As a leader, you face complex and intricate challenges every day. At times it can be hard to pinpoint or even articulate these challenges. But until you can fully address and resolve them, they have the potential to stall your professional and personal growth, your career, and your team’s success. This is where professional coaching comes in.Elizabeth is head of digitization with a private international bank headquartered in Switzerland. It’s a role that she has held with tremendous success for the last three years, leading a dedicated team of more than 50 people and delivering significant impact across a slew of cultural transformation and cross-functional initiatives. A recognized high achiever, Elizabeth has steadily climbed the ranks of her organization over the years, and she has been tipped for promotion to the executive committee. But a recent conversation with her manager has left her unsettled.
Elizabeth’s boss tells her that the organization would like her to take over as VP of IT: a role would integrate her current digitalization unit and oversee the establishment of a new unit for organization-wide cultural transformation. It’s an interesting offer, but Elizabeth is unsure. First, she feels this move would push her back into operational rather than strategic responsibility. And second, Elizabeth has long had the ambition to become the organization’s first female board member—and to use her influence to challenge the incumbent top-down leadership model and accelerate organizational transformation from the highest level.
Elizabeth feels unsure about what to do. She feels unable to refuse this new role but simultaneously unwilling to put her ambitions for systemic impact on hold. Sitting at this career crossroads, she seeks out the support of an executive coach.
Bolstered by a deeper understanding of the critical importance of healthy disagreement and debate, Elizabeth gets to work with her coach, defining and articulating the role that she would like to have.
Elizabeth has been given 10 days to figure out if she wishes to accept the new position or not. Together with her coach, she decides to focus on her decision-making capabilities in this heightened and high-pressure context. This means meeting for two immersive sessions during which Elizabeth is challenged to explore the possibilities of accepting or declining the offer through different visualization techniques, and practices that engage the subconscious such as automatic writing and drawing. Elizabeth’s coach then invites her to role-play the conversation she will have with her manager and something interesting happens. Still feeling unable to accept or decline the offer, Elizabeth and her coach articulate a new question: if there is no “yes,” or “no,” what else might there be?
This is a breakthrough. But getting to a point where she might be able to propose a counteroffer to her manager – a forceful personality with strongly-expressed opinions – will take effective negotiation. Above all, Elizabeth will need to be ready to agree to disagree if her manager refuses to accept her counterproposal.
Elizabeth and her coach unpack what agreeing to disagree looks like. Together they explore the fear of rejection or humiliation that is attached to conflict avoidance, but they also analyze the power of constructive disagreement: the collaborative, creative, innovation and resilience benefits that accrue when leaders tolerate and welcome dissension, discussion and debate; and the psychological safety that this creates that in turn fuels individual and organizational growth. They also discuss what happens when leaders cannot agree to disagree: the cultures of compliance and control, secrecy and self-interest that flourish when dissent and debate are restricted or denied.
Bolstered by a deeper understanding of the critical importance of healthy disagreement and debate, Elizabeth gets to work with her coach, defining and articulating the role that she would like to have – and tapping into her own abundant inner resources and the learning that past experiences with her manager and other board members have given her. She puts together strong arguments in support of her desire to move up to the board. At the same time, she works on preparing herself should her manager decide not to accept her counterproposal. Key to this is anchoring herself in her core values, secure-base strengths and her understanding that a position on the board – just like the position of VP of IT – will be in service to the entire organization; both roles imply positive cultural impact.
Coaching has made something clearer to Elizabeth. Leaders who cannot agree to disagree see disagreement as betrayal. Over time, this contaminates the organization – splitting teams into factions that mirror the leader’s inner polarization. But leaders who tolerate or encourage disagreement shape a culture better geared to discovery, creativity and innovation where people are unshackled from fear and self-protection.
She is now ready to tell her truth and speak up. She goes into the discussion with her manager ready and empowered to propose, counter propose and agree to disagree. She understands that being able to agree to disagree is strength: the strength to accept that others may see differently, and that truth is often larger than any single perspective. Following a long and healthy discussion, she is promoted to the executive committee.
Leaders who cannot agree to disagree, often confuse the self with the role. For them, disagreement equals betrayal. Over time, the organization becomes an extension of their psyche, absorbing their anxieties, splitting into factions, and mirroring the leader’s inner fragmentation.
On the opposite, a leader’s ability, or inability, to tolerate disagreement ripples outward through the organization, shaping its culture, its capacity for innovation, and its resilience in the face of crisis.
In such climates, creativity flourishes, because people are not preoccupied with protecting themselves. And they also practice a form of leadership that relies more on collaboration than on control.
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