(Dis)respectful Disagreement

I didn’t truly understand the message until I became a manager¹.

Specifically, I know an engineering lead whose game plan for building his team is to hire people who are unlikely to get along by virtue of having different goals and principles. This engineering lead also once credited the “healthy tension” between our teams with certain successes.

It’s impossible to operate effectively without the healthy tension between two groups who respectfully, openly disagree. My case study here is management, but it can be applied to product development, resource planning, relationshops, or any number of things.

I’m careful to say respectfully, and I should describe that. In a respectful disagreement, each person’s response explicitly recognizes the others’ point², even if it rails against the other, and each person feels their advice was understood even if not followed. By contrast, in a disrespectful disagreement, one side feels unimportant and ignored, even if they’re not aggressively belitted.

Now, why am I suddenly realizing this as a manager?

Primarily because I’ve finally come to my own answer in the painful debate swirling in my head for the better part of two years, into which I’ve poured careful thought, consulted a number of resources, listened to my coworkers, and reflected on my own experience. I have wondered whose job it is to manage my employees’ scope and potential for over-work: theirs or mine.

I’ve come to the painful conclusion that it’s theirs.

The reasons are easy to list:

• It’s always better to have the opportunity, and to have the right of first refusal.
• A lack of opportunities is too often perceived as a lack of trust, and – for the part of the population that has never had equal opportunities – can be perceived as something even worse.
• If a person wants to work forty hours per week, sixty, or anywhere in between, it’s their call to make.
• If a person is allowed to reject opportunities, then they’ll tend to keep the work that motivates them more.
• People should be limited by their own choices and skills, not by the system built up around – and sometimes against – them.

As always, though, the reasons are hard to weigh against the other side:

• Employees are afraid to tell their manager “no” or to drop a projet for fear it’ll be interpreted as failure.
• Employees are incentivized to maximize scope, which is easy to evaluate in the performance review process.
• Employees naturally care about their teams and jobs, and many sacrifice their well-being – despite complaining about it – in pursuit of unsustainable goals.
• Employees are discouraged to publicize dropping projects by managers who ask them to invest time looking at alternatives even when the reason given is insufficient time.

The recognition that most of these problems are not inherent to the employee eventually swayed me. Employees do seek work-life balance – I see that in the annual company survey – but sacrifice it to minimize disagreeement with their manager or team – and I see that in the annual survey, too. I remember distinctly an instance while discussing this with my skip where work-life balance was the team’s top issue and one person angrily said “I can’t just not do that work” and I immediately thought “well, that seems like a you problem” but also though “why can’t this experienced, mature leader set effective boundaries?”

I’ve concluded letting the employee manage their own time is the right solution as long as you can establish a relationship between employee and manager that accommodates respectful disagreement – where the employee can set those boundaries and be respected for it.

If we could establish a relationship and community where “no” and other disagreements were always brought and met with respect and care, we might not have those problems. If managers solved the problems their employees brought them rather than ignoring, dismissing, or coaching them through situations where they clearly want help, we might not have that those problems. And if we punished and rewarded people based on the quality of their work rather than its amount, yet again we might not have those problems.

I suppose this is why “Radical Candor” is one of the most-commonly recommended books for me as a junior manager. The ability to disagree in a way that’s respectful and kind is at the basis of making difficult decisions and give tough feedback. I only wish the book were recommended to employees to use on their managers, not just the other way around, because it seems to me respectful disagreement going both ways is the basis of what’s most important to most people: opportunity.

Photo credit for the banner image goes to Storm Writing School.