Avoid Useless Conflict & Collaborate: Executive Influence

• If someone disagrees with you, the first instinct should not be to show why they are wrong but to understand why they disagree.

Process

1. Try to bring the conversation into zoom instead of over text. This makes it easier to get an understanding for each other.

2. Approach the discussion with an open mind and understand why they disagree.

3. Repeat back to them their point to make sure you’re on the same page.

4. Weigh the pros and cons, and evaluate what makes sense as a step forward.

5. Consider other potential options that take both sides into account

6. If a stalemate occurs, call it out and bring in a 3rd party like the rest of the team. At this point, I would try to collaborate with the person on a pros & cons doc that describes both options to bring to the team.

7. Face-to-face > Text: If the disagreement is hard to describe or explain over text, or it seems someone is coming on strong with a hot take, try to bring the conversation to Zoom instead of text. This makes it easier to get an understanding for each other.

   1. Say: “That’s a good point (or ‘That’s super interesting’). Since there’s a lot to consider, let’s discuss this more in-depth over Zoom and I can summarize the discussion in the doc for us for afterward.”

8. Open mind: Approach the discussion with an open mind and understand why they disagree.

   1. **Ask: “**So I saw your comment in the doc, but now that we’re on Zoom, would you be willing to explain your suggestion one more time for me?”

9. Repeat and understand: Repeat back to them their point to make sure you’re on the same page.

   1. Ask: “Just making sure I understand your suggestion—what you’re saying is with the approach you’re suggesting we would get X, Y, and Z benefit but have this tradeoff? And you’re thinking it would be worth it because X?”

10. Weigh pros and cons together: Evaluate together what makes sense as a step forward.

    1. **Ask: “**I hear you on your suggestion. So I think it would be a decision between X benefit and Y tradeoff vs B benefit and C tradeoff. Does that line up with how you were thinking about it?”
    2. From there, you can use past experience, the company culture, existing technical decisions for consistency alignment, or future-looking goals to defend your option.
    3. Past experience: “In the past, I’ve tried both of these and found option 1 to work better for these reasons. I’ve tried option 2 but it didn’t end up working for these reasons. What has your experience been?”
    4. Existing technical decisions: “I totally get you on the benefits of option 2; however, since this other area of the code follows this pattern, I think we’d be better off by being consistent with that pattern.”
    5. Future-looking goals: “I get you that scalability is important, and I’d love to put that as a top priority. However, since our org goals are to ship to the customer by September, I think we’d need to go with this approach to meet the deadline.”

11. Find options neither of you are seeing: Consider hidden, 3rd options together that act as a win-win for both sides.

    1. Ask: “Are there any options we aren’t considering that would get us the benefits of both options without the downsides of either one?”

12. Bring in a 3rd party: If a stalemate occurs, call it out and bring in a 3rd party like the rest of the team. At this point, I would try to collaborate with the person on a pros & cons doc that describes both options to bring to the team.

    1. Say: “I get the sense we’ll be going back and forth for a while. Maybe we could bring in someone else to see if there’s something we’re missing or to break the tie.”

Alignment

https://lethain.com/how-to-get-more-headcount

1. Do we agree on the problem to be solved?

   e.g. We’re having too many incidents and it’s impacting user perception and developer productivity.

2. Do we agree on the general approach to solving that problem?

   e.g. We’re increaing end-to-end coverage and rejecting PRs that reduce coverage.