How to disagree

Many people in my workshops tell me they want to learn how to disagree. Especially with their boss, or other people that are higher up.

It’s easy.  

Just say, “I disagree.”

I’m obviously joking.  You can see learning how to disagree is not actually what they want.

What they want to learn is how to get the other person to agree with them. That’s a whole different thing.

Last week I had an extremely competent woman in my workshop.  No one does her type of work better than she does.  She was very soft-spoken and very respectful of others.  She avoided unpleasant situations and frequently held back saying which she was thinking.  In a group she was especially subdued.

She was at manager level, but despite many attempts, never moved higher in the organization. She had almost given up making it to Director.

Everyone loves her.  She was frustrated.

It was especially tough for her when she disagrees.

The difficulty most people have when they disagree, is maintaining a deep human connection and a feeling of rapport with the other person.

If you lose these 2 things in a disagreement, you’re going to fight (and lose) a battle.

These 2 are the foundation for every great conversation and every great outcome you’ll ever have.

The mistake people make is they start disagreeing when there’s no real connection between them and the other person. I see this all the time in my workshops.  They’re so focused on disagreeing, they’re not focused on staying connected.  Do that and you lose.  Period.

They think the problem is that they’re disagreeing. 

Not true.

The problem isn’t that you’re disagreeing. The problem is that you’ve lost that strong connection with the other person.  If you never had it to begin with, it’s even worse.

Without the connection, you have no power. 

I have been receiving a series of emails from this woman in my workshop saying that learning these skills has had a profound impact on her life. She’s speaking up. She disagreed with her boss and swung him to her point of view. She tells me how exhilarating it is to have these skills and how strong, how powerful she feels.  She is dancing through life.

I predict she will be a Director soon, and then not long after, she’ll be a VP.

Build that deep human connection.

Then talk about anything you want.

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The hardest thing to do is change mind sets

My clients want to learn how to do 1 thing really well:  make what they want HAPPEN. 

Some want to get through to a boss “who doesn’t get it”.  Some want to land a job that takes them to the next level of their career.  Some have aggressive sales goals.  Some want to influence peers who don’t listen.  Some want to build more effective teams.  Some want to inspire.

An example is Allen, a rising star who works in a very large organization.  His new assignment required him to change the way his part of the organization was operating.  Allen had great ideas, even a clear vision of what should happen. 

He summarized why he wanted my help in our first conversation.  He said,

“The HARDEST thing to do is change mind sets.  I’m in a fight every day because I’m doing something the organization’s never done before.  They’re not sold.  Every time I turn the corner I get resistance.  I’m far from winning the hearts and minds of the people I’m talking to.”

Allen’s boss described Allen to me as a “High potential individual who knows he’s right, but can’t get anyone to listen.” 

When I met Allen he was, predictably, frustrated, feeling defeated by his own organization.  He felt they were facing one of the greatest opportunities in the organization’s history but wasting time arguing senseless points.  The only input from senior leadership was, “Work it out.” 

I love working with people like Allen.  People who are high potential, who have great ideas, who are right in their visions … but they come to find out … being right is no guarantee of success. 

They have a lot of people to convince.  They would give anything to get their ideas adopted, get on with it and make change happen a lot faster.

Each situation seems unique, yet what each person is searching for is similar.  They want to know how to control the outcome without controlling the person. 

You don't want to control your boss, yet you want to control the outcome with your boss.  You don’t want to control the people in your life, yet you want to control the outcomes you have in those conversations. 

There's only 1 way to do that and that is to communicate so extremely WELL, to create such PROFOUND understanding, that the other person WANTS the same outcome you do. So much so that they AGREE, COMMIT, and ACT on it.

AGREEMENT is key to commanding the outcome.  The degree of agreement you get DETERMINES the outcome.  If you have 2% agreement, you’ll get 2% of the outcome you want.

It takes 100% agreement to get real COMMITMENT.  And then it takes 100% commitment to get ACTION.

Without agreement, it goes nowhere.

Now here's the kicker. You can't MAKE people agree with you.   I know we’ve all tried a thousand times.  But, like me, you probably found out the hard way that it can’t be done.

Whether or not they agree with you is ENTIRELY up to them.   It's a decision THEY make.  You can't control it and you shouldn't even try.  You'll just frustrate yourself and them.

It's also a sign of respect to let the other person make up their own mind about it.  None of us likes the salesman who hovers over us while we’re trying to decide, or the one pushing us to buy.

