I know you’re trying to get everyone to step up. I’m worried about overriding Penny’s push pin price at this point. “I hear you that you think we got the price of push pins wrong and that you want Penny to change it. If we apply those principles to the push pin CEO, it might go like this… Use questions more than statements (so you leave a back door).Anchor to an issue that matters to the business.The four rules of speaking truth to power. That way, if your boss really doesn’t like what you’re saying, you leave yourself room to change your tack. Evoke curiosity rather than being assertive. Nor is it the time for assertions or red lines. That way you’re putting the discussion in the context of rules that everyone has agreed to.įourth, disagreeing with the boss is NOT the moment to use your power poses. Third, use the company language of values or principles to couch your comments. It feels like the boss has just humiliated you in front of one of your direct reports, but that’s not how you want to broach the topic. Second, don’t be sloppy with judgment or drama. That way, you’re signalling that this is an issue important enough to justify a little discomfort. In this case, the CEO is on record saying that they need leaders at every level to step up so he can spend less time on the day-to-day and more time figuring out how they’re going to survive Amazon. How could this leader have the difficult conversation with his boss?įirst, when you disagree with your boss, anchor your comments to something that matters to the business. This scenario is a good one to work through. And my guess is that he was feeling crappy about not standing up to the CEO, not backing up his employee, and it was a lot easier to say he was protecting himself from being fired than to admit he just chose not to do the uncomfortable thing. “Really?” You really think that if you politely remind the CEO of a commitment he made…that if you protect your category manager from the inappropriate overturning of her decision…that you’ll get FIRED?” The VP scrunched up his face and said something I’ve heard hundreds of times before, “Oh sure, you think I’m going to say that to the CEO? I might as well start dusting off my resume.” Overriding that decision would send the wrong message.” I suggested that the VP simply say, “We made a call that pricing would sit with the category managers. The CEO had made a commitment to stay out of the weeds, so he was the one who was out of line. I was talking about what the VP could do in this situation. And worse, because the pricing is supposed to be done by the category managers two layers below the CEO, it meant that the VP in the middle was disempowered in front of his direct report. The problem was that every time he changed the price of push pins, he overrode the person whose job it was to set the price. Most great retailers will tell you, “retail is detail.” After a lifetime of fine tuning prices and rearranging displays, sometimes the CEO couldn’t help but meddle. I was helping the CEO get the other leaders to step up so he could get out of the weeds and pay more attention to the big challenges facing his business. I really got a sense of how strong this aversion is when I was working with the top three layers of leaders at a retail chain. Now, even hinting that you don’t agree with what your boss is saying feels impossible, let alone initiating an actual conflict. We’ve learned to tough it out instead of making it better. It’s no surprise that as adults, we let destructive, disorganized, or dishonest bosses go on doing their damage because we fear getting fired. Worse, we learned that when someone in power does something ineffective, insensitive and even immoral, it’s us who should change, not them. Teachers or coaches behaved badly and we were told to, “Try harder and stay out of trouble.” When we complained that the soccer coach was being mean, we got a pat on the head, “Be a good boy.” And so, we learned not to question people in positions of power. Like most of our conflict aversion, our unhealthy relationship with power starts early. Today, I’m taking aim at a fourth source of our conflict avoidance, our unwillingness to question people in power. “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all,” or “Mind your own business!” or “You made him cry,” programmed us not to rock the boat. I’m exploring how the things we were told as children, taught us that conflict was bad. This is the last of a series of posts exploring the causes and impact of our profound conflict aversion.
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