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Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You

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Re: Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The bigger the organization, the more muddy the waters. Cryptic territorial fights, all up and down the chain, become a shade coloring a great many decisions. I heard a story recently of a fairly simple decision that put two territorial groups in conflict. It escalated to the person at the split between branches, who made the decision. Which is fine, except that the arguing parties didn't overlap one or two levels…

And the best part was the person making the decision was completely non-technical, and unaware of the actual considerations. Their decision was likely based on as much valid insight as a coin flip. Had a coin flip been agreed upon earlier, not only would the results likely have been the same, but morale would have been better, and costs would have been lowered. Not necessarily advocating for a coin flip approach, jus…

Hah, this was actually my thought when I first heard it.

Anywhere in that entire chain, two equal-power managers could have said "this really isn't a big deal, I'll flip you for it". It would have saved time and money, and probably produced less resentment than the 'intelligent' decision.

We already know the average stock picker is at 'random chance' levels of quality - I wonder how many other parts of corporate life could be replaced with a dartboard?

Re: Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You

#92

But you are a smart and socially conscious human being. You know that you can’t just go to Kara’s desk and tell them “Kara, the icon is wrong.” Kara would get defensive and argue for the the icon. I never understood this logic. How is Kara being offended a smart and socially conscious decision? A better way to handle criticism is to ask for people's opinions and not get defensive. After reading couple of negotiation…

> How is Kara being offended a smart and socially conscious decision?

Well, it did say you are a smart and socially conscious human being, it didn't say anything about your co-worker.

Re: Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You

#93

There's some caveats to all this. The most obvious is that you're right and Kara's wrong. The problem in creative orgs is that it's often hard to tell you apart from Kara. Learning and unlearning are important abilities in a creative setting. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a creative setting. How many of us (in ops) have had to argue with coworkers about the usefulness of configuration management (back when that was becom…

I think the main point is that it's not about being right. You need to pick the right battles to fight, it's not worth ruining workplace relationships when people dig in their heels over a disagreement about something relatively small

Re: Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You

#94

But you are a smart and socially conscious human being. You know that you can’t just go to Kara’s desk and tell them “Kara, the icon is wrong.” Kara would get defensive and argue for the the icon. I never understood this logic. How is Kara being offended a smart and socially conscious decision? A better way to handle criticism is to ask for people's opinions and not get defensive. After reading couple of negotiation…

You can't affect her being offended. All you can do is respond to it. Yes, maybe Kara should be less defensive, but that's not something you have control over; and trying to argue your way into convincing someone to not be offended is only going to make things worse

Re: Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You

#95
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello there! Author of the article here. I love the point you've made. Often there are long term costs in e.g. technical debt. I assumed in this article that the stakes are low (and they are more often than we think) but I have a future article in mind about how to make team decisions when the stakes are high, and it'll be something along the lines of: Have a strong process, and make it the responsibility of one pers…

Hello! It's wonderful that you're joining us here today. I found your article insightful as I'm dealing with a very similar situation at work. I was wondering if I could ask for some further advice. Here's my story: I'm currently working on a multi-faceted project, where I have essentially become responsible for all things UI related. This is fine, considering UI/UX was a decent part of my educational background and…

Test your design vs their design with 5 people [1] and share the results with the team. If the results are in your favor, you've effectively elevated the design decision from this sole person to the greater team at large and are then presenting objective data that anyone in opposition of your design would have to publicly admit to colleagues that their reasoning is arbitrary and not grounded in reality.

As a UX champion on your team, you must bring the user's voice to the table and that data will make it easier for people pulling rank to agree with you in my experience, cause they'll never take the time to test designs as they wouldn't have the skillset for UX research whereas you do (or are learning it). Cheers.

1. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/why-you-only-need-to-test-w...

Re: Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You

#96
post #41

But you are a smart and socially conscious human being. You know that you can’t just go to Kara’s desk and tell them “Kara, the icon is wrong.” Kara would get defensive and argue for the the icon. I never understood this logic. How is Kara being offended a smart and socially conscious decision? A better way to handle criticism is to ask for people's opinions and not get defensive. After reading couple of negotiation…

I've read a bunch of negotiation books as well as conversation books. What the latter heavily emphasized is: Do not ask leading questions What you describe is textbook behavior. People usually will know when you are doing it, and will get defensive. Especially the smarter ones. I look back in all my years and understand a lot of people's reaction to me: Some people have literally shouted at me when adopted the Socrat…

A strategy for this is outlined in the (great, IMO) book "Never Split the Difference": treat the interaction as a negotiation, and adopt a EQ-first approach. The book has some good phrasing hacks and other subtle messaging techniques designed to place both people on the same team, solving a common challenge.

