Disagree and Commit; defined

I love the book Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

Conflict is not only ok on a team, or even good… It is necessary and required.

These are words from Patrick Lencioni – and I could not agree more.

However, there is healthy and unhealthy conflict. There are many criteria to determine the health of conflict… One of these conflict health criteria is how the team “Disagrees and Commits”.\

If you agree on everything, I guarantee you folks aren’t being authentic… and you likely have a trust problem.

If after conflict folks that engaged in the conflict feel unheard and/or don’t understand why there is a disagreement (aka they aren’t “hearing” others)… I guarantee you have a ticking time bomb of what I call the “I told ya so” or the even worse passive-aggressive “I’m going to show you that you are wrong and you should feel bad for being wrong” disease and it is eroding trust.\

The Cure?

Disagree and Commit

But how do you disagree and commit well / in a healthy manner?

At the end of a “hard conversation” ask everyone to rate the following statement on a 6-point scale:

“I understand the context behind the need of a decision, the necessity of making a decision now, and what we’ve decided. I feel heard (my teammates understand where I stand and why I stand there). I believe I have heard everyone else’s stance as well. I may disagree… even strongly disagree, but I am committed to the decision. I can be committed in a way that is still authentic to who I am and my belief systems, but not be corrosive to teamwork and trust.”

That is about 8 Likert statements in one, but all 8 are necessary in pursuit of a healthy team that can build on a strong foundation of trust and have truly healthy conflict.

Think about the last decision you made where there was a disagreement. Do you Strongly Agree, Agree, Slightly Agree, Slightly Disagree, Disagree, or Strongly Disagree with the FULL statement above?

If you had disagree in your response… if you use non-violent communication to tease apart the judgement into actionable feedback, and you take action on it; you’ll be on the path towards the next decision being more healthy than the last.

Below are a list of ways, I personally, pursue the radical candor and disagree and commit, needed for teams to be great.

(links to deeper explanations coming soon)

• Framing
  • It all starts with how the discussion is framed… I will most often use 3D Decisions.
• Issue, not Person
  • We must make the issues about the issues and not the people… Best way I know to do that is use non-violent communication
• Genuine Commit After
  • Being genuine is a personal value, and to ensure authenticity… I will sometimes employ to the Morpheus state of mind (this is safe enough to try… and even though it does not adhere to my beliefs, my beliefs do not require everyone to believe the same thing) when I strongly disagree and commit

Since writing this, I’ve expanded my exploration into Disagree-and-Commit into two other notes; Disagree and Commit; Committing Defined and Disagree and Commit; When you can’t commit .