The most persuasive argument is no argument at all. Quality, speed and accuracy don't need advocates. If the idea is really good, just mentioning it is enough for the team to adopt it. If I think someone should adopt my style, my tool, my configuration, my editor or anything else, the first thing I ask myself is how does it compare to the most important thing that the team needs to advance on? If it's the most important thing, then I'll cajole the team to adopt the idea. A recent example of that for me is a particular way of running integration tests. But if it's not the most important thing, well then I'm just distracting myself and everyone else with another thing to do, and I try to get back to whatever is really important to my own progress.
How to Get Your Teammates to Follow Your Lead
31–40 of 52 posts
Re: How to Get Your Teammates to Follow Your Lead
#32I don't like the term leadership capital because the analogy misses an important aspect: If the change turns out good, the leadership capital of the technical director increases to more than she had before. So she did not really "spend" it, but rather invest/bet it in/on Figlet.
Also, it is not a single value. For different people the technical director has a different amount of leadership capital. If Figlet turns out good for you, it increases. If you don't like Figlet you consider the technical directors capital as lower. So the amount of capital is actually specific to a relationship between two people.
Re: How to Get Your Teammates to Follow Your Lead
#33I don't like the term leadership capital because the analogy misses an important aspect: If the change turns out good, the leadership capital of the technical director increases to more than she had before. So she did not really "spend" it, but rather invest/bet it in/on Figlet. Also, it is not a single value. For different people the technical director has a different amount of leadership capital. If Figlet turns ou…
I was initially taken up with the elegance of the idea, but did a double take after your comment. We haven't really established that trust is transactional...
Re: How to Get Your Teammates to Follow Your Lead
#34Totally missing from the article is any notion that the tool or thing you're trying to push might not actually be a great idea. The assumption seems to be that the author was Right (TM) and all that remained to address was the challenge of getting others to see the one true path. If you're trying to convince others to make a change, and they're pushing back, listen to those concerns and revisit whether or not the cha…
My thoughts exactly. In particular, a lot of the reason for the best process (which is not too different from what the author lays out in this article) is not to enable adoption in the case that the change is a good one, but rather minimizing the damage in the case that it turns out not to be the case. Having a dictatorial leader issue directives that all turn out to be exactly correct is annoying, but not horrible, and probably will NOT actually result in rebellion, as they say. On the other hand, using that method for a decision that turns out to be the wrong one, at least for that team and that project, will maximize the damage. Getting the right process for minimizing the damage of a bad decision is much harder, and much more important, than the relatively simple one of enabling a good decision.
Re: How to Get Your Teammates to Follow Your Lead
#35I don't like the term leadership capital because the analogy misses an important aspect: If the change turns out good, the leadership capital of the technical director increases to more than she had before. So she did not really "spend" it, but rather invest/bet it in/on Figlet. Also, it is not a single value. For different people the technical director has a different amount of leadership capital. If Figlet turns ou…
At the end of the article, the author explains that leaders move slowly, more slowly than they otherwise could, to allow their small changes to pay off before asking for more, thereby earning them more leadership capital. Which I think makes your point.
Perhaps your disagreement is purely around the term capital. You may not realize that, in finance, the term capital implies that it is there to be invested.
Good point about differing levels of trust between individuals, as opposed to groups. It's a nuance the article doesn't really broach.
Re: How to Get Your Teammates to Follow Your Lead
#36An often-overlooked political tool is the one-on-one meeting. If you need to push a difficult decision, speak to decision-makers (this can include teammates) and convince them one by one. When it comes up for a group discussion, you will already have a winning proposal.
Re: How to Get Your Teammates to Follow Your Lead
#37Or... first get the team to acknowledge the problem and agree that a fix is needed. Then have everyone research solutions. Propose your tool while asking what other solutions have been found. As a team, talk about the pros/cons of each option, and facilitate those discussions. Build consensus by listening and understanding what your team has to say. Once you agree on the solution, talk through the configuration quest…
If you have a high degree of confidence in your solution, then this seems like an unnecessary introduction of uncertainty, indicating a lack of leadership. Your team will start having the wrong discussion and invest their time in a fractured way, leading to frustration down the road. Why waste your team's time like this?
OTOH, if you don't trust the solution you have with a high degree of certainty, absolutely gather your team's input.
The corollary is, if you don't already know your team extremely well, how is it that your degree of certainty is high?
Re: How to Get Your Teammates to Follow Your Lead
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
But my co-workers might have strong emotional attachments to answers that I know are wrong. I might have a co-worker who promotes their favorite technology as the answer to all problems. I might already know, from previous battles, that particular people are going to distort the conversation in particular ways. If I'm going to go into a situation without trying to push a particular agenda, I'd have to be willing to l…
Yes and the biggest possible win you can make is to let go off your own "good solution". Beeing humble and dealing with problems later in lieu of beeing always right is correct choice. You have to prevent only catastrophic decisions. If you are working on CRUD web platform most decisions will not be catastrophic. Maybe inconvenient, maybe eat more budget but probably company will not go under because of some technica…
Catastrophic decisions are rarely as bad as they sound. You lose time and resources resolving them, maybe lose some customers, and possibly even data. Yes, this sucks. You also learn a valuable lesson. This makes your team stronger.
Much worse is a series of mediocre decisions that you can live with, but compound over time to slow you down. You never really learn what's going wrong, your team doesn't improve. Give me the former, painful though it may be in the moment.
Re: How to Get Your Teammates to Follow Your Lead
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
But my co-workers might have strong emotional attachments to answers that I know are wrong. I might have a co-worker who promotes their favorite technology as the answer to all problems. I might already know, from previous battles, that particular people are going to distort the conversation in particular ways. If I'm going to go into a situation without trying to push a particular agenda, I'd have to be willing to l…
Yes and the biggest possible win you can make is to let go off your own "good solution". Beeing humble and dealing with problems later in lieu of beeing always right is correct choice. You have to prevent only catastrophic decisions. If you are working on CRUD web platform most decisions will not be catastrophic. Maybe inconvenient, maybe eat more budget but probably company will not go under because of some technica…
Your answer is idealistic in a very limited way. You are suggesting that their is moral value in being humble and accepting the input of other people. I'll point out that it is even more moral to fight for what you know is right, and it is not moral to retreat from the fight simply because it is exhausting or tedious or repetitive or badly managed or the odds are lopsided. Over the last 20 years I've run into people with your attitude many times. I believe I understand your argument -- that sometimes we have to accept outcomes that we disagree with. However, what my life has taught me is that their is no valor in being passive while bad decisions are made. When I'm hired, I've been hired as an experienced professional whose advice is valuable, therefore I have an ethical obligation to fight as hard as I possibly can to be sure what I've learned over the years ends up benefiting the company. That is what I'm paid for. Passive acceptance of bad outcomes is neither ethical nor moral. We each have an obligation to fight as much as we can for what we know to be right. In the professional context, that is what we are being paid for.
As a practical matter, "be humble and accept the input of others" quickly shades over into "be lazy and allow stupid people to dominate the meeting, because letting them dominate the meeting is easier than fighting them." I agree it is easier, but it is unethical to accept money while allowing bad decisions to be made.
Re: How to Get Your Teammates to Follow Your Lead
#40An often-overlooked political tool is the one-on-one meeting. If you need to push a difficult decision, speak to decision-makers (this can include teammates) and convince them one by one. When it comes up for a group discussion, you will already have a winning proposal.
Thank you for saying this. You've managed to condense down a lot of what I was trying to say in "One-on-one meetings are underrated, whereas group meetings waste time"
http://www.smashcompany.com/business/one-on-one-meetings-are...