If you’re just tuning in, The Leader’s Edge is a multi-part story exploring the challenges and growth potential of expanding your leadership range and communicative competence. 

Throughout this series, we’ve been following a cohort of leaders from the fictionalized Horizons Tech organization as they engage in a six-month-long leadership development program. The program was designed to increase their ability to navigate behavioral change and communicate effectively amidst complex interpersonal dynamics.

In Part 3, we spent time with Vijay, a well-liked leader in the organization. We watched as he realized that the communication mode of Oppose — the act of voicing opposition, concern, or constraint in a conversation — might have been missing from his team conversations. “Oppose” is one of the Four Modes of Communication in the language of Structural Dynamics (the approach to communication developed by researcher David Kantor). The Four Modes of Communication are a core facet of TeamCatapult’s leadership development programming, and Oppose is consistently the most challenging. This was certainly the case for Vijay, despite his preference for hearing from all voices on his team!

Thanks to his journey with the leadership development program hosted by Horizons Tech, he was eager to learn more as quickly as possible to help him calibrate more effectively with his team — so eager, in fact, that he was getting frustrated with the pace of the program’s second 3-day intensive workshop. He wanted to get to the point and get going.

After hesitating to share his resistance to the set pace, he decided to voice it. Not only did he discover that he wasn’t alone, but the program co-leaders heard his concerns and worked with the group to rearrange the day. They decided to move forward in a way that felt more fast-paced while still carrying the value of the deep group learning that comes with time spent. 

For Vijay, this modeled something new that he immediately carried forward into his work with his team: moving forward, he wanted to ensure that he was inviting his team’s true perspective — even when it didn’t align with his own — so that opportunities to meaningfully shift the group process or approach weren’t missed. 

Over time, he — and his team — not only felt that there was a more effective balance between hearing all voices and moving forward in the conversation, Vijay felt much more grounded and aware of how he could help balance the needs of the team and the needs of the day in a way that helped everyone (including himself) feel more forward momentum in the group process.

Notably, however, while Vijay’s leadership outlook made it relatively straightforward to practice incorporating opposition into his team meetings productively, someone else in the room discovered that they had a steeper hill to climb. 

Why inviting opposition can feel challenging

When Amir watched Vijay voice his concern about the pace of the day, he was really surprised. He was not used to seeing opposition voiced, and was definitely not used to seeing it go well when it was. After a moment’s hesitation, though, he decided to follow Vijay’s lead and voice his own concern. It made him nervous, but, like Vijay, he felt immediate and positive feedback when the workshop co-leaders decided (with the group’s buy-in) to close the session a full 2 hours before the planned time. 

He’d never seen a process work like that. Normally, if someone dared to voice opposition in the organization, one of two things happened: they were either politely dismissed or it started a full-on debate about how one person was wrong and the other was right. He had never seen vocalized opposition or disagreement actually change the course of the outcome productively. It really impacted him to see the co-leaders listen to the concern, inquire more about what it meant, ask the group for input on what would make it better, and then follow the group’s suggestions. 

He found himself in a completely new frame of experience. He felt validated and understood, like he could actually impact an outcome — even if what he was voicing felt like opposition to the plan or intention. 

But, in this same moment, he realized that he spent the majority of his day trying to avoid opposition from his own team. He would go to great lengths each day to make sure no one had a chance to really voice dissent or concern. 

Why? Because he didn’t know what to do with it when it got voiced. Not only did disagreement feel like a personal attack, opposition felt like it would take the conversation “off the rails” — and he was scared he would be seen as an incompetent leader. 

You see, Amir’s best days as a leader were when he felt like everyone was getting along with one another. He liked harmony. On the one hand, it was okay when people shared their ideas, even if they had different ideas than his. In fact, Amir loved the creativity of ideas and was quite well known in the organization for being creative and inventive when things were tough. On the other hand, he would find himself in high stakes when people argued with one another or with him. What he disliked most was when someone opposed him or told him he was wrong. His tension would skyrocket, and he would even get a bit of tunnel vision. 

As Session 2 of the program progressed, it became pretty easy for Amir to see why he might struggle with hearing pushback and opposition. Growing up, he was often rewarded for having the right answer and being a high performer in school. However, on the occasions where he didn’t do well on a test or got a lower-than-usual grade, it would result in lectures from his parents about doing better. They let him know that it was disappointing to them when he didn’t do well. As a result, he realized he had a tightly held story about himself that said he was “always disappointing others.” 

As a leader, this internal story played out daily in his work. He would feel the stakes rise the second he sensed that someone thought he was wrong, or that he was bringing a “less than stellar’’ idea to the table. And because he had never before been asked to develop the self-awareness to recognize when he was in “high-stakes mode” — much less why the tension had risen for him — he had simply developed a leadership style to avoid the feeling altogether. He liked to have a clear agenda, stay focused on the topic, and move on quickly if there was any hint that someone disagreed. 

In short, he didn’t create space to hear from others on the team. As a result, whether he realized it or not, he was sending the message to his team that opposition was just not welcome in team conversations.

