When the Devil Takes Over Your Meeting
He called it playing the Devil’s Advocate. We just called him the Devil. We were getting nowhere – as usual. Every time a new idea was brought up, the Devil poked holes in it.
As soon as he began to speak, you could see the joy and enthusiasm get sucked out of the room. Everyone would look at the floor and listen quietly realizing a new idea was about to bite the dust.
A Worthless Meeting
Our meetings were stagnant and our team was stagnant because we rarely came to any decisions. I am sure our Devil’s Advocate thought he was helping. But, he was doing the opposite.
Playing the Devil’s Advocate periodically is a form of wisdom. Doing it as a policy can transform someone from playing the Devil’s Advocate to just being the Devil himself when it comes to moving a team forward.
Through my years in the corporate world and through my time consulting with multiple organizations, I have come to realize how many people hate meetings. Most people hate meetings because they often end without any decisions being made.
The cause is often the voice of one or two experienced people who feel the need to tell everyone why something won’t work instead of finding reasons something will work.
If experienced people ONLY play the Devil’s Advocate role, the team will stop trying new things and sharing new ideas. It is even worse when it is the boss behaving this way. A boss like this will crush the spirit of a team.
The Alternative
New ideas are not always good ideas. But, a former boss of mine did a great job encouraging people to improve an idea instead of just shooting them down. He would stay quiet until he had an alternative idea or a way to make that idea better.
When he did, he started his comment with “Would it be even better if….”
He was not there to shoot down an idea. He was there to improve upon it. In this way, he encouraged us to do the same.
Instead of seeing three reasons a new idea was not going to work, all of us, including the resident Devil’s Advocate, were asked to find at least one reason that new idea would work.
Meetings on his team were productive and decisions were made. It was not that all the ideas shared in those meetings were good. But, new ideas were discussed, improved, and ultimately given a thumbs up or a thumbs down.
The individuals were engaged. The team flourished. And the Devil was held at bay by the attitude of the leader and the rest of the team.
The Bottom Line
Playing Devil’s Advocate should be a role we play not a lifestyle we live. If it becomes a lifestyle, people will stop listening to us because we will become an anchor around their neck dragging everyone down.
The alternative is to find the good parts that are present even in the worst ideas. To get a team out of neutral and moving forward, we can not allow someone to constantly press on the brakes.
It all comes down to a choice. How will I approach a new idea?
If my attitude consistenly shuts down the ideas of others, I may think I am just playing the Devil’s Advocate. But if that is all I do, I may have actually become the person none of us ever wanted to meet or intended on becoming.
Read more about choices and attitudes by clicking on the following title:
Your Choices Make or Break You
Question
What other ways can good ideas be nurtured on a team?
Dave-
Good piece. A topic that all leaders need to deal with. Many sales teams have at least one “Devils Advocate” and like the term “devil” itself, they come in many forms. Some do it because it’s often easier to be negative than supportive. Some do it because it makes them stand out (not always beneficially). Some do it because it’s calculated and some do it because it’s just their nature.
The key is HOW a leader deals with this. They can embrace it. They can shut it down. They can ignore it and let it fester. I think top leaders embrace it and allow for opinions to be heard but also manage those individuals acting in a devils advocate way to understand how to position their dissent in positive terms and figure out ways to incorporate that into a final position. Devils advocates can be valuable but they also need to be managed like anyone else.
Most Devil’s Advocates want to be heard and be taken seriously. I have coached them in the past to be more balanced. If it is always negative, then it is like the boy who cries wolf. People will stop listening and taking them seriously – which is the exact opposite of what they desire.