Responsive answering

I recently was reading an article of HBR which spoke of how critiques are important to a discussion. This vindicated to me into the practicality.

It is important to note that how many of the Managers and Leaders today really want Naysayers in their teams? It is essentials for a Leader to have people who can be assertive to ideas, who have their point of view (which is not necessarily in line with that of the Leader) and who have a stated logic behind the counterargument.

I believe “Naysayer” is not a personality in itself, it is an attribute which each one of us entails. It is just the exhibition of it that we have confined. Well the reasons could be many, internal or external however of all the pertinent is how one has witnessed counterarguments being handled.

This is not necessarily around professional life but goes beyond it to personal life as well. Every child is full of curiosity more between the age 2-8 when he/she is at the highest realms of environment absorption. If the questions of a child are shrugged, or the child is discouraged to ask lot of questions, somewhere it rests at the back of the mind, “asking questions is not good”.

Though today with the internet world every question can be answered by typing in the query but still there is no better learning that one can get than a vicarious learning.

Similarly as we grow up, we get into a habit of keeping our doubts and queries to ourselves somewhere thinking “what my level of intellect will be considered if I asked this?” All these thoughts stem from a fact – how well are the questions and arguments encouraged.

In today’s time if we want our teams to work together and bring out the best solutions it is a Leader’s responsibility to elicit the critical side of each. “Responsive answering” is the key.