How To Disagree With Someone More Powerful – 7 Steps To Respectfully Disagree
It is scary to disagree with someone more powerful than you at work. Learning how to disagree without offending, without being disrespectful while still presenting your viewpoint clearly and confidently is huge. People more powerful than you value your opinion when you provide it in the right way. They need your feedback, ideas, and solutions to get better results. Better results help their team and them.
Demonstrating leadership potential is challenging the status quo, it’s demonstrating independent thinking and the courage to voice your opinions and ideas. Learning ways to respectfully disagree at work is vital for your career progression and your ability to increase the value you create at work.
How To Disagree With Someone More Powerful – 7 Steps To Respectfully Disagree
- How to decide WHEN to disagree
- 7 steps to follow to disagree with someone more powerful
- 4 communication actions when voicing your disagreement
To help you learn how to disagree with someone more powerful, without negative repercussions, we are covering when to disagree, how to disagree and how to communicate your disagreement.
Use each of these steps and actions and you will build your confidence and success in how to have a respectful disagreement with your boss or colleagues without causing upset.
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There are times you should absolutely speak up when you disagree and there are other times when speaking up, even if you disagree strongly, is definitely not sensible.
How to decide WHEN to disagree is a very valuable skill.
Use these five thought processes to help you decide when you should voice your disagreement and when to stay quiet.
The Impact
Firstly, think about the impact on the team or business of changing the idea, action or plan currently being discussed. If the impact is big in terms of performance, team culture, direction or goals, and you disagree, then voicing your disagreement is likely to be worth the personal risk of doing so. If the impact is small, then staying quiet is probably the better option.
Business Reasons
Secondly, make sure there are clear business reasons why you disagree with your boss or colleagues. For instance, if you think taking different action will improve the outcome then speak up and tell your boss why you disagree with what they are proposing. If you want to disagree because you personally don’t like the action or you don’t like your boss or are annoyed at them, etc, you should absolutely stay quiet.
Risk versus benefits
Thirdly, always consider the company culture, and the person you might be disagreeing with. What is considered okay and what is not? How good is your relationship with the person? What levels of trust have you developed? How are they likely to react? These all influence when you might disagree, how strongly you will disagree or how far you push to get change and how you go about disagreeing with them. Assess the personal risk of disagreeing compared to the benefit gained for the team and business.
The Risk of Silence
Fourth, consider the risk of not saying something. What will happen in the future, if you don’t disagree now? If you can see big flaws with a plan, and you don’t say anything, will the fact that you could have stopped these issues occurring come back to bite you? Always consider the risk of not disagreeing and compare it with the risk of voicing your disagreement.
What Do Others Think
Fifth, when deciding whether to disagree respectfully at work, find out what others think and feel. Do they agree with your view but are too scared to disagree with someone more powerful than them? Or do they genuinely support what is being proposed? The more people with similar views to yourself, the lower the risk of disagreeing with your boss or disagreeing with someone more powerful than you.
There you have 5 thought process to go through to help you decide if you should disagree or stay quiet. When you have decided to disagree respectfully, then what should you do to disagree without offending.
7 steps to follow to disagree with someone more powerful than you
I use these steps regularly and have used them successfully for many years when disagreeing with those more powerful than me.
1. Agree the Process Before Disagreeing
Firstly, try to get agreement about the most acceptable way to disagree with the person more powerful than you. State “there may be times I will disagree with you – how do you want me to raise these disagreements with you?” This step checks if they are happy with you disagreeing, and effectively gets their permission for you to disagree if you follow their guidelines.
As a general point, it is always much safer to disagree with someone more powerful than you in private rather than publicly – for example in a meeting. This is less threatening, reduces undermining and the confrontational aspect of disagreeing with them.
2. Ask Permission to Disagree
Secondly, when you want to disagree with the idea, action, or plan, ask permission to disagree. Ask “I have a different viewpoint, would you mind me sharing it with you?” or something similar. Asking permission gives them power, reduces the threat posed, and puts them in listening mode.
3. Restate Their Position To Disagree Respectfully
The third step when disagreeing, is restating their original idea, action, or plan. Taking this step demonstrates that you have understood and considered their perspective. It is good to reiterate the plus points or the parts you agree.
4. Explain the Purpose Of Disagreeing
Fourth, explain the purpose of your disagreement with them. Connect your disagreement to shared goals such as reaching team targets or overcoming a pressing business challenge. By stating why you are disagreeing, you reconfirm the business reasons behind the action. This step demonstrates your focus on indirectly helping the person you are disagreeing with and quashes fears of a personal motive behind the disagreement.
