Disagree with a company decision? Here's how to share it with your team

Does your personal opinion matter as a leader?

What does it mean to be “authentic”; a trait often touted as important for leaders, when you’re tasked with communicating and executing decisions you’re not on board with?—

Scott Carey asked me to write for LeadDev about what to do when you’re asked to communicate a decision with your team, but you’re not on board with what’s been decided. And what I initially already knew to be a complex topic, led me to reflect on a lot of my own history as well. Ultimately, I got to the very fundamentals of the question:

Is there a difference between who I am as a person and my role at work?

Do I just pass on information to my teams? (I think no.)

If I don't just pass on information, does what I think about the information matter? (I think it can, sometimes even should!)

If what I think matters, does it matter whether my thoughts are rooted in... my professional experience?

Or if it's rooted in my personal experience, like the fact that I've seen a certain situation already because of aspects of my identity?

Or does it matter if I can substantiate my thoughts with quantitative data and research, or whether it's rooted in instincts that I've honed in a career of almost 20 years, and a life (more than 20 years)?

Is there a difference?

I don't have easily generalizable answers, and I am not sure they exist.

Here are some things I do know:

With many decisions that I was asked to communicate to my teams, I landed somewhere on a spectrum closer to pragmatism over idealism. In practice, this often meant that I’d voice my disagreement to relevant parties, try to influence change, and share a degree of my disagreement with people I had trusted relationships with.

For myself, I've never bought into the idea of "bringing your whole self to work", even though that's something I want to make at least an option for everyone I work with. Even though I wish that were at least an option for everyone I work with. Maybe it's the inevitable German parts of me - I love potatoes a lot, after all -, but I've always needed some separation of my personal and my professional selves, even though both influence each other.

I also know that there are instances where I could (should?) have been more open with my teams about the degree to which I disagreed with a decision. I also know that I haven't always won popularity contests with this approach, and some former colleagues think that I backed decisions that I didn't. Honestly, this part sucks a bit, and isn't easy to write about. At the same time, I have always viewed it as part of the job, like I viewed learning to care less of what other people think of me as critical for me being able to do this work.

These are some thoughts that went into what ended up being a documentation of how I’ve been grappling with this question myself in the past. - And a step-by-step guide that you can use to work through how you communicate a decision that you disagree with to your team(s). Read the whole piece on LeadDev.com.