Edmonton Leadership Coaching and the Art of Agreeing: Disarm Difficult People
My name is Adam Melnyk, leadership coach and owner of Seeding the Lead, and today I’m going to teach you all about the art of agreeing.
One of my biggest pet peeves is the fact that leaders refuse to agree with people. Usually this comes from a place of ego—it could be stress, it could be an agenda, it doesn’t really matter. The crux of the issue is that leaders feel like they need to know it all, that they understand the issue better than somebody else, and they feel they don’t need to agree with the other person because their opinion is the only opinion that matters, and I find that incredibly frustrating.
Believe What People Tell You
For example, when I worked as an employee, I remember going to my manager and saying, “I feel incredibly isolated here at work; I just don’t feel as connected with the people around me or the job that I’m doing.” My manager said to me, “How could that be? You can’t be isolated—we have team events every week where you’re always talking to your team members. That’s just not a thing that I’m seeing.” I became incredibly frustrated in that moment because she simply wasn’t listening to me. She didn’t agree with me on anything, and ultimately we felt—or I felt—that we’re on opposite sides of the ballpark. I didn’t feel like I could come to her with my problems, and ultimately I was taught through that interaction: don’t come to my manager with problems, don’t talk to my leadership, they’re not going to help you.
That was incredibly frustrating, because as a leader your job is to build bridges, to point out the similarities, to understand the other person’s points of view, help them come to the table, and work with you to solve the conflict. Your job as a leader is to build the bridge—extend the olive branch to the other person—and the easiest way to do that is simply to agree. Just agree. It doesn’t matter what you agree on, as long as it’s something that you agree on.
Find a Middle Ground with Others
For example, I remember working with a lawyer, and he said to me that oftentimes he has a witness on the stand who can be quite cantankerous, frustrating to work with, and is disagreeing with this lawyer all the time. I remember talking to this lawyer and asking, “Well, how do you work with that individual? How do you find that middle ground?” He said, “What I do is ask a question that both parties can agree on, such as, ‘We both can agree that the sky is blue, correct?'” The cantankerous witness would say, “Yeah, the sky is blue.” “Awesome, so we can agree on something now.” Then they would ask their next question. Sometimes agreeing is as simple as finding the most common of middle grounds for both parties to create a community of us—not an us‑versus‑them—because in leadership our power comes from the ability to get others to act on our behalf. If the other person feels like they’re on the opposite side of the fence, if the other person feels like there’s no middle ground, guess what? They’re not going to act on our behalf, which means that our power is diminished, it’s reduced, and ultimately if nobody wants to act on our behalf, then there’s a big question of: are you a leader, are you even a manager, should you be fit for that role?
Which is why it’s critically important that we find the similarities. For example, I remember working with a gentleman, and he got very frustrated with me and said, “Adam, you’re just a prick—you’re stuck up, and I hate working with you.” I said to him very poignantly, “Yeah, I can be a prick at times; I understand how that could be frustrating.” I didn’t agree with his whole sentence—he was clearly attacking me—but by simply reflecting back his words, showing that I heard him, and agreeing on something, I started to diffuse the tension from that statement. That gentleman I was working with—I had to find multiple grounds of similarities, things that we could agree on, before I could build a working relationship with him.
Ensure Your Staff Feel Seen
And that’s just it. When somebody says something to you, our job is to look for what we can agree with. Another great example is this manager that I went to when I said, “I feel incredibly isolated and alone; I feel very disconnected from my team members, and I feel like I’m just disconnected from my work.” To simply agree would be to say, “Yeah, I can see why you feel disconnected if you’re feeling isolated.” That’s all we’re doing—we’re just agreeing—and it allows the other person to be heard, to feel seen.
Which is why it’s important that when we’re looking to agree with the other party, we work from a place of curiosity, understanding where they are coming from, and leave ourselves at the door. It’s not about our thoughts, our opinions, what we think is the solution—no no no no no. When we’re agreeing, we’re listening to the other person strictly, and when we’re listening to the other person, it’s about looking for the one thing that you can agree on.
Many of my coaching clients come to me and say, “There’s nothing that I agree with with the other person.” I say, “That’s because you’re not listening.” Typically, in my coaching calls, I’ll have to sit with my client and break down what the other person is saying to find the one thing that they can agree on, because ultimately, if we can agree on one thing, we can agree on another thing, and then ultimately we can create conflict resolution.
Learn Reflective Listening
One of the most fundamental skills I always encourage my leaders to develop is a skill called reflective listening. This is where we’re not changing or altering a person’s statement—we’re just reflecting it back to them. For example, I once had somebody come up to me and say, “I have so much on my plate, Adam. I’m incredibly stressed out; my wife is divorcing me; I’m getting written up at work; my friends are having problems with their marriage; I think I might have some health conditions that are going on, and I just don’t know what to do.” Reflective listening is not changing anything that they just said, but ultimately reflecting it back to them with something as simple as, “That’s a lot on your plate; I can see why you’re stressed out.” All we did was take what they said and reflect it back to them. It is a critical skill for all leaders to learn—to start building that bridge, to extend the olive branch—so that both parties can come to the table, so that we can overcome conflict management, so that we can solve problems.
Edmonton Leadership Coaching Can Help You
If you want to learn more about reflective listening, come sit down for a free four‑week coaching session where we can get into the nitty‑gritty of reflective listening and how you can use it to move up to the next level. If you found this video helpful, give it a like, subscribe, and share it with somebody who you think could use this information. Otherwise, I’ll see you in the next video. Cheers.