Escalating Disagreements with Peers
What do you do when you and a peer need to agree on a decision and you can’t? You’ve probably been in this situation. Both you and your peer have strong views on the topic, the stakes are high for both of you, and you can’t bridge the gap.
If you are using a Unilateral Control approach, you’re thinking that you need to influence your boss so your position wins over your peer’s position. You may try to get to your boss’s office before your peer does. If your boss is the “decides-based-on-the-last-person-who-talked-to-her” type, then you try to figure out when she has talked with your peer. If your peer doesn’t report to your boss, you escalate it up to your boss so that she can try to resolve it with your peer’s boss.
Whether you and your peer report to the same person or not, the problem with the Unilateral Control approach is that not all of the information gets on the table and it undermines commitment. Even if your view prevails, when your peer finds out you’ve used this approach, you’ll have a much larger problem to solve – your peer may not trust you.
Here’s how to use a Mutual Learning approach to address the issue:
Jointly meet with your peer and the person(s) you report to on this issue.
If you’re using the Mutual Learning approach, you are thinking that you want to be transparent, you want everyone to take accountability, and you want to ensure that everyone can make an informed choice.
Instead of going around your peer, ask your peer to go together to your common boss or to both of your bosses. Say something like this: “I think we’ve gone as far as we can together and we still don’t have a decision that we can both support. Do you see that the same way? If you agree that we’re stuck, I suggest we go together to Francine, tell her where we’re stuck, and figure out the next step with her. I want to make sure she hears each of our views, so we all hear the same thing at the same time and we’re all involved in the next step. How does that sound?”
Before you get to the meeting with Francine, prepare the following with your peer:
- Identify the source of your disagreement. Is it that you disagree about some information? Is it that you have different needs that you can’t reconcile? Or is it that you are making different assumptions that lead you to different conclusions? For more details on how to do this, click here.
- List the possible solutions that the two of you have considered. Be ready to explain what it is about each of these solutions that didn’t work for one of you.
- Let your boss know exactly what you need from her to help resolve the disagreement. Do you need her to validate whose assumption is correct? Do you need to identify which of the competing interests should take priority?
By jointly designing a way to resolve the disagreement, you increase the chance of a high quality decision with high commitment that maintains or improves your working relationships.
Originally published April 2011
