Your Opinion Matters, and So Does Everyone Else's. Here's How You Can Find the Right Balance. (2024)

The difference between two opinions is curiosity to understand and appreciate.

Most constructive conversations often fall flat because we lack, despite our intentions, curiosity to explore. Instead, we tend to dig in our heels and over-rely on our expertise and ego, closing our minds to opinions different than our own.

We've all been in a conversation that took a hard left into positional territory. What was meant to be a productive meeting escalated into each person feeling alone on their own island of ideas, beliefs, answers or solutions, a tidal wave feeling of frustration and no resolution in sight.

In our hyper-paced world where leaders are pressured to make every second count, it's more important than ever to spend time fostering relationships not repairing them. In doing so, and finding the sweet spot of appropriate opinion-forward advocacy and curiosity-driven inquiry, opens the door for leaders to spend more time on the stuff that's really important to achieving results:

• creating trust.
• making better decisions.
• building effective collaboration.
• sharing transparent communication.
• increasing psychological safety and commitment.

As leaders rise in the ranks to more senior positions, the issues become more complex and diverse and the reliance of proactively tapping into the knowledge and experience of others becomes paramount. By deepening our awareness of others’ thinking, we can think more clearly and thoroughly limiting the likelihood of mismanaging conflict, creating unnecessary mistakes, or narrowing our field of judgment by jumping to conclusions.

This is about finding the right balance of advocating your view and inquiring into the views of others so that you can discover new opportunities, together. It requires changing your mental models, and if you’re willing to be curious and expose the limitations in your own thinking – the willingness to be wrong – you can create a valuable collective learning space for your team to reach deeper levels of critical thinking.

When we’re communicating from a place ofinquiry, we are curious, open-minded, and genuinely willing to listen -- listening to understand vs. listening to respond. When we’re coming from a place ofadvocacy, we tend to be overly confident and passionate, pre-decided, and grounded in our position -- we’re less willing to accept a perspective or opinion different than our own.

Whether you're a first-time manager or experienced leader, here is a simple guide to help get you started. If it feels clunky the initial few times, it's OK, that's a good indication this is new territory for you. Use your language and make it your own.

1) Verify Information You Heard:

What information did you hear? What assumptions were made to form beliefs or actions to be taken?

Try:"What I heard you say is…”

2) Explain Your Thinking & Describe Information:

For accuracy, describe the information and assumptions used to draw your own conclusions by revealing your thinking and conclusions when taking a position.

Try:“I arrived at [this view/decision] by [information/reasoning/etc]…”

3) Probe Your Thinking:

Question assumptions and conclusions (yours and others).What else might be going on?What information was self-selected and filtered?What information was avoided, not available or considered?

Try:“Is there something I missed or overlooked?”

4) Seek Others’ Views and Encourage Challenge:

We sometimes assume others see the world as we do, thus quickly leaping to conclusions. Our beliefs (mental models) affect the information filtered and what we see and hear.Information selected tends to be reinforcing of embedded beliefs leading to bias.

Try:"What are your views? Do you see things differently?" or "What do you see or hear that I don't?"

Note: Don’t bother asking questions if you’re genuinely not interested in the others’ response (i.e., showing face, being polite, etc.)

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-Bjorn