5. Present a Reasoned Argument
Fifth when disagreeing is presenting a reasoned argument, backed with examples, insights and facts. Everyone has an opinion. If you are taking the risk to disagree with someone more powerful than you, make sure you have a clear reasoned argument with strong business benefits. This demonstrates your professionalism and competence as well as increasing the chances they will listen and change their mind.
6. Invite Their Input
Sixth, after presenting your agreement, invite their input and feedback. This is a great step as it gives them power, demonstrates you value their input and you respect their greater authority. Listen carefully to what they say. You then need to decide how to respond. Don’t reverse your disagreement at the first sign of resistance to change. Do work towards a sensible compromise where this serves the team and business.
7. Acknowledge Their Position
The seventh and final step when voicing your disagreement is clearly acknowledging their position of power. Statements like “that is my view, but the final decision is yours” or “at the end of the day it is your choice or decision” are great ways to confirm you respect them and their position.
So there you have 7 steps to disagree with your colleagues or boss. As always, flex each of these steps to the person and situation you are faced with when you want to disagree with someone more powerful than you. Remember, stating your disagreement in the right way is very valuable for the team and business. Positive conflict, handled in the right way often leads to better solutions and outcomes. Plus, you need to practice voicing your opinion, ideas, and solutions to stand out from the crowd and progress your career.
Knowing the steps to follow is vital when disagreeing respectfully at work with colleagues or those more powerful than you. Just as important is how you manage yourself when communicating your disagreement.
4 important communication actions when voicing your disagreement
Be Mentally Positive
Firstly when disagreeing, get yourself mentally in a positive space before you voice your disagreement. To be effective when disagreeing, you need to be confident and express your conviction in what you are saying. If you don’t believe, then why should anyone else believe?
Alongside confidence, display humbleness and calmness. Both will help you minimise negative reactions in the other person. A great way to do both is to mentally keep in mind their position, your respect for them and the value you will be adding to the solution, action, or plan by voicing your concerns, ideas, and perspective. When disagreeing, don’t think in terms of your approach being the best. Think in terms of your approach being a valuable approach, one that might save time, money, resources etc for the team and company. Keep yourself mentally humble and calm and be clear about why you are speaking up and disagreeing to maintain your confidence.
Manage Your Non-verbal Communication
Secondly when disagreeing, to minimize negative reactions and maximise the chances the other person will listen to you, pay attention to your tone of voice, pace of voice and your body language. You want to keep your non-verbal communication respectful and neutral. You cannot afford to be aggressive, angry, overly excited, negative, or overly emotional when communicating. Remaining calm, considered and diplomatic in how you communicate will encourage the same emotions and responses in the other person.
Choose Your Words Carefully
Thirdly when disagreeing, the words you chose when communicating your disagreement are important. Do not trash their ideas or solutions. Do not criticise or speak negatively of what they are supporting. Rather than say “I don’t think that is going to work” use “I think doing x, y and z should increase the chances of a better outcome”. Use positive phrasing. Keep your language factual and evidence based where you can. Don’t use adjectives or keep your use of them down. Don’t state “I have an amazing idea” say “Taking x step should work better because…” Aim to keep the words and phrases you use neutral.
Show Your Respect
Fourth, when disagreeing, show your respect for the other person and what they offer. Acknowledge the merits of their idea, action, or plan. You could list them and then say “and to further build your solution, we could add …” or “to make your solution even better, what about doing …” It is rare that those more powerful than you, like your boss, will put forward rubbish ideas, suggestions or plans. Acknowledge the good point while disagreeing with the weaker points. Always approach with the aim of helping them improve the outcome.
in summary
It is scary to disagree with someone more powerful than you at work. How to disagree with your boss in the right situations creates a lot of value for the business and demonstrates your leadership abilities.
Disagreeing with others can be perceived as a challenge, as undermining or as a threat. You want to avoid all of these responses through the steps you take when disagreeing and through how you communicate your disagreement.
To recap, to disagree with someone more powerful, without negative repercussions, we have been through:
- How to decide WHEN to disagree
- 7 steps to follow to disagree with someone more powerful
- 4 communication actions when voicing your disagreement
If you have any questions on “How To Disagree With Someone More Powerful – 7 Steps To Respectfully Disagree” please email me at support@enhance.training and I will get back to you.
In my experience, people more powerful appreciate their team members disagreeing with them PROVIDING they disagree carefully, respectfully and diplomatically with achieving business goals firmly in mind.
By disagreeing, you ask the other person to strengthen their idea, solution, action or goal or providing them with an alternative option. This process often results in a better solution overall which is good for everyone and the business. Disagreeing is part of business life so learning how to do it well is very much in your personal interests.