MBA1257 Managing Disagreements in Your Team + Free Ride Friday!

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It's our way to say thanks for showing us some love on itunes. All right, let's jump into today's episode. Heyo. Welcome to the $100 MBA Show. Real business challenges solved every day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teach Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, the Complete Business Training and Community online. And in today's lesson you will learn how to manage disagreements in your team. Many people get worried or get even frustrated when they have team meetings and discussions and there's disagreement amongst teammates. I say disagreements are great for your team if it's managed properly, if everybody saw everything eye to eye, there would be no innovation in your business. When people disagree, when people go back and forth with ideas, that's when we actually move the needle. That's when great ideas get born. But your job as the leaders, to make sure that these disagreements are managed properly so they're respectful and they're productive, that they don't go on forever. And at some point, a decision needs to be made and the whole team needs to be on board. We get into how to implement all of that in today's lesson. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Disagreements in a meeting can often sound like fighting, but you can disagree without being in a battle. In fact, I believe disagreements are very healthy. Having differences of opinion in your business means that you didn't hire a stock standard person. You hired different types of people with different perspectives, from different backgrounds, and that's great. That means you're going to have an informed team, a team that's going to give you a global perspective. We often have team meetings with our software company, Webinar Ninja, and a lot of the times there are disagreements, but it's all out of love. It's all out of really caring about the product and caring about our users. It's about passion. It's about people saying, hey, I really believe in this idea and I really care, and I want to see my idea be communicated and be heard. And that's really what you need to understand as a leader of your company. That's what everybody's kind of trying to say, and sometimes you're going to have to say it for them. Often when we have a big discussion and maybe some disagreement in that discussion, at the end of the meeting, I will say, hey, we had some disagreements today and that's a good thing. That means that people care, people are passionate, and it's all coming from a good place. I also always say, as long as we're respectful with each other when we disagree and allow everybody to voice their opinion in the time allotted, then we're all good to go. We're all good. But you also need to communicate that, hey, at the end of the day, the result of the disagreement, at the end of the day, you need to make a decision. And whatever that decision is, which way we're going to go. There's no winners or losers. We're all going to back that decision and go forward and try our best. Even if it wasn't our decision or our opinion and often me, the leader of the company, the owner of the company, has to take that position and say, hey, this is not my choice. This is what the team believes that we should do. I'm going to let them take that one. I'm going to let them go with that, because, hey, they have more experience than that. It's not my choice, but I'm going to back it. I'm going to do the things I need to do to support it. And everybody else is on the same page. When it comes to disagreements, you really need to make sure that a few things happen. Number one, people have a chance to voice their opinion. Now, when I say that there's going to be more vocal people on your team than others. So you're going to have to allow the people that are not vocal to have an opportunity. They're not going to force themselves into the conversation. You're going to have to give them, you know, a prompt. You're going to say, hey, what do you think about this, Jane? What do you think about this, Hector? They're going to be quiet in that meeting. So you got to make sure that their opinion is heard so they don't feel like they're being rolled over. You can't expect everybody to pipe up. You're going to have a few people in your team that are more than happy to pipe up and voice their opinion, but there are going to be plenty of people that are not. So you're going to have to allow the time for other people to actually voice their opinion about something. They might say, hey, I'm cool with whatever. That's fine. You can move on with the next person. Obviously, if they say, I'm cool with whatever, every single time you have a meeting, you got to make sure you pull that out of them and say, hey, you can't say that every time. We want to really know your opinion. Now, you're going to have dominant characters in your team, and you got to make sure those dominant characters don't by mistake dominate the conversation. Your job as a leader or the person that's leading that meeting is to make sure it's a fair argument, it's a fair discussion, and at the end of the day, somebody needs to be responsible of a decision. So, for example, I had a meeting just last night with our development team, and we were discussing a new implementation to our cancellation process. And our designer, UX UI designer Arina, was presenting her designs, and we were commenting and we were actually giving some feedback, and we had some disagreements on some points, but at the end of the meeting, I said, hey, these are the things that are important to me. These are the things that are important to this person on the team. It's your decision arena, the way you take that feedback and the way you present the new version of the design. At the end of the day, we're going to roll with her decision and she's going to consider everything that we've said. She may not follow every piece of advice or every piece of suggestion, and that's totally fine because it's her decision to make. Sometimes it's going to be my decision to make or the team leader's decision to make. But you as the leader have to assign who is the person that's going to make the final decision. And you have to state, hey, whatever this person decides, we're going to roll with because this is their area of responsibility and we want to make sure they have ownership over it. Now, the reason we do this is because you want to make sure everybody has an opportunity to make a decision or to be responsible of a decision. One, because you may feel a little bit disempowered of every time. You just have to follow orders and you don't get to make your own decisions at any time. So it's nice