Consider your impact

Over the course of the 3-day intensive that had started with Vijay’s check-in about the pacing, Amir came to understand some of the impact that his leadership style around opposition was having on his team. Over time, his team had learned to speak quickly and offer new ideas only. More than likely, he realized, if they didn’t like something Amir or someone else suggested, they were taking the conversation “off line” — either making suggestions or giving feedback away from team meetings and out of Amir’s eyesight. 

Their meetings had become fast paced, which Amir had considered a “win,” but he was now bringing more awareness to something that many of the team members already felt: 

• Team conversations remained superficial 
• People shared platitudes with one another and offered ideas, but the meetings lacked meaningful conversation
• Team members were holding back valuable feedback because they didn’t feel like Amir was able to listen

In fact, what Amir didn’t know was that a couple of the team members had started to meet for lunch occasionally so they could dive deeper into some of the real issues they were experiencing. 

Moreover, they were beginning to experience some of the key markers of burnout:

• They didn’t feel valued for their perspectives or ideas

• They felt inefficient as a team

• They were experiencing low morale and little ownership 

• They weren’t feeling energized about the work or the team direction
• They were starting to use phrases like “just tell us what you want us to do” — a key lagging indicator that team members are starting to withdraw or withhold their real thinking from conversations

Through the leadership program workshops, Amir really became aware of how avoidant he became around voiced opposition or concern, and he caught glimpses of the impact that it was having on the team. 

Over the course of the session, he became more curious about why he switched into high gear so easily, and he was determined to shift his behavior. 

Change takes a commitment

Amir wanted to make a change. He didn’t want his team to feel unvalued, unheard, or disempowered. That was not his intention at all! So Amir began a journey to change his own behavior so that he could more effectively lead change in his team culture. 

It started with using journaling to process his thoughts. At first, he was resistant to journaling. He’d read all the self-help advice about the benefits and power of journaling, but he just did not see any benefit to spending the time to write out the thoughts in his head. He didn’t have time, is what he told himself. He thought it would be much more efficient to just think through his ideas and then take action. 

But then he had an individual coaching session with one of the program co-leaders in which he shared a challenge he was facing with a team member. The person just frustrated him constantly, and every interaction seemed to be difficult. 

To his surprise, the coach asked him, “What might you be doing that’s contributing to this dynamic?” 

Amir was taken aback, and slightly annoyed. He didn’t think he was doing anything — it was the other person that was challenging. So his coach gave him an assignment to journal each morning about the dynamic and what was happening between him and this team member. The idea was to let his brain talk to him through pen and paper. She gave him this prompt: what might I be doing that’s contributing to my frustration? 

“Just see where your pen takes you,” she said, and encouraged him to write whatever he was thinking at that moment — even if it was “I think this is the stupidest activity ever.” The goal was to do it consistently for five days, and then they would talk again about what he was noticing. 

Amir gave it a go the next day. He carved out 10 min and sat down and began writing. He spent the first 5 minutes writing out how stupid it was to be wasting time this way, and then he moved to the prompt. He started listing out what he was doing and things that might be causing friction with this other person. 

And, indeed, he came to the next coaching session with a couple of hypotheses about what role he might be playing in frustrating his teammate. More importantly, he was able to think through a set of actions he wanted to take to shift the dynamic. 

So, when it came to think about what he was doing to preempt opposition on his team and what he might be able to change to invite it more effectively, he started with journaling. And by engaging in the journaling process despite his initial resistance, he found himself more grounded in his thinking. So much so that he felt inspired and able to share his insights and newfound commitment with his leadership program cohort. 

Here’s what he said: “I have come to realize that I dislike being opposed. I’m noticing that I equate someone opposing me with the disappointment my parents would voice about my grades growing up. The experience of being listened to by our group co-leaders and seeing what a positive impact voicing opposition can have when it’s met with curiosity was very different from any conversation I’ve witnessed or participated in as part of this organization. It’s also very different from my own team conversations. I think I avoid opposition like the plague.”

He took a deep breath and continued, “Today, I am committing to welcoming more opposition in my team conversations. I’m starting to see how helpful it can be. And I’ve had a huge realization: I was holding back my own perspective and concerns because I didn’t want to be rude. But the pacing of the program was really bothering me, and it felt like a huge weight was lifted off me when we talked about the challenges as a group. It felt empowering when we made some positive adjustments to our group process because of the concerns that were expressed, and I want my team to experience that. If I get this kind of positive energy in a leadership development program, imagine what might be possible if my team were able to have a similar experience in their work!” 

He smiled, realizing this was the moment of him taking the plunge. “So,” he concluded, I’m committing to welcoming more opposition. I’ll let you know how it goes!” 

What’s a topic that you resist hearing opposition on? Why do you think that might be? 

Amir had a steep hill to climb, but he had found his purpose in the program. He would deepen his self-awareness and leadership range so his team could co-create a better group process, take ideas further by exploring their edges, and tap into their collective intelligence rather than taking important conversations “off line.”

He had done a lot of introspection to explore why he might be so resistant to hearing opposition, but he’d also caught sight of an inspiring question: What would it feel like to invite it anyways? He was at the beginning of a breakthrough that had the potential to fundamentally change the way his team worked together — and he was committed to the work ahead.

Stay tuned for the next edition of this multi-part series to learn how Amir brought his learning from the leadership program back to his team to help accomplish these goals — and how he overcame familiar patterns and challenges in the process.

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