No Objections Does not Mean Everyone Agrees With You

We’ve all been in those meetings where you present an idea for consideration, there’s a couple of comments, but largely an awkward silence. 

You know that there are things being left unsaid. 

It could be because people are just tired, or they could be uncomfortable discussing the topic publicly, or it could be that your preferred management style is ‘crushing dissent’. 

Either way, you have two options.  You can either say ‘Great, glad everyone’s agreed’ and move onto the next thing, or you can choose to pause and dig deeper.

That’s the subject of a recent piece by Candost Dagdeviren, a software engineering team lead at Jimdo.  

It’s a good reminder that when those silences happen, we should resist the temptation to move on, and do the work to find out what our teams really think.

This may involve some of the following:

• Asking clarifying questions: if you suspect there are questions that aren’t being voiced about a part of your proposal, try asking them yourself to get the conversation moving. 

• Moderating the discussion: as the conversation (hopefully) starts to move, it’s your responsibility to be proactive and make sure it’s inclusive.  The louder voices shouldn’t drown out others.

• Following up privately: some people won’t be comfortable talking publicly. This may be exacerbated by power dynamics in the room and/or if the issue is particularly contentious.  If you think someone has something to give but seems reticent, rather than calling them out in the room, consider approaching them privately afterwards for their view. 

• Changing your decision-making style: this whole piece assumes that getting everyone to agree and achieving consensus is a good thing.  Of course, it is, but sometimes the path to getting there can be so long and tortuous that it compromises the broader objective of achieving an outcome.  That’s not to say you should move to directly issuing commands (don’t do this) but you should be able to resort to a ‘disagree and commit’ process where you acknowledge and respect any objections, explain your decision, but make a choice not to wait for consensus on a specific issue in order to move forward.