You have been mediating the wrong thing.
That recurring argument in your leadership team has almost nothing to do with the two people having it.
Your team runs on a pattern that has never been named. Not the personalities, and not the agenda. It is the mix of motivational orientations in the room, and that mix produces behaviour of its own.
Three patterns come up most often. One of them is probably yours.
ONE. CLUSTERED AT ONE END WITHOUT REALISING IT
A team clustered toward gain feels fast and full of ideas, and decisions come easily. What nobody notices is the question that never got asked. A team clustered toward protection feels thorough and dependable, and delivers what it commits to. What that team is not attempting rarely comes up. Both are right about their strengths. Both are working with a narrower picture than they think.
TWO. GENUINELY SPLIT BETWEEN THE TWO
The same people take the same positions meeting after meeting. It reads as a personality clash, so you manage around it. You pre brief separately, you move the contentious item late, or you quietly decide it yourself. None of that looks like a problem. It looks