How can you use the devil's advocate approach to improve team decision making?

While I believe that a leader should look always for new approaches to ensure the best decision making process in a team, it is also important to understand when to use it and when to pivot to another approach. I think that the devil’s advocate approach could work, however, the leader facilitating the team’s dynamics needs to understand the cons of this approach such as in some cases, the opinion of the Devil’s advocate could make team members frustrated or feeling not heard when bringing forward an idea. Ideally, I love when there is an stage of a team in which one team member naturally believes in alternative opinions or encourage minority viewpoints.

He has the skill of critical thinking, challenges the status quo, and questions assumptions, ideas, and decisions. It ensures that it prevents the flaws of collective thinking when the team reaches a consensus without studying and examining alternatives comprehensively.

Taking a structured and intentional approach to countering or questioning an idea/concept is an interesting one but I think it should be an act of last resort. I think it is far better to work to build a team dynamic that fosters respectful and supportive conflict. If your team is one where members of all levels feel comfortable speaking up, disagreeing, poking holes, etc, that "devil's" perspective will be richer and more complex.

In my experience with diverse teams, embracing the Devil's advocate approach ensures your team's decisions are battle-tested, fostering innovation and guarding against groupthink in high-pressure situations

I think incorporating the devil's advocate approach into your team's decision-making process can be a powerful tool for improving the quality of decisions. It encourages constructive conflict, helps prevent groupthink, enhances critical thinking, and fosters a culture of psychological safety. By embracing this approach, teams can make more informed, well-rounded decisions that ultimately lead to better outcomes.

If you did the smart thing and hired smart people with different options ... then you let them challenge and help the team win by overcoming the challenges.

Coming up with a situation here where this might be useful: In a software development team, there's a discussion about adopting a new coding style guide. Most team members support a well established guide, but a devil's advocate suggests allowing individual coding styles within certain bounds. This prompts a debate about flexibility versus consistency. The team decides to create a hybrid approach, allowing some customization while maintaining key guidelines. The devil's advocate approach encourages a nuanced exploration, balancing standardization with individual preferences and resulting in a coding style guide that accommodates diverse developer needs while still upholding important coding standards.

The devil's advocate approach safeguards decision-making from biases, fuels critical thinking, and yields more well-rounded, creative, and informed choices for teams.

The devil’s advocate approach helps avoids two phenomenas: Groupthink and Groupshift. Groupthink occurs when all members of a group are too comfortable or agreeable with each other’s ideas. It leads to groupshift that is taking extremely polar and tilted decisions, since no balanced opinion exists. While groupshift might be useful in times of pivoting, the devil advocate’s approach adds checks and balances to identify any loophole in the team’s logic and mitigate any risk thereof.

Stimulating Discussion: It stimulates productive debate and discussion within the team. When someone plays the devil's advocate, it can prompt others to defend their positions more thoroughly and offer stronger justifications.

It's a powerful tool when used thoughtfully. Remember, it's all about improving outcomes and fostering a culture of open and critical thinking within your team. Let me share a personal example. In a recent team meeting, my coachee and team were planning a product launch. I designated a team member as the devil's advocate. They questioned the pricing strategy and suggested it might be too high. Initially, some team members were defensive, but we listened and discussed the concerns. It turned out they had valuable insights about our target market's preferences, and we adjusted our pricing accordingly. In the end, the product was more competitive, and sales exceeded expectations.

Effectively using the devil's advocate approach involves assigning a credible challenger, rotating the role, defining its scope, promoting constructive dialogue, and providing balanced feedback.

One way to approach the devil’s advocate role is to take two cases that represent two polarly opposite methods or processes of doing the same thing relevant to the objective of the team or group. After discussing both the cases, the leader should identify the case that the group is tilting towards and take the advocate’s role for the other case. It introduces two situations, first, the conflict between a forced opposition stance by the leader from a position of authority versus a collective opinion, and second, a nudge for the entire collective to push through their existing reasoning in an effort to win the argument and convince the leader. In the middle of this forced tension, new ideas, opinions, and fault lines emerge.

