Leadership 101: Alignment vs Agreement
How do you handle disagreement with you boss?
You don't always see eye to eye with your boss. What do you do if you disagree? The naive response would be, "I will convince my boss that this approach will not work". Does that really work all the time? Not every single time.
There are two main reasons why leaders share their ideas or their implementation plan.
Agreement to the plan.
Alignment to execute.
The ideal situation would be “Agree + Align”. There are occasions when you will not be convinced of the basic idea. So, how to handle this type of situation?
I have learned from my mentor that one of the key mantra in leadership is Disagree + Commit.
That essentially means you have every right to disagree with my idea, but I'm looking for a commitment to operationalize my plan. Over the last couple of years, I have met with many strong leaders. Different leaders use different ‘means’ to achieve an ‘end’. You are typically groomed early in a certain style of leadership.When you happen to see a new leadership style thanks to a job or role change, the first reaction would be to confront the new style. That impulsive response is not a sound approach.
The one fundamental learning when I went through various leaders is,
"There are several ways to do a certain thing, each approach is optimized to work great for a specific variable".
I would generally start by committing to my leader's idea and also keep him informed of the trade-offs and risks we are taking in this situation. This method would give great confidence to your boss and also makes him think through the alternative approach to see if there is an option to pursue a better route. To oppose from the outset and not commit would be sub-optimal, as it gives the impression that you have a heavy head and that your leader need to burn a lot of energy to get your membership.
The closer you are to the execution field, the more familiar you are with the issues when the idea becomes operational. Your leader would benefit greatly from this information. That's precisely what your boss is after.
In a nutshell, Start by committing to the execution of his ideas, provide your views and give enough space for him to take the ‘informed’ decision should you think the idea needs revisiting.