock throwing very well could be. Okay well thank you very much this is a good one today especially for those that might not have recognized that they come across this way there's a certain dose of awareness that leaders need to get before we can really deploy these kinds of things but and one last thing sorry Mikey I know we're trying to wrap on time I'm going to take us over just for a second our field notes are always applicable in the workplace out of the workplace.

18:15This one I think is huge for how you communicate with your family. Yeah I agree your partner even about where you go to dinner like what other up to be explored other than this place or or what helped you come to that conclusion of this furniture piece versus that one there's so many that our field notes can be helpful personally as well as professionally and this one in particular felt like I'm excited I'm going to think about I'm going to say to my wife what reasoning was in your mind before you put this outfit on. Oh yeah that might that might not go well. Thanks appreciate it by now.