Encouraging Dissent
Dissent can be presumptuous, ignorant, hostile, disrespectful and just plain rude. Even with the best intentions and under optimal conditions, dissent is uncomfortable both for the dissenter and those on the receiving end. Dissent compounds the management challenges posed by other disagreements since it both confronts and carries power.
Why would any manager tolerate—much less encourage—dissent? Perhaps because dissent is simply indispensable for those who care about making the best possible decisions. Its presence illuminates the tension between the quality of a decision and the power of those making it.
Skilled managers learn to both cultivate dissent and also to contain it. They appreciate that dissent can be unruly and learn not to over-react when it flows outside of “appropriate” channels. Here, I’ll focus on the initial challenge of encouraging that dissent. Managing that dissent deserves an article of its own but I’ll briefly address a few common issues.
Better Decisions. Thoughtful dissent will generally lead to higher quality decisions. In Weird: The Power of Being an Outsider in an Insider World, Olga Khazan describes studies showing:
Teams with dissenting opinions came up with more innovative solutions than the teams in which everyone agreed.
Exposure to dissent can encourage the group to consider alternatives, reexamine their premises, or even just think harder.
Voicing a competing perspective reduces the common tendency to double down on sunk costs.
Even one dissenter can keep groups from making bad decisions.
Challenging assumptions, uncovering hidden costs and identifying risks result in changes to decisions that improve the likelihood that they will accomplish their intended purposes. Dissenters force those presenting to step up their game and either embrace adjustments or explain why the initial course is better.
Organizational culture. Embracing dissent reinforces qualities that most nonprofits value about themselves:
Prioritizing results. Supporting dissent because it improves decisions is evidence that an organization cares about its impact. Embracing the challenges and rigor of dissent is not easy and means subordinating competing values, particularly consensus and collegiality.
Valuing staff. Listening to what team members have to say, processing it and responding are all indicators of respect. Valuing is often demonstrated by what staff are given—fair compensation, supportive HR policies and professional development. Also significant is what staff are encouraged to give of themselves—perspectives, opinions, judgments and predictions.
Engaged and responsive leadership. A culture of dissent requires both staff willing to express it and leaders and managers able to engage with challenge and criticism. This isn’t to be taken for granted. Leaders who embrace dissent are taking the harder, better road on behalf of the work and the staff.
Power. By definition, dissent challenges power while simultaneously asserting the power of the dissenter to do so. To effectively encourage dissent—and to manage it—a manager needs to navigate both aspects of the power dynamics. Some common elements of the power dynamic include:
Influence. The power of a dissenting viewpoint is most apparent when it causes adjustments in or rethinking of a popular idea. Even when the dissent does not prevail, it can still commandeer the agenda and force the group to deal with it.
Managers are naturally reluctant to engage with dissent because it is a challenge to their power. Dissent is an assertion of who gets to ask questions and who has to answer them. This is partly why hierarchically oriented managers and groups can find it particularly difficult to embrace and encourage dissent.
The Group. Dissent doesn’t just challenge the leader, it puts the dissenter at odds with the group. Groups tend to reward those who conform, don’t show each other up, and keep meetings short. Dissenters must resist the seductive power of conformity.
Dysfunction. When organizational dynamics are unhealthy, dissent can take on a disproportionate significance, making it seem more hostile or dangerous than it would in a healthier organization. Boundaries and shared expectations that support constructive dissent may be unclear or entirely missing. This will be most apparent when decision-making processes are unclear, the manager is uncomfortable in their role, the culture values consensus or when the dissent incorporates issues or emotions not explicitly connected to the decision itself. Dissent can also be used as a way to slow things down, obstruct work, and validate positions that may or may not be aligned with group goals.
Voice. The ability to dissent is a reflection of the individual power of the dissenter. A willingness to challenge a leader, a colleague or the group consensus may come easily or have been hard-earned. The bravery and practice it requires from the team member is reinforced when the organizational culture values and nurtures their effort.
Encouraging Dissent. The complex relationship between culture, power and dissent requires managers who want to reap the benefits of dissent to make a concerted effort to foster it:
Ask. If you want folks to dissent, you have to say so. Out loud. Repeatedly. This won’t be enough, but it’s a start.
Model. Show through your own behavior how to dissent constructively. This can be particularly effective when you are on the weaker side of a power differential, as with your manager (or Board), or even with funders. Demonstrating your willingness to accept the risks inherent in dissent will give your verbal encouragements more credibility.
Reward. Those willing to take on the risks of dissent should be rewarded both for their own sakes and to encourage others to follow their lead. These rewards may include recognition, praise, attention and professional opportunities. Of course the real payoff is when the dissent results in adjustments to decisions. Managers should go out of their way to make sure this happens whenever its reasonable to do so.
Create the infrastructure. A solid culture supporting dissent must be grounded in practices and policies that reinforce it. You can ask for, model and reward dissent all day long, but if you have short meetings where new ideas are introduced for immediate resolution and the manager does most of the talking—it’s not going to happen. Consider if your decision-making processes might be improved by:
Requiring multiple proposals to ensure a variety of options are on the table.
Asking team members to identify risks associated with an option can help them to fame concerns that they might not be comfortable expressing as objections.
Sharing information and proposals in advance, to support team members having done some preliminary processing at their own speed.
Separating decision-making from the discussion. This can lower the temperature of the discussion, making it easier for team members to participate while allowing processing time after the discussion so that useful dissent can be thoughtfully incorporated.
Inappropriate Dissent. Each person’s dissent is informed by their own perspectives and experience, unique approach to conflict, orientation towards power, level of confidence, etc. Only rarely will that expression match the way in which a manager would be most comfortable hearing the dissent. As a result, the dissent may feel aggressive, personal, ill-informed, not solution-oriented, etc.
Managers may want to define a line between dissent that is merely uncomfortable and that which is inappropriate, but authorizing only acceptable dissent is unlikely to encourage it. Instead, consider some guidelines can be helpful almost anywhere along the spectrum of dissent:
Don’t take it personally. Maintain as much emotional distance and perspective as you can. Even if the dissent is personal, there is almost never any value to responding as if this is so.
Practice empathy. Remember that dissent that feels uncomfortable to the recipient is often at least as uncomfortable for the dissenter. The better you understand that discomfort the more empathetic—and resonant—your response will be.
Be willing to reconsider expectations about what dissent “should” look like. To what extent are these rooted in privileged orientations towards power, experience and identity? It’s not a coincidence when your sense of appropriate dissent coincides with what feels most comfortable and familiar.
The dissent itself represents engagement for which you can take some satisfaction, even if it’s not exactly what you were hoping for.
Over time, with practice, most people will get more comfortable with dissent. If your primary objective is to encourage it over the long run, it is far more important that your response should affirm the dissent, rather than trying to perfect it—possibly out of existence.
Even one dissenter can keep groups from making bad decisions. Developing a climate supportive of dissent, taking into account organizational values, culture and power dynamics is both extraordinarily valuable and incredibly difficult. Empowering a single dissenter may have somewhat less value, but it’s also substantially easier. Find the right person, cultivate them for this role and then work with them to get better and better at it. Maybe others will follow the example, feeling safe to emulate the dissenting behavior that they witnessed. Maybe not. Either way, you increase the likelihood of better decisions.