Managing (Technical) Disagreements

Human is a very complex creature by design, and diversity is imbedded into our DNA combined with background and experiences, make us looks, think, and act in different way one to the other. Some anecdote of two people can have more than three opinions may happen not only in personal but also in professional life.

Regardless of what kind of professional world you are into, as engineers, as athletes, as teacher, as public servant, as lawyer (specially this) you must come across to some form of disagreement in any of your daily interaction, in one form or the other, with your boss, clients, colleagues, counterpart, or your subordinates and that is normal. If you never ever have one...then you are not normal.

Throughout my careers, few things that I have learned in dealing with disagreement at work :

Nothing Personal

Make sure this is not about your ego, you want your idea to be accepted, then whoever challenge your idea need to be tackled. Or you don't like other people so whatever idea that they bring need to be challenged. This is not about you or anybody, this is about one (or more) subject and keep focused on it and not to the person.

Start from Agreement

There must be a common value, common sense, common objective that everybody agreed upon and use as common ground. Use this as starting point of any discussion.

View from opposite direction

Try to understand the opposite view, why they disagree with you, listen to their explanation, digest their facts and figures, and corelate with common value and try to find the crossing path

Venue

Do we have to resolve it right here right now ? Or it would be better we have separate discussion before ? or after ? or with the presence of third party who can be a mediator ? or do we need to add other resource person to help filling the gap ?

Disagreement can become constructive and productive process if we can manage it properly. Different opinion within a team can become a synergy if it can be managed in the way that keep the momentum move forward to reach the goal.

Every new idea have to be challenged and tested before implemented, and disagreement is the nature way to test it.