A $40 million MSP owner realized his team never pushes back on his ideas, so decisions go unexamined and nothing gets done. The fix: ask for opinions before you give yours. Patrick Lencioni's work shows teams need real conflict to actually align.
In that space where we kind of were the loudest voice in the room, right? And so a lot of times what I see— I was just having a conversation with a $40 million MSP owner and he's like, yeah, I think people seem to always like agree with me. And so nobody challenges me. And then it's like, are we doing the right thing? Or things don't get done. And so it's like, hey, you're the loudest voice. And so if you say, hey, here's my opinion, and then you ask people to disagree with you, they're probably not going to do that, right? Like collect opinions first, because if you give yours first, then everybody's going to tend to Be like, yeah, boss, that sounds great. And then they're going to go talk about it at the water cooler later and be like, that's the dumbest idea I've ever heard.
And, you know, Lencini and Five Dysfunctions of a Team, The Advantage, all of that sort of stuff. And they talk about where you have to have that conflict in order to— that respectful conflict in order to get buy-in, in order to be aligned going forward.
