Stop trying to win the debate

One of the problems I see very often on leadership teams is leaders that without trying, without meaning, to shut down conversation, they shut down a conversation because they are too smart for the room.

Very typically, it comes from the CEO, and they state their opinion so strongly that it shuts everybody else down. And great ideas that should get onto the table, that may challenge this leader’s ideas, other ways of looking at it, never come up. I see that happen a lot.

I've worked and coached leaders on solving that before. But I just read a great book I'm going to tell you about. And sometimes, when you learn something new, you read a great book, it helps you to put language around a problem that you didn't have before. And when you put language around that problem, you can do a much better job of solving it.

So let me describe the problem a little bit more. And then I'll tell you about this book and give you a process I recommend, you may want to go read the book. But I'll tell you about that in a minute.

But an example of this is an issue comes up in a meeting. The CEO states their opinion, very strongly. And then says nothing and waits to see if the room reacts. And the room does it because the CEO stated it so strongly, they're afraid to challenge it, because they might look foolish, or the CEO does more than that the CEO states their opinion. And then says something like, does anybody not see this the same way? Or wouldn't you all agree? How do you challenge a leader when they do that? Again, if you challenge them, there's a chance you might look foolish.

So I've seen that before. I've coached on it before.

But here's the book and the language that I think will help you decide whether you have this problem, or other folks on your team have this problem, and how to go about solving it.

So there's a book called "Conversational capacity" was recommended to me by a great sales coach I know named Mike Carroll. So Mike, if you're watching this, thank you. It's written by a guy named Craig Weber. And in the book "Conversational capacity", he talks about a continuum. And you want to be right in the middle of that continuum, the sweet spot, he calls it, to have great conversational capacity.

And on one end of the continuum is something he calls minimizing. Minimizing says you are afraid to speak up in a meeting, or when you do speak up, you minimize it, you say this is probably not important, but, or, you know, we don't really need to solve this, but I've kind of looked at it this way. You shut up, or you minimize what you're saying, which lowers your ability to add real value in the conversation.

So one end is minimizing, the other end of the spectrum is winning.

Winning says your goal in a debate in an argument is to win. It's not to gather more information. It's not to see other perspectives, you are so confident you're right, that your goal is to win. And this is the problem.

When leaders, when CEOs, when their goal was to win, especially someone with that authority as the leader of a group, when their goal is to win when they're on this side of the continuum, what happens is everybody else moves over to this side, and they minimize and where you want to be is in that sweet spot in the middle.

And let's talk about that sweet spot, that ability to have conversational capacity.

It doesn't mean you don't state your opinion, it doesn't mean you state it strongly. It doesn't mean you're not passionate about it, you can have all those things.

But what it means is, you have to give room for other people to share their perspectives. Instead of winning the argument, your goal has to be to gather information, so you and the team can make the right decision. Not so there's consensus, but gathering all the information necessary to make a decision. It's not about winning. So here's the four-step process that Craig Weber in "Conversational capacity" recommends very simple, and I'm giving you this process. So as a leader, you could start practicing it, and maybe you can teach it to others.

So step one, state your clear position. This is not about shutting up. This is about stating your position, stating it in a clear way. It's okay if it's in a forceful way. That's step one, state your position.

Step two, is to explain your thinking. Don't just say this is what I think. I hope you all agree. State your opinion, your position, and then describe. What led you to believe that. That's step two.

Step three is to test your perspective. Testing your perspective is not saying, don't you all agree, that's not a good test. But saying, hey, who sees this differently? I don't need other people to agree with me. I want to know who sees this differently? What am I missing? What do you see that I don't see? Cast your perspective, in a not just using a technique, but with an attitude of truly being curious to where you may have missed things. None of us see everything. Trust me, there are things you're missing, test your perspective. So state, state your clear position, explain your thinking, test your perspective. And now is number three.

And number four, is inquire into other people's perspective. How do you see it? How are you looking at this problem? How would you solve this problem? Now, when you do all those things, again, your goal is not winning, your goal is gathering information to make the right decision.

So it's not about minimizing. It's not about winning.

You got to be in that sweet spot of being able to state your opinion, but being open to other perspectives with the goal, not winning, the goal of gathering all the information, so you can make the right decision.