Part of Find the Balance, a series on the tensions every leader lives with: why we lean one way, what drives the lean, and one small move.

In many teams there’s an unwritten rule that nobody ever says out loud: if you want a particular decision from a particular manager, make sure you’re the last person they talk to. It isn’t cynical, just what people have learned from watching. The manager in question is usually warm, flexible and easy to deal with, and is often the last to realise that their agreement has stopped meaning very much.

The paradox

Be open, and be clear. Being open means adapting to people, taking their views seriously and finding a way forward that works for more than just you. It’s what makes someone easy to work with, and it honours the fact that people and situations differ. Being clear means people know where you stand, and that where you stand doesn’t depend on who asked you last. Open without clear turns into drift. Clear without open turns into a wall.

Too little, too much

On one side is Adapting: flexing to the person and the moment, cooperating and adjusting your approach. Done too little, it becomes rigid. The same approach regardless of what the situation needs, the same position regardless of new information, all defended as consistency or principle. Done too much, it becomes people-pleasing. You say yes to the request, then yes to the conflicting request, and your position shifts with whoever you spoke to most recently.

On the other side is Being candid: saying what you actually think, stating your position and holding it when it matters. Done too little, which is where heavy Adapting usually lands, people have to guess what you really think. Done too much, candour stops listening, and stating a view becomes a way of ending the conversation rather than opening it.

What each side invites

People-pleasing invites people to push. If the last voice wins, people learn to be the last voice, and the ones who don’t push get less. Standards start to shift depending on who’s asking, everyone gets treated a little differently, and nobody quite knows where the bar is. Your yes starts to mean “until someone else asks”. Rigidity invites the opposite response: people stop trying. There’s little point proposing a better way to someone who won’t move, so they work around you, or dig in themselves. In both cases you’ve shaped how others behave, and in both cases they’ve stopped bringing you their real view.

Within: why you lean

The belief behind heavy Adapting is usually some version of this: keeping the peace matters more than saying what I think. It often comes with a quieter one, that disagreement will cost the relationship. The belief behind rigidity tends to be that changing my position looks weak, or that consistency and integrity are the same thing. Each is a first story about what happens if you move, and each is rarely tested. The person who always goes along seldom finds out how much more they’d be trusted if they occasionally didn’t. The person who never bends seldom finds out how much more they’d be heard if they occasionally did.

Around: what the space rewards

This lean is shaped heavily by the space, and especially by Safety. In strongly hierarchical workplaces, going along with the person above you is the sensible thing to do. In places that hold harmony as a value, disagreement can be quietly treated as not being a team player, even when nobody intends that. Elizabeth Morrison’s review of research on employee voice describes people weighing up two things before they speak: whether it’s safe, and whether it’s worth it. If saying what you think has gone badly before, for you or someone you watched, going along isn’t a character flaw. It’s a reasonable reading of the conditions. That’s worth knowing about yourself, and about the people who keep agreeing with you.

They move

The leaders who handle this well are clear about what’s fixed and open about everything else. They hold firm on intent, values and standards, and they flex the method, the timing and the approach to suit the person and the moment. That’s a better kind of consistency than doing the same thing every time. It means being steady in purpose while adapting how you get there, which is what a changing world asks for anyway.

The move

Try a little more of the opposite, as one small step. If you lean towards going along, the next time you’re asked to agree to something on the spot, say you’ll come back by the end of the day. Use the gap to check it against what you’ve already committed to, and then give a clear answer, including a clear no if that’s what it needs to be. If you lean towards holding the line, pick one position you’ve held for a while and ask someone who disagrees to make their best case for changing it. Then change one thing about how you’re doing it, even if the position itself stays.

And a question to sit with. What have you agreed to lately that you’d rather have questioned, and what have you refused to reconsider that might deserve another look? If you asked your team whether they always know where you stand, what would they say?

Find the Balance is one of Square Peg’s three practices, alongside Change the Story and Shape the Conditions.

References

• Morrison, E. W. (2011). Employee voice behavior: Integration and directions for future research. Academy of Management Annals, 5(1), 373–412. https://doi.org/10.1080/19416520.2011.574506