It is indeed important to avoid to be hostile or toxic. Nevertheless being hostile is differently perceived by different people and different cultures. It is very important to discuss with the team upfront what behaviours are helpful and which are not, and also how the team wants to react in case a behaviour is perceived as "hostile". There should be also clarity that being challenged gets people outside of their comfort zone and feeling slightly annoyed is normal. One good practice for the all is to always practice appreciation before any suggestion, or criticism, or counterarguments. Criticism should focus on specific points but never on a person .

The catch in it for me is the potential it has in strengthening communication within the team, making it more open and transparent. Providing stronger justifications for decisions and choices made, improving decision clarity and buy-in. Ultimately, the Devil's Advocate approach increases the resilience of decisions by subjecting them to rigorous scrutiny. It's a valuable tool to ensure that the chosen course of action is the most informed and well-considered option available.

Senior leaders need to recognize that more junior members may not feel comfortable poking holes in ideas in every context. There is inevitably too much deference and too little truth-telling. Work to make spaces where folks can speak freely, have that thinking shared 'up', and responded to thoughtfully.

In my experience, it is about intent and delivery. Expressing a counterargument for the sake of simply giving input mostly results in losing focus. But this approach provokes analytical thinking, and if based on logical thoughts and possible situations, it sparks an appetite of interest and collaboration. One should view a topic of discussion from all aspects, as this allows the entire team to contribute, creating inclusion and fostering opinions. People grow by being exposed to other’s experiences, and this enables just that.

Don’t over do it. Use it for complex decisions where different contradictory approaches are valid — here it helps illuminate tradeoffs and spur lateral thinking amongst a team. Don’t use it for decisions that are more clear cut or where team consensus has been established. To foster dialogue with junior teams, it may help to start with a permission prompt “may I challenge that view?” or to simply call out the usage of the approach “let me play devil’s advocate: have you considered this viewpoint (…)”.

With any review model, Devils advocate needs to be selected in the most appropriate manner were healthy debate around uncertainty and/or human interaction is the core focus. Selection of this method should be discussed at the planning or review stage prior to a team session to ensure all team members are prepared and on board.

When implementing the devil's advocate approach, it's important to be mindful of potential pitfalls to ensure it serves its purpose of improving decision-making rather than causing unnecessary friction. Overuse, confirmation bias, defensiveness, lack of preparation, lack of follow-up, time management challenges, and mainly ignoring the advocate are the potential pitfalls in the approach. By being aware of these potential issues and actively addressing them, you can maximize the benefits of the devil's advocate approach and use it as a powerful tool for enhancing your team's decision-making processes. Remember, it's all about fostering a culture of open dialogue and critical thinking while ultimately working towards better outcomes.

One important consideration when employing the devil's advocate approach is to recognize that it should not be used as a means to obstruct progress or stifle creativity. It's meant to challenge assumptions and improve decision-making, not to create unnecessary conflict or slow down the process. Therefore, it's crucial to strike a balance between constructive criticism and forward momentum. Additionally, it's beneficial to cultivate a culture of open-mindedness and psychological safety within the team. Team members should feel comfortable expressing dissenting opinions and playing the devil's advocate role without fear of reprisal or judgment. This culture fosters a more productive and effective use of the approach.

Another way to get to the devil's advocate approach is to ensure that you have people on your team who think and communicate differently. When you have people who come from different perspectives, you inherently have fewer blind spots. It sometimes takes longer to start projects to allow everyone's voice to be heard, but when you get to the outcome - it's always better for having a depth of experience and collaboration behind it.

This a perfect opportunity to introduce the 5 Ws. If done with true curiosity and the intent of learning, it's not perceived as poking holes or diminishing positions, and true conversations are possible without someone being on the defensive.