Captain Raymond Lewis choosing to be arrested at an Occupy Wall Street demonstration

“Challenging is a sign of engagement!”, is what IMD Leadership Professor, Chris Parker, used to explain, to calm the fears and anxieties of the C-Suite people he was coaching, by explaining that their people’s challenging reaction (even when too loud, even if clumsy) was, in fact good news: It implied that they felt close enough from their boss to do that, that they lived in a sufficiently Safe Psychological Culture, that they were still engaged by the Purpose of the organisation and wanted their voices to be heard.

Recently, Eric Schmidt, Google’s co-founder (if anyone still didn’t know;), went through the bitter experience of being booed by the students of Arizona University as he was singing the virtues of A.I. In an elegant article (see Gaspard Koenig LinkedIn page), in Les Echos, Philosopher Gaspard Koenig, draws a parallel between what was reported of M. Schmidt’s reaction to the students’ vocal pushback and the attitude (when confronted to the crowd’s challenge) of executed Romanian president Nicolae Ceaucescu, when his last intervention in public drew an unexpected opposition from the people in the street. His dictatorial regime fell apart 4 days later. Our reaction, when facing challenge, can successfully engage our “opponents” or, on the contrary, turn them into “the first line of (ruthless) defence.

For those of you liking metaphors, see the disaster, when confronted to unexpected challenge, played by John Cleese in “Fierce Creature“… Hilarious and so illustrative. On the opposite, in the famous Invictus movie, tracing back the key moments in Nelson Mandela first steps as RSA new President, look at how he embraces the small signals of silent rejection and addresses the issue in a respectful and non-threatening way…

Today, my colleague, in the Enablers Network , John Griffin , published a very relevant article along those line:

• “When resistance goes quiet, that’s the real warning!” claims John, from the start
• And, following him, they push their neutrality button, for three possible reasons: 1. People stopped believing their voice matters. 2. The trust that makes honest pushback safe has already eroded (Psychological Safety). 3. The system is still sending signals – but you’ve trained it not to send them to you (you don’t want to hear/shooting the bad news messenger.
• Quoting the researcher, exec. coach, Rick Maurer, John explains that the negative reaction to challenge plays at three levels: Level 1 is about understanding. Level 2 is about fear. Level 3 is the residue of every change that was handled wrongly before this one.

To know more, I will let you read, John’s article. My suggestion, when confronted to such a situation is to: 1. Embrace the challenge (respect, seek to understand, spot the good intention), 2. If or when ready for it, engage into a problem solving dialogue with your contradictors, 3. Seek to focus on the alignment points (usually far more that the conflicting points).

Enjoy your Leadership Journey