Hey Boss! Are You Confrontable?

by Richard Hadden and Bill Catlette

“Ever disagree with your boss?”

“Yeah….once….in my last job.”

That pretty much tells the story.

Most of us know Danish storyteller Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes, in which the vain and self-important emperor buys, from a couple of reprobate tailors, a suit said to be visible only to the most intelligent in his empire. Not wishing to be excluded from this group, none of his subjects will tell the emperor the truth, that he is, in fact, parading about in the altogether.

No one, except, of course, a young boy, who has the courage and character to say what he sees, or rather, doesn’t see.

How many times have you been involved in the following conversation?

“So, what do you want to do tonight?”

“I don’t know. What do you want to do? It doesn’t matter to me – whatever you want to do.”

It’s the classic conversation any couple who’s been married more than six months has on Friday nights after a long hard week at work. The truth is one wants to go pay the bills online before they get a dunning e-notice, and the other wants to make sure that presentation is ready for next week’s meeting. But that sounds so boring that out of consideration for the other, they endure an overpriced meal, and a bad movie.

Afflicted with indigestion from the evening’s activities, they rise in the middle of the night, pay the bills, and prepare the PowerPoint.

A real paradox

What’s happening here is what Dr. Jerry B. Harvey calls The Abilene Paradox.

In his classic workplace film of the same name, Dr. Harvey acquaints us with a rural Texas family of four reasonably intelligent adults who embark on a nearly disastrous trip to Abilene, a pleasant community 53 miles away. All verbally agree that’s a good way to while away a summer’s evening, though it’s clear that Abilene is the last place any of them, including the patriarch who first brought it up, wants to go.

Afraid to challenge his boss, the salesman lost the sale to a competitor

In a bizarre but true tale from a Florida hospital, a doctor was preparing to amputate the big toe of the right foot of a diabetes patient. The attending nurse knew that it was the big toe of the left foot that was slated for removal, but said nothing, while a perfectly good toe was separated from its host foot. According to court documents, the nurse (who could have gotten a job at any number of area hospitals, hurting for RN’s) feared for her job if she challenged the doctor, a man known for being more impressed with himself than were any of his patients or co-workers.

A salesman for a telecom firm, having done his homework on the prospective client, felt strongly that the way to this particular sale was through the prospect’s technology department. His manager knew better, and insisted that it is always the Purchasing Manager who signs the contract. “Spend your time on him,” he advised.

The salesman, afraid to challenge the boss, complied, and lost the sale to a competitor who courted the techies. The boss told him he should have known better.

In perhaps the most tragic and well-known example of the Emperor/Abilene syndrome, history has pretty well established that NASA’s Challenger explosion in January of 1986 could have been avoided had engineers been more assertive, and managers more willing to listen to those they paid to recognize the dangers of cracked O-rings.

And what about you?

When training leaders in Coaching Skills, we always remind participants that in order to be a good coach, they must be coachable. How coachable, how confrontable are you?

Sure, it’s not the easiest thing to do. After all, you’ve worked long and hard to earn your way into management. And you wouldn’t be where you are if you didn’t know more than your subordinates, right?

All those who really believe that are excused immediately from the rest of this article. You’re beyond hope.

Strong leaders are open to challenge. They invite it. And they encourage it, not just with words, but with deeds. They don’t put out the bait of welcoming disagreement, and then close down on the unsuspecting victim like a venus flytrap.

Quite the contrary, in fact. They reward challenges.

Applying this lesson we learned from great leaders, when we’re leading a seminar, we always tell the group that if they hear anything they just don’t buy, we want them to challenge what we say. And since somebody always disagrees with our unconventional message, we always come prepared with a supply of gifts – a copy of Contented Cows>, or maybe an It’s Your People, Stupid! T-shirt for those with the chutzpa to speak their mind.

When you, as a leader, go into a discussion with someone you lead, you know you have to be prepared. But are you also prepared to be surprised?

Far too often we have our agenda, our plans, our own points we want to cover. But we’re much less adept at responding, with integrity, when the employee tells us something we didn’t know.

And we cut ourselves off from valuable information and perspectives, and sometimes lead our troops down a road to certain defeat.

Challenging your boss

How do you challenge your boss? Professionals do it in a way that gets their point across, while respecting the position of the person they’re challenging.

First, show the boss the same respect you would any other professional at work.

Respect how they got their position (unless they talked, slept, or married their way into it, in which case you wouldn’t want to bring that up.)

Recognize that the boss’s resistance to your challenging or disagreeing with them probably comes from a feeling of loss of control. Don’t try to wrestle control away from them. Share it with them toward a positive outcome.

If you turn out to be right, don’t gloat. You may not get the chance to be right the next time.

Be as open to challenge yourself as you wish your boss to be. It’s the only way either of you will learn and grow.

The business world has enough bosses. What we need are more leaders who are willing to be challenged, put on some real clothes, and stay the heck away from Abilene.

Bill Catlette and Richard Hadden, co-authors of Contented Cows Give Better Milk, help clients clobber the competition by having a focused, fired up, and capably led workforce. They deliver powerful conference keynotes and leadership training. They can be reached at 800-940-7006 (+1-904-720-0870 from outside North America), or throught their informative website at http://www.contentedcows.com.

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