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Having participated in countless board, executive, and strategy meetings, I've often observed how poorly disagreements are handled. How quickly they can derail even the most seasoned leaders. It's astonishing how quickly mature professionals can shift from being composed to defensive, stubborn, and even impatient, especially when tensions rise over seemingly small points.
We know people don’t like being wrong, I don’t like to be wrong. Smart people with strong personalities, knowledge, and experience are going to argue their corner strongly. Done poorly you end up with silos, and personal animosity, or disengagement. Too much disagreement handled poorly can derail leadership teams, culture, and generate some very poor decisions. We’ve seen this and know this. Too much agreement, however, is a BUG disguised as a FEATURE. I've sat in meetings where the goal seems to be getting through the agenda in record time. The Chair patting themselves and the attendees on the back, “hey, meeting closed at 5:25pm, that’s a new record!” While efficiency has its place, if your leadership group too quickly seeks agreement or treats dissent with impatience, you're likely missing out on the opportunity to make the best decisions and foster growth and innovation. To be clear, I like it when we agree. However, if I do happen to hold a mistaken belief or understanding, I don’t want to hold that one moment longer than I need to. We need our ideas tested and our strategies sharpened. High performing leadership teams need to solve problems and make high quality decisions. That requires high quality discussion from diverse minds. We need our perspectives to be challenged and tested to get closer to whatever is true. We need each other to help course-correct before our strategy drifts too far. This is WHY we have boards and exec teams. High quality disagreement is the goal we should strive for Disagreement—when done well—is a critical feature of strong leadership. It ensures we are continually refining our thinking and making better, more informed decisions. Remember: High-quality disagreement is not only necessary, it is vital. It’s through respectful debate and open exchange of ideas that we sharpen our strategies, refine our actions, and ultimately make better decisions. When we struggle to change habits, we often lament our lack of willpower. "If only I had more discipline." "I just need to try harder." But this perspective misses crucial aspects of the problem. Willpower isn't the hero; it's just one player in a much more complex system.
It isn't about trying harder it is about working smarter. Habit change is brain change, and changing our brain has one significant problem that the 'personal power' style cheer squad choose not to notice. Namely, we're inside the bubble. We're trying to change a complex system, from the user interface, whilst you are using it! I developed my "Brain Change Process™" to explain to my clients how. The Brain Change Recipe™ The real process of changing habits involves recognizing the key ‘moments that matter’, having useful options available, and then deploying willpower effectively. Let's explore why each of these elements matters more than sheer willpower alone. Step 1: Noticing - The Crucial First Step What arrives in our consciousness is the outcome of non-conscious processes. Not noticing an opportunity to change isn't a willpower failure. It is closer to a search engine and attention failure. The more habituated you become to a behaviour the less conscious awareness you need to repeat it. Your brain becomes efficient at executing the habit, making it increasingly difficult to notice the critical moment when you could choose differently. For instance, you do not notice the habit of putting words into syntax when forming sentences. If you want to speak differently, attend to syntax you must. [see what I did there?] If an automated process completes its cycle without your awareness - how can you possibly intervene? This challenge is compounded when you're stressed, tired, or busy. These brain states compromise your conscious awareness, further reducing your ability to notice habit triggers. Ever noticed how you tend to 'snack' without really noticing at times when you're tired or distracted? Noticing gives you an OPPORTUNITY to do differently. Step 2: Knowing - Having Useful Options Even if you successfully notice the habit moment, you need useful alternatives to appear in your consciousness. Your complete set of options is limited to whatever ideas arise in that moment. If helpful alternatives don't emerge, you're likely to default to your established habit. This insight is demonstrated in the "What's your Plan B?" Anti-drink-driving campaign. Having people think about their alternative ways home before they’ve had a few drinks is powerful as it increases the likelihood that useful of ideas will arise in the moment when it matters. It increases the likelihood that when considering leaving the pub, the idea “What’s your plan B?” arises in consciousness. Allowing you to notice this moment as a decision point AND already be opening your phone to tap for an Uber. Again, brain states play a crucial role. When tired, busy, or stressed, (or drunk!) your brain's ability to generate nuanced options diminishes significantly. Your consciousness is either too occupied or too depleted to think optimally about alternatives. Step 3: Acting - Finally we're getting to Willpower This is where willpower enters the picture. Acting requires behaving differently than your habit is pushing you to behave. Your habit sends you down path A, and you use willpower to choose path B instead (assuming step 2 has given you a clear 'path B'). However, willpower is a finite resource that depletes throughout the day. Your ability to override habits depends on: - How deeply ingrained the habit is - Your current physical and mental state - How much willpower you've already expended that day (e.g. if you have needed to apply mental discipline for much of the day, you’re more likely to have a "snackcident" after dinner). And remember—this is just one instance. Habit change requires repeating this process consistently enough to allow your brain to rewire itself. The Smarter Approach to Habit Change Don't beat yourself up for a "lack of willpower" when numerous other factors influence your success. Instead, be strategic.
