I May Not Agree With What You Say…

...but I will fight to the death to defend your right to say it."

- Voltaire, French writer, philosopher and historian.

The above statement is often quoted in the context of democratic rights and civil liberties. However I think this also has a huge importance in the corporate scenario in areas like team work, negotiation and decision making.

Very often at work and in life (and we do not realize this), we fall into the trap of looking at things from a highly one dimensional point of view. This may happen because we are very confident of our understanding and knowledge of a particular topic or area of work.

Sometimes we may underestimate the capability of a junior colleague or person and may not take seriously, what he or she says.

However in the long run this acts against us, because it closes our minds to other opinions and ideas that maybe potentially as good as ours, if not better. This also harms the team and the project in the long run.

More importantly, we stop learning and growing by understanding and taking the good points of other viewpoints. To be a thorough and well-rounded professional, apart from gaining knowledge and competencies, we also need to pick up other skills that would help us understand others and arrive at conclusions, that would enable us take those decisions, that would be beneficial for all stakeholders involved.

We have to remember, that at work nothing is personal. All efforts, discussions and debates are for a better team and for the better outcome of projects. To do this we need to be good speakers as well as good active listeners.

I say "active" because often just to show that we are listening; we pretend to do so, while we are actually not listening. This is as good as not listening at all. 

Different stakeholders have different concerns and if we push for maximalist solutions, we would never arrive at a consensus. So unless it is absolutely impossible, a discussion or a negotiation has to be an act of give and take where all parties feel that they have gained something.

We also need to remember that speaking up is good, but we need to gradually make sure that we are right and make sense most of the times. Saying things just for the heck of it without proper application of knowledge and experience may lead to lack of credibility for us. 

On print this sounds so simple, but I have seen grown up, extremely knowledgeable and experienced people, folks doing MBA and stuff, spouting organizational jargons left and right, but completely ignorant of the basic rules of negotiation and showing respect to individuals and points of view.

The bottom line is we need to be vocal about our thoughts and ideas and also give respect to those of others. While we may completely disagree with another point of view, we still need to be able to show respect in disagreement and learn to “agree to disagree”.

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