Small Business Entrepreneur Blog

If you are lucky enough (I know I am and I will explain you why) then your employees will sometimes challenge you with very different opinions from yours. I’m sure it happen to you too, at the last product release, marketing message or when deciding what’s best for your company. But first, why should you feel lucky if your employees don’t always agree to do exactly what you want the way you want? After all, you are their supreme ruler right?

Premises

Ok, let’s say you are working on a new product and you need to decide what features should be in. I will start by assuming you are knowledgeable enough to lay down the features of the new product and you probably have a reasonable idea about what’s needed to make it a successful one. So what do you do? You write down what the product is about, list some features, maybe do some research upfront and here you go, you set up a meeting with your employees to let them know the plan and what they need to do to create the product.

Meeting starts. Probably for the first 10 minutes nobody says anything, they just listen to what you say. Then the first questions appear and together with them (if you are lucky enough) the first sign of opposition – some of the guys will tell you are dead wrong. First reaction? You will get upset. In fact, you are so damn sure about what needs to be done that you feel things are so obvious and everybody will agree from the beginning and all opposition is just because your employees don’t know what they are talking about.

Things will heat up. Maybe someone will raise the voice. Your blood pressure is going up. Who are they to challenge you? Why the 1 hour meeting turns into a 3 hours meeting and nothing is decided? Why does everybody is convinced they are right and everybody else is wrong?

Why is it a good sign that your employees don’t always agree with you (and you are lucky)

• It means you created a working environment where your employees feel free to express their opinions. I’m going to argument this with a question: what would you prefer having your employees executing your decisions (good or bad) without feedback or brainstorm on ideas?
• It means your employees speak up based on their best knowledge. And that’s good because even if you are in a leading position you might never have as much knowledge, experience and skills as the sum of your employees.
• It means your employees are well committed to bring value to your business. Actually if you don’t get feedback and opposition should be an alarming sign: nobody cares enough to make things better or to take responsibility.
• Having a different opinion is way different from doing things wrong and not executing duties. As long as stuff gets done the right way and everybody does what is supposed to do it means everybody does his job.
• You might actually be dead wrong and not knowing it. Yes, you, the absolute ruler, might overlook things.

But what might get wrong? Lots of things.

• People might get angry and stressed. Remember I told you that the product features seem to be so obvious that is hard to accept your employees might have a different opinion? Well, their experience, knowledge and skills tells them with the same emphasis that you are wrong and they are right. They get angry and stressed the same way you do and unlike you, employees fear repercussions. What if you fire them or don’t give them the raise they deserve because they told you are wrong? And what happens if your employees are angry and stressed? Their productivity drops. And you don’t want this.
• You might prevent your employees from expressing their knowledgeable thoughts in the future. It happen to me when I was employed. I just wanted the meeting to finish and to do whatever the boss wanted me to do just to get at the end of the day. I’m quite sure it happens to all employees at some point if you get out of control. And you don’t want this.
• Burn a lot of time with no constructive results. Don’t you hate when it takes you 3 hours and nothing gets decided in the end? Or nothing new and constructive gets added to the product? You need to schedule another meeting and burn some more time. That’s expensive because you keep a lot of people from actually doing something. And you don’t want this.
• Confusing decisions that might slow down the creation of the product or lead it in the wrong direction. This usually happens when you fail to make clear conclusions or when your arguments don’t convince. Employees will leave the meeting without a clear “What needs to be done” vision and come back for more details or even do things wrongly because they understood things wrongly. And you don’t want this.
• Lose employees commitment due to low acceptance or misunderstanding of the product vision. Ok, now, what will happen to some employees is that if you fail to present your vision with strong arguments they will still not agree, but go ahead and implement stuff without truly believing is “What needs to be done”. And you know what happens when you don’t believe that what you do is good: you work slow and don’t really show interest in doing it. And you don’t want this.

Through my professional experience, being an employee myself or an entrepreneur I got to deal with being in an environment that permitted or even encouraged different opinions to an environment based on despotic management. It doesn’t make me an expert in meetings management or decision enforcing, but what I can do right now is to lay down my own observed rules in mitigating different opinions from up to bottom.

Golden rules when your employees don’t agree with you

Prepare the meeting like you’re doing it for a group of investors

Are the investors going to be convinced and give you some money? Have you made your everything to preset things to the best of your abilities? Your employees are the first ones that will have to buy into your idea. Whatever you do, slideshow presentations, executive summaries, features lists, expected outcome, market opportunities, all should be sold to your employees first.

Deal with anger/stress and keep the meeting at reasonable levels

You shouldn’t forget who is leading the meeting and what is the scope of the meeting. After introducing the product concepts, state a clear list of achievable for the meeting, what should be the output: a list of features, a specification, whatever it is. When things are heating up let people know through your own attitude that opinions, language and deliberations should be constructive.

Never rise your voice (hard to do if things are heating up)

If you’re raising the voice it will just stress people more. Nobody wants the boss yelling at them and sometimes your employees will yell more just to impose their view. It’s going nowhere.

Never say “Because I say so”

If you do, it means you run out of valid arguments and just use your position to impose decisions. It stops employees from expressing their knowledge. Of course that in the end, employees will have to do whatever you are setting as their duty, but just don’t say it as an argument.

Ask for constructive feedback

Whenever someone has a point that is not obvious, ask for argumentation. A list of examples, market research or previous experience might clear up things, steer the product in a better direction or show flaws in the original vision.

Write down opinions and points of view

Sometimes some opinions seem out of space, but they might prove valuable later on when product is being created. Maybe a feature might not look important now, but will differentiate your product later. Don’t let these ideas being washed away in the heat of the discussion.

Don’t let the meeting slip up

It might take hours to let everybody speak on every piece of information. Meeting direction might slip – usually focusing on details and missing the main points. Whenever you feel this is happening ask for resolutions and decision making.

Meeting minutes

Meeting minutes are a must in more ways: everybody has a clear list of things to do and second if they got confused at some point they can check with the minutes if they got it right and come back if they didn’t.

Don’t forget to thank everybody for the contribution at the meeting

I know it sounds a little cheesy but it helps people de-stress and give them the feeling that they accomplished something.

Never ever take things personally

If your employees have the courage to not agree with you it’s not probably because they have something with you personally. They just think at what is best for the company.