When a direct challenge is simply aggressive

This HBR article rightly points out that a healthy level of disagreement at work is vital for performance.

https://hbr.org/2018/01/why-we-should-be-disagreeing-more-at-work

After all, it is through good debating culture that any existing cognitive diversity in teams can make an impact.

Otherwise, what is the point of having a diverse range of people, if no one is willing to challenge even small consensus? We would waste most of our cognitive diversity.

However, in my opinion, the article fails to clearly articulate one important point: Challenging someone directly (as is desired in many organizations) is simply perceived as aggressive if there is no personal care for the other person.

And this really seems to be the magic sauce that Kim Scott has written about in her great book ‘Radical Candor’. (https://lnkd.in/fyjUC2E).

It’s only when we make an effort to care personally about the other person (i.e. show empathy and acceptance towards their position) that a direct challenge is likely to land well.

Otherwise, we can’t be surprised about an almost inevitable flight/flight/freeze response, when we directly challenge someone who we don’t have a high level of trust with.

For Leader Coaches this has an important implication: We want to benefit our team members with clear and non-judgemental observations that are an expression of our curiosity towards their situation. We add value by being direct and factual this way. However, all this is wasted if we failed to notice a lack of rapport and trust in our relationships.

Simply put, the other person feeling cared for is a pre-condition to our direct challenge being effective and being met with a constructive dialogue. This reinforces again how important it is to spend the up-front time to do that. Stephen Covey simply put it best when he summarized it by saying that ‘building trust increases speed and lowers cost’.

-Maik