from time to time to have that power, to have that autonomy. But also the flip side, it forces people that are just sitting on the sidelines to be a participant and to take ownership and say, okay, I have to make a decision. I have to pay attention to this discussion. I have to weigh out my options and make a decision even when it's difficult for me. I mean, you've hired people on your team to be responsible and that's what you need to expect from them. Now I want to share a few things that have worked for me that diffuses some, maybe high tensions in a meeting when there's disagreement. Sometimes people get really riled up about the way they feel about something and it can get a little hostile. Not super crazy, but a little bit outside the comfort zone. And I like to break it up with just a simple smile on the call. Like if I'm on a video call or an in person meeting, smiling can ease it up a little bit. Can say, okay, this is not that serious, I should calm down. The person gets the message. I like to also break it up with humor. And that's kind of my job as the leader is to kind of calm things down when things get kind of heated. And I could do something simple, something silly like just maybe say something In a silly way, like, I believe we should do this, and I'll just sing something out, you know? And I know that sounds really corny and cheesy, but it breaks the tension in the moment. And if you get a couple laughs and a couple of giggles, that's great. And then you can reset and say, all right, guys, let's just reset for a second. I know that everybody has an opinion and feels strongly about this, and it reminds people to say, hey, we're all on the same team here. We're all trying to do the same thing, but we're all looking at different ways to do it. I also like to send some messages, you know, whether it's using Basecamp or, you know, project management software or with Slack or just to send out an email to your team after a meeting and say, hey, that was a great discussion. It got me pumped. Thank you so much for your, you know, feedback. Even if it was a little bit heated, it shows that you are happy with the fact that they're participating. And if it got a little bit too heated, you could make a little joke and say, hey, next time, let's try to do this without boxing gloves on and just say, let's hug it out, guys. And it is totally fine. And people just realize, hey, this person knows what's going on, has their finger on the pulse, and is making an effort to, you know, make sure that the team feels heard, included, and also comfortable. Disagreements are going to happen if you have a new hire. This person's probably not going to speak up that often, but as your team starts to grow together and get more comfortable, after the first year or so, they're gonna start disagreeing and start voicing their opinion. You get a different group of people in the room, it's gonna happen. And that's totally fine. It's human nature, and it's good for business. You just have to be able to regulate it, manage it, and smooth things over when it gets a little bit too heated. I do want to say that obviously, obviously, obviously. We all have to be respectful with each other. You know, no foul language towards each other. You know, in terms of, like, cursing somebody out, of course we shouldn't cut off each other when we speak, and if we do, we apologize. We don't shut down people's ideas. Everything needs to be respectful. And I even say it has to be nice, Sue. You have to be nice to somebody. You can't just be mean, even if it's the truth. We work with human beings, not robots. Right? We're working with feelings here. So I say be nice to each other. And I'm lucky enough to have a team that understands that. And I think that some of that comes from the way I try to lead. I can't take total credit for that because I don't run this company alone. I have Nicole, who's my co founder. I have other team leads. But the point here is that the idea of respect has to be important, has to be a priority. And that starts with you and the way you speak and the way you treat everybody in those meetings and in your team in general.

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Wrap up today's lesson, you will have conflict, you will have disagreements. You will have people that don't agree with each other. In your business, whether it's in a meeting, whether it's offline, whether it's just in general, not everybody's gonna see eye to eye. And that's totally fine because you're gonna get different types of customers and you wanna make sure you get different perspectives and you're making informed decisions based on those different perspectives. As long as you're respectful, as long as you're all looking to achieve the same thing, you still have the same prize. You're all focused on the same goal, serving your customers. You're good to go. Your job as a leader is, is to make sure that you reinforce respect, reinforce being fair and making sure that you have the ground rules set and they're enforced on a regular basis. Guys that Wraps up today's lesson. But today's episode's not over because it's Free Ride Friday. I gotta give away a lifetime membership to ezcourse. Let's see who won this week's free ride. And the winner is. Chard Hsns. There's literally no vowels in this handle on iTunes. It's CHRD HSNs. That's the free Ride Friday winner of this week. Let's see what they said on itunes. All about that action boss. Five stars. Chowing through these episodes right now. So easy to digest. I listen to podcasts all the time. They usually just regurgitate information. And I can honestly say I'm only a few podcast episodes in, and I've already learned a lot of new information that I'm going to put into action right away. Superb. Well, thank you so much, Chard hsns. You are a Free out of Friday winner. Your mission is to email me at omar00mba.net so I can hook you up with a free ride. If you're listening and you want to win a free ride, just leave us an itunes rating and a review and you enter our weekly random draw. It's that simple. Listen in on Friday to see if you won. All right, that wraps up today's episode. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. In a lot of ways, I see being the leader of your company as a coach of a team, you are hiring a bunch of professionals to do a job. You have to motivate them, you have to guide them, but you also have to make sure that it's civil and that people get along. And it's a good place to work. So think of it as being a coach of a team. Sometimes that helps put some perspective to your job. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll check you on Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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