Yes, it can be exhausting if you do this in every interaction. But I've been picking 1 interaction per day and implementing those techniques to significant success.

[edit] Relevant article from the author's site: http://blog.blackswanltd.com/the-edge/the-key-to-disarming-t...

Re: Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You

#97
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read a bunch of negotiation books as well as conversation books. What the latter heavily emphasized is: Do not ask leading questions What you describe is textbook behavior. People usually will know when you are doing it, and will get defensive. Especially the smarter ones. I look back in all my years and understand a lot of people's reaction to me: Some people have literally shouted at me when adopted the Socrat…

A strategy for this is outlined in the (great, IMO) book "Never Split the Difference": treat the interaction as a negotiation, and adopt a EQ-first approach. The book has some good phrasing hacks and other subtle messaging techniques designed to place both people on the same team, solving a common challenge. Yes, it can be exhausting if you do this in every interaction. But I've been picking 1 interaction per day and…

I was debating if I should mention the book, and was worried someone else would.

Of all the negotiation books I've read, it is the best book at explaining the psychological aspects of negotiation. However, the tone and ego of the author is incredibly off putting - especially his continual bashing of the other well known books that are used in MBA curricula. He often makes claims about those books that aren't true and ridicules them (the straws are thick in the book). And then over 80% of what he does advocate is also in those books he criticizes. I usually don't mention the book because I worry that people will read it and have a biased view against all the other good books out there.

As for his "phrasing hacks" - some are great, some less so. I think this is a product of his background - he was an FBI negotiator and most of his negotiations are one-off. He is not going to interact with his counterparts once the negotiation is complete, so he is not aware of the long term consequences. Finding clever ways of asking "How can I do that?" works in the short run, but will often damage relations in the long run - people do wisen up to it. These days I have to deal with someone who keeps asking what the author would call "calibrated questions", like "Yes, but how will I know X?". I'm at the point where I just respond with "Yes that's a good question. How will you know X?". And likewise to all the other questions.

Some of the calibrated questions are really effective. Others are not. I suspect because most of his interactions are one-off, he cannot distinguish.

One of the books I read (Bargaining For Advantage) formalizes this a little: You have two axes and 4 quadrants. One axis is: How much you care about the outcome. The other is: How important is the relationship to you?

The toughest is when both are important. The quadrant where you care about the outcome but not the relationship is easier, but can be challenging too (examples are divorce and negotiating the price in a market). When the relationship is important but the outcome isn't, the advice is to focus on making the other person happy - this can also be the perspective of an employer who wants to hire a good candidate - if the candidate asked for an average salary or less, give him an above average salary. For the final quadrant where neither is important, society usually has protocols that people just follow so that time isn't wasted on negotiating trivialities.

But I agree - there is good stuff in the book. And of all the ones I've read, it is the most "down-to-earth" in terms of putting what you learn into practice.

Re: Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You

#98
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello! It's wonderful that you're joining us here today. I found your article insightful as I'm dealing with a very similar situation at work. I was wondering if I could ask for some further advice. Here's my story: I'm currently working on a multi-faceted project, where I have essentially become responsible for all things UI related. This is fine, considering UI/UX was a decent part of my educational background and…

Test your design vs their design with 5 people [1] and share the results with the team. If the results are in your favor, you've effectively elevated the design decision from this sole person to the greater team at large and are then presenting objective data that anyone in opposition of your design would have to publicly admit to colleagues that their reasoning is arbitrary and not grounded in reality. As a UX champ…

They ignored published best practices (per OP), why do you think they won't also ignore data? "Admit to colleagues" assumes you roped in other managers, do you really think an individual contributor is going to win the political game at that level? Because I've seen what happens at that time; all the other managers nod their heads politely, and then behind closed doors tell the one you were butting head with "You have to reign in your people". All you end up doing is undercutting your entire team's authority, you don't elevate your own above your manager's.

Re: Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You

#99
post #61

I actually absolutely agree with everything in this article; but I did find it amusing that the article is titled "How To Get Your Coworker To Agree With You", and the answer is actually, "Don't." The three sections can be summarized into: 1) Stop the first reaction of trying to do it, 2) Check yourself also, 3) Let go. Again, I actually agree with the author, just thought this was amusing, and may not be what reader…

Agreed. Clickbait title with a promise of results.

The original title doesn't seem like typical clickbait to me though. Literally, the title is inaccurate but does bring in the right audience. I clicked it wanting to solve this issue and was completely turned around by the article.

Ultimately it dis resolve my issue with handling disagreements in a manner that would have taken me much longer to understand so clearly.

Re: Don't Get Your Coworker to Agree with You

#100
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello there! Author of the article here. I love the point you've made. Often there are long term costs in e.g. technical debt. I assumed in this article that the stakes are low (and they are more often than we think) but I have a future article in mind about how to make team decisions when the stakes are high, and it'll be something along the lines of: Have a strong process, and make it the responsibility of one pers…

Hello! It's wonderful that you're joining us here today. I found your article insightful as I'm dealing with a very similar situation at work. I was wondering if I could ask for some further advice. Here's my story: I'm currently working on a multi-faceted project, where I have essentially become responsible for all things UI related. This is fine, considering UI/UX was a decent part of my educational background and…

Hey there! Sorry you're having to deal with this. There's not necessarily one solution or any silver bullet, but there are many things you can try.

The biggest thing I can suggest is to raise your level of thinking from UX to the business metrics. By this I mean, rather than trying to optimize your product for "best UX", try to optimize it for "delivering most value to the customer." Creative people don't like to admit it, but sometimes the creatively optimal thing (good UX/good design/etc) doesn't always imply moving the needle of the business metrics. If you don't believe me, look at how much Amazon sells with their terrible UX. Ultimately the only thing that matters in a business is delivering value to the customer, and if the bad UX doesn't get in the way of that then you can sleep well knowing that your lead's bad UX decision didn't hurt anything.

I've found that thinking in these terms allows me to separate myself and let go of concerns like these. If the poor UX decisions of your manager are having a business impact then you can go find that data and put a dollar amount on it. For example, "I did some A/B tests and we got a 12% lower clickthrough rate with the button there." Your manager may not agree, but at least now you're talking about the customer, not about UX. If you can't produce that data then you still win because the business is unaffected by this mistake and you get to make your lead happy by doing it their way. Winning trust by doing bad UX is still winning trust.

Here's an example-by-story: I was once an engineer tasked with building an automated testing system. Automated tests are easy to understand and so everybody has opinions about how they should work. And so my system's design quickly got bogged down with folks giving the same sort of "i like it better that way" arguments that your lead is giving you. So, rather than engage with any of them, I picked a single battle in the design of my system, something that nobody could argue against, namely that tests should actually be test descriptions, so that the test system can work with declarative data and make decisions about the tests more easily. I showed how that would have a measurable impact on the business (having the test descriptions gives the test system flexibility so we can e.g. filter tests on the fly so that at desk testing times can be kept to a minimum, or easily move tests between BVT and Smoke, or whatever) which sidestepped all of those arguments.

If that doesn't float your boat, I like lostcolony's approach. One possible route of addressing it is to go through the hierarchy. As they mention it can be a tricky approach, you should avoid saying anything negative about your leads or explicitly asking anyone to change their behavior.

You could also try just having an earnest conversation with this person, expressing to them how their behavior makes you feel, and asking them what you should do to gain their trust and the ability to work autonomously. Try to make the conversation not about their behavior, but rather about what actions you can take. "What can I do to take more of these responsibilities on myself?" Then if you hold up your side of the deal, they're more likely to be accommodate you.

It may not be what want to hear, but getting someone else to change their behavior is one of the hardest things you may ever have to do in life and is often impossible. You might have to deal with the fact that this person will always do this. As lostcolony says, you can quit, but I see this as a last resort. You're just going to run into the same problems elsewhere, and it benefits you to learn to deal with the problems where you are.

Good luck!

Jorge

Edit: Looks like sizzle said exactly what I ended up saying but much shorter. And lostcolony's reply to sizzle brings up a good point: You have to present your case delicately, be careful not to make this person look bad, and if they don't respond to hard customer data, maybe it's time to find a team that does.

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