In managing technical teams, an IT leader will routinely be in a position of making decisions between two or more competing technical views, systems architectures or proposed solutions. As “the decider”, you may consider yourself fortunate to have multiple choices presented to you by your staff, as >1 options would seem to increase the likelihood that the most appropriate decision can be found among the competing views.
An unfortunate situation experienced too often by IT leaders is the overwhelming “need to be right” among certain staff members, and that behaviors’ negative impact on the decision-making process. Whether a product of the times or something unique to the IT field, this need expresses itself similarly to what one might find within a political discussion on cable TV, or a heated religious argument. Does any of this behavior sound familiar:
- A polarization of the language used, with words such as “right/wrong”, “its clear”, “its simple”, “its self-evident”.
- Presented views are long on opinion, short on facts/research and don’t appear to be data-driven.
- A strong need to convert others to one’s views.
- If that fails, a discounting of another’s views, or even the person.
- Its a zero-sum game, and someone has to be wrong/lose. Its important to identify the winner and loser before everyone leaves the meeting.
- All individual ideas attached to the losing proposition are also considered invalid.
- Working with a team member who presented a differing (losing) opinion would water-down the (winning) solution, or otherwise render it useless.