Successful habit change isn't about heroic willpower—it's about understanding how your brain actually works and designing smart strategies that work with your neurology, not against it. Ever wondered why your successes can seem so empty or your failures so unfair? One driver is that we rest our sense of satisfaction, happiness, and fulfilment on acquiring transient things or experiences that are outside our control. We WANT something in the future - a nice house, good job, career advancement, people to like us, peak experiences. To get these things, we work out what we think we have to DO - work longer hours, save aggressively, play the corporate game, maintain a carefully curated social image. After we've DONE all the tasks to get what we want to HAVE, the world responds according to its own rules - others want that job too, some play the corporate game better, that new BBQ area is nice but already the decking needs re-oiling. We either HAVE or DON'T HAVE what we wanted, and very quickly, that moment slides into the past. This cycle is like walking up a down escalator - exhausting and ultimately unsatisfying. We keep striving for the next moment, the next pay bump, the next wine price bracket, only to watch each achievement quickly slip into the past.  Even worse, this approach often sabotages our success in life's MOST IMPORTANT areas. Things like joy, connection, and meaning can't be acquired by directly pursuing them.
What if we shifted our focus? Instead of fixating on external markers of success, what if we applied a process focus - starting with who we want to BE? For instance, the best way to HAVE relationships of value and trust is to BE trustworthy and valuable. You cannot force genuine connections or build them insincerely. When you focus on being fully present and authentic, meaningful relationships naturally follow. Similarly, career fulfilment comes not from chasing titles or salaries but from bringing your authentic self and full presence to your work each day, which tends to improve your chance of career advancement anyway. Today, identify one area where you've been chasing outcomes and experiment with a BE-first approach instead. Ask yourself: "What way of BEing, if consistently applied, is likely to build success AND feel right along the way?" You may find that this brings you closer to the results you've been seeking all along. Either way, your happiness is not outsourced to factors outside of your control. Diversity of perspective and method is the most consistently powerful way of getting closer to an optimal solution. This means that you have different brains, experiences, and methods all contributing to the solution to a problem. The science is clear – whenever you add diversity, you reduce error.
Scott Page, Professor of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan, has extensively documented this phenomenon through his "diversity prediction theorem." This mathematical proof demonstrates that collective error decreases as cognitive diversity increases. Diversity produces innovation through recombination of ideas and perspectives, creating new solutions that are closer to optimal that exceeds the individual capability. Diversity of Preferences however can cause problems. Preference diversity is where you have people who want or prioritise different outcomes. For instance, my daughter's music preference is different to mine. She's Taylor Swift and others, I'm a little more old-school metal, rock and blues. These diverse preferences when deciding what to listen to in the car can cause a problem because there is no way to parse them without compromise. There is no optimal solution, only compromised ones. Well, in reality, it means we listen to Taylor Swift when she's in the car – very much messing with my Spotify algorithm and causing my music app to make some truly bewildering recommendations! When in disagreement with someone, it can be really powerful to consider this difference. If you can find out whether your differences are about preferences (what you each prefer) or perspective (your view on how to achieve a given outcome) then you can generate higher quality insights and conversations. At home, recognise that preferences are just that. It isn't 'wrong' to prefer Thai food over Italian (or vice versa) – there is no optimal. That my preference for a happy daughter outweighs the discomfort (only just!) I experience from letting her choose the music in the car (much to my disgust, I even catch myself singing along at times). The practical implication is clear: High Performing Leadership Teams cultivate cognitive diversity while establishing shared goals. This balanced approach harnesses diversity's problem-solving power while maintaining decisional coherence. By distinguishing between these forms of diversity, teams can strategically incorporate different perspectives and methods, and powerfully deploy them toward common objectives. AF: “Middle managers are the pressure point for workplace law interactions”
A couple of weeks ago, at a business forum on employment risks [thanks to Cutcher Neale, Jenkins Legal and AoN], I left with one burning question: Why would anyone employ people at all? Yes, plenty of businesses do treat employees terribly. Yes, there are legal and moral obligations to provide safe workplaces. But the tsunami of new legislation has made it increasingly risky – and costly —especially for smaller businesses without HR departments or established policies. Today's target: the newly legislated obligation to provide psychosocial safety. At first pass - WTF? Looking closer, the intent becomes clear:
What does "psychologically safe" actually mean? People arrive at your workplace with vastly different mental resilience. One person shrugs off the rude and obnoxious, while another crumbles when asked about their performance. People also bring their entire lives to work—complete with personal contexts, belief systems, and traumas that shape their psychological safety and resilience. Don't misunderstand—I value mental health deeply. My entire business revolves around developing emotionally fit leaders who prioritize their team's mental wellbeing as a strategy for success. This shift demands businesses apply the same rigorous risk management thinking to psychosocial safety that they use for physical safety. No more dismissing poor leadership as "being direct" or writing off incidents as "shit happens." The Middle Manager Pressure Cooker One statement from the forum by speaker Tereska Zai [AoN insurance] hit home for me; "Middle managers are the pressure point for workplace law interactions." Bang on! These managers deal daily with an array of personalities showing various levels of emotional robustness. They face pressure to deliver but may lack training in effectively influencing people or navigating difficult conversations. The data is sobering. Alyce Stones [Cutcher Neale] presented evidence that mental health claims have more than doubled over the past decade. The average claim costs over $72,000 in 2023/4, meaning a SME business with just 2-3 claims spends around $200,000 annually. Even more alarming: productive time lost from mental health claims averages 37 weeks—nearly a full work year. The 10% Solution What if middle and senior managers were just 10% more emotionally mature and capable of respectful, calm interactions with their teams? How much would that reduce workplace mental health claims? What if employees were just 10% happier in their own skin? What difference would that make? What if these costs—both explicit and hidden—could be halved by improving people's emotional fitness? Wouldn't that be worth investing in? Emotional fitness (aka happiness) has always been a smart business strategy. Now it's also a crucial risk mitigation strategy—the fastest way to cutting through the noise and getting things done. Is this you?
The purpose, the “why”, for my entire business, is to help people improve their felt experience of life. To help you clarify and achieve your success. It is why I do this work and why I built the My Ataraxy Process (TM). This session has been specially designed to help you understand:
As senior leaders and business owners you take responsibility for other people’s wellbeing. You will often forget about and sacrifice yourselves. This is a chance for you to investigate an opportunity for you. Take back control of your life, career, and move ahead with confidence and energy. Join me on Wednesday 31 May at 9.00 am (AEST). Reserve your spot below. “I thought I would have to be stressed for the rest of my life. Work challenges have changed. They’ve gone from hard and done, to complex, ever-evolving and continuous. Far beyond the capability of any one person to solve. Your people are deluged with information overload and tasks to attend to. Under pressure, they hunker down and start to isolate. People start to act out and can play small, petty and at times seem quite childish. And business opportunities get mired in process and detail. It’s why I created the Integrated Leaders Power-Up. The strategic way Senior Executives get their leadership teams working together. And create traction towards important goals.
I am offering a 45-minute executive briefing to step out exactly what you need to do to integrate your leadership team. To move them from stuck and overwhelmed, to dynamic and effective. Join me on Friday 28 April, at 9am (AEST). You can sign up below. an outcome far better than I would have expected The Parley Framework An effective tool to help you bridge the gap between warring factions within your organisation.
Under pressure well meaning, talented people can develop conflicted and polarised positions. Us & Them silos arise and adults can act out in immature ways. Business challenges become harder to solve; as people become less flexible and slower to respond to commercial opportunities. The polarised positions feel like a chasm, and can deteriorate into a “winner/loser” dynamic. It's why I created The Parley Framework. Simple strategies to help my clients become peacemakers. I am offering a targeted 30-minute executive briefing to show you how to start bringing the factions together. So that they begin to integrate and work more collaboratively. >> Join me on Tuesday 28 March at 1pm (AEST) for a 30-min micro-training. For senior executives that want their teams to move from divided to cohesive. Can you make it? >> Please register below. Here’s what one client had to say about it: we got an outcome far better than expected "There had been a significant dispute growing between two leaders in the business, I had to meet with one to address the situation and get people working together again. I ran the meeting very differently than I would have without your guidance and it made a huge difference, we got an outcome far better than I would have expected." S.T., General Manager, Automation Systems Manufacturing Industry Integrated Leadership Diagnostic The strategic approach leadership teams use to make better decisions, faster. Teamwork of leaders falls away under the weight of their workload and pressure to deliver. They each become more isolated, just at the time when the organisation needs them to be working together. It's why I developed the Integrated Leadership Diagnostic. I am offering a targeted 30-minute executive briefing to show you how to pinpoint what’s holding them back. So they solve complex problems quicker. Join me on Tuesday 28 February at 1pm (AEST) for a 30-min micro-training. For senior executives that want their teams to move from disjointed to dynamic. Can you make it? Please register below.  If your People are open, clear of mind and attentive,
If your context (aka Culture) allows for purposeful interactions and integrations, and If they are cognitively diverse and have the Skills to leverage each others difference, and problem solve together - you will have a very powerful team. One of the simplest and often overlooked contributor to the above is to have people pay attention, to be present. Thought this might help. It is a simple A4 poster that you can share with your team about the importance of attending to what you are doing - minimising distraction. Really valuable and simple piece of knowledge to help people prevent mistakes (including injury) and do good quality work. My clients find it useful, so I thought I'd share it with you. Let me know if you find it helpful. |