Use the nominal group technique: give everyone five minutes to write two benefits and two risks of a change, then discuss responses anonymously. Only 14% of senior managers say their executive teams feel comfortable disagreeing, so explicitly thank people for painful criticism to show dissent is safe.
Here's how to get honest input from people who won't speak up in your meetings. Say that you announced a process change and you can tell some people are not on board, but nobody's saying a word, so those doubts will surface later, probably as passive-aggressiveness. At your next team meeting, hand everyone a blank sheet of paper and say, we're pausing for 5 minutes. Everybody write down 2 potential benefits of this change and 2 potential risks. Then I'll collect the papers and we'll discuss. That's what's called the nominal group technique. You get a response from every person without putting anybody on the spot. One more step. When you hit the painful criticisms, say, thank you for raising this. Only 14% of senior managers strongly agree that their own executive team is comfortable disagreeing with each other. Prove that disagreeing is safe a few times and people will start saying this stuff out loud.