Even if you're in a position of command, you can't force them to agree.

You can order them to do something, but if they don't agree, it won't be done well.  And if you try to force it, your relationship will deteriorate.  And they’ll stop doing it the second you stop looking.

I can’t tell you the number of senior executives I’ve coached because commanding people just wasn’t working for them.  Being at the top of the organization is no guarantee others are following you.

So getting agreement is critical.  That’s where communication comes into play.

In those situations where you’re not getting the agreements you need, you may be talking, but you’re not COMMUNICATING, you're either not getting through or you’re debating.

Debating usually just leads to more debating. 

What is the BIGGEST influence on whether or not the other person agrees with you?

HOW you communicate.

The key is to communicate so well, that you remove ALL barriers to agreement and the other person comes to your point of view ON THEIR OWN.

This takes SKILL.  Skill is defined as “a great ability to do something well or with excellence”.

When you do it well, it reduces the amount of time it takes for agreement to happen.  If you use solid communication skills you can achieve agreement in 1 conversation not 10.

So it really comes down to your command of the communication process. When you command THAT, you command agreement, not by forcing the other person, but by communicating SO WELL they can't help but agree with you. 

Allen mastered the communication skills he needed to rise to the challenge facing him.  I tracked Allen’s journey through follow-up calls.  The positive results he created were immediate and then snowballed.  On each phone call he was at a new high of exhilaration.

On one he said,

“It’s amazing how everyone’s responding to me now.  I’ve never gotten such a positive response.  I’m presenting the same ideas, but the conversation is going COMPLETELY differently. They are all agreeing with me.  And when people are talking with me, I can SEE it in their eyes - they find extraordinary communication amazing.  It IS amazing!”

Agreement is only created by outstanding communication.  This kind of communication feels like a real DIALOGUE.   A dialogue is defined as “an interchange and discussion of ideas, especially when open and honest, seeking mutual understanding or harmony, done with the spirit of goodwill.”

When you create rich dialogues, agreements can’t help but happen.

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The source of all frustration

I remember when a Sr. Director of a large organization walked in and announced, “Communication doesn't work.”  He proceeded to tell me about a recent major re-organization he tried to stop, but which went forward despite his best efforts to re-direct it.  The re-org created mass disruption and confusion.  He was definitely frustrated.

The frustration I’m talking about is the kind that involves other people.  I’m a people expert.  As someone who’s coached and delivered workshops to professionals and executives for over 30 years, you can imagine how many stories I've heard, how much frustration has crossed my doorstep for assistance.  Every kind of situation you can imagine. Take all the frustration you've ever experienced, to that add all the frustration you've ever seen around you, and you begin to have a sense of the amount of, and types of, frustration I've heard about and helped with.  Not just limited to work, but spanning the depths of personal life too.

And I'm expected to provide effective help that produces results in a matter of days, not years.

I'm going to tell you 2 guiding principles and 3 areas of focus that have enabled me to help as many people as I have so you can make frustration evaporate from your own life, replaced by the sweet exhilaration of success I’ve seen thousands of times.

The first of these is, that 80% of what is going on has nothing to do with the other person, it's about you and what you're doing. Before you decide I’m being insensitive, harsh, hostile or overbearing, I’d like you to consider what I’m telling you as a workable truth that has the power to liberate you from any frustrating situation.  Because what it means is that you can do something to change it.   And change it dramatically.  The power to transform any situation or any person begins with your ability to assume the cause role in your communications. 

The second principle has to do with how you’re handling the situation.  You’re in a situation where you want to make something happen or to change something.  It involves another person or people. You try to communicate. Your communication fails to get the results you want.  You get frustrated.

That’s a simple description of what’s happening.  The people I help tell me how communication isn’t working and specifically what about the other person is making it difficult, even what is wrong with the other person.  I often hear, “I tried communicating with them and it didn’t work.”

As soon as you think communication isn’t working, you're going to get frustrated.  Do you ever feel that way?  Feel communication doesn’t work?  You’re not alone. 

Most of the people I help are super achievers and, believe me, even they have many moments of feeling that way.  We super achievers are hard on ourselves and don’t accept defeat easily.

The communication skills I’ve spent years developing, coupled with a unique career that gives me a front row seat as the people I help turn even impossible situations around into victories, has provided me with too much evidence to ignore.   I now know that communication always works.

So, what's the disconnect?

People are eager to tell me what’s frustrating them.  I hear the disconnect as I listen to the stories they tell when they first arrive.  I can clearly see that what they're calling communication, isn't. This, by the way, is true whether it’s about their 1-on-1 communication, meetings, or presentations. 

They think they’re communicating (heck, they really believe it), but what they’re actually doing is not communication. They are talking, persuading, convincing, selling, explaining endlessly, debating, arguing, complaining, demanding, asserting, insisting, challenging, defending, justifying, overpowering, drowning them in details, just putting it out there, scolding, lecturing, posturing, pleading, trying to impress, throwing it out and hoping it lands, dropping hints and leaving clues, being indirect, threatening, forcing, getting emotional, and sometimes outright manipulating. And they are correct – these things do not work. Never have, never will.  When someone is doing even one of these other things, you can be sure the one thing they are not doing is causing real communication to happen.

And, let me be completely clear, not one of these other things is communication.  Not even close.  Not anywhere near the right neighborhood.  No hope of landing success with any of them.  They are communication pretenders.

For example, take the Sr. Director, Bill, who was trying to make the re-org go away.  He started out endlessly explaining why it was a bad idea to everyone who would listen.  When that didn’t work he moved to debating, debates he always lost.  Debating was then replaced with pleading and threatening.  Bill was a loyal, valuable high level director, so others put up with it, but it was all useless in getting anyone to change their mind.  He talked himself blue in the face and had given up on “communication”.

I understand this well myself.  I was a debater until I learned how to communicate.  I could never understand how I could win the debate and lose the issue or the relationship.

“Communication” is one of the most frequently used words we have today, and yet I find hardly anyone really knows what true communication is or how to make it happen. The usual definitions of communication that are casually thrown around are woefully inadequate.  You need to operate with a precision definition to achieve success.

Communication, by definition, is 2-way.  By definition, communication consists of complete clarity, unadulterated listening, and perfect understanding.  By definition, communication requires these to be mutual. 

It's your ability to make true communication, real communication, full communication, happen on a two-way basis, not just for you, but for the other person as well, that determines the outcomes you get.

Bill worked for a very large oil company (I guess they’re all very large actually).  They had announced a re-org that affected thousands of individuals.  The announcement came from the top about a week before I met him.  During the workshop Bill realized that, despite all the talking, he had not communicated his thoughts effectively.  Afterward, he went back and, for the first time, he communicated.  It sounds so simple, doesn’t it?  But he wasn’t doing all these other things any more.  Initially he was told it was too late, the decision had already been made and he had to move forward.  However, Bill went ahead and communicated his thoughts, this time he made it real communication, he communicated effectively, powerfully.  He created understanding at a whole new level.  This powerful and profound understanding penetrated and created a breakthrough. 

Within 48 hours senior leadership retracted the re-org announcement.  I’ve never heard of this before, that a re-org org announcement of this magnitude was retracted 2 weeks after it was made.  It was the equivalent of saying, “We were wrong and we’re changing it back.”  Simply on the basis of, “We understand more today than we did yesterday and, in light of this new understanding, we re-evaluated the situation and our decision.”  Senior leadership was grateful to have a more complete picture of the situation.  Everyone was relieved.  Frustration evaporated. 

The facts never changed.  The level of understanding did.  Bill caused it.  A pure, powerful and profound degree of understanding resulted in a new decision.

What does this mean for you?  Focus in on causing truly effective communication to happen the next time you get frustrated with someone.  Don’t get caught into the trap of doing all those other communication pretenders.  Cause real communication.  Cause:

1. Complete clarity

2. Unadulterated listening

3. Perfect understanding

And make it 2-way, mutual.

The people I help come back to tell me magic happens when they do just that.

They got the promotion, conflict evaporated, the other person changed completely, their teenager’s talking to them, their vision is spreading throughout the organization, they closed the $400 million deal.  I could go on.  I'm swimming in client success stories, so nobody could ever get me to believe it doesn't work.

No tricks. No gimmicks. No sales talk. No debating. No arguing. No persuading. Just pure and profound communication.

That’s what I would love to see happen for you.  Change your approach, make a profound level of communication happen and you'll experience the magic. When you can communicate at a profoundly effective level and get what you want, you won't feel frustrated, you'll feel elated.

The power to transform any situation or any person begins with your ability to assume the cause role in your communications. 

Be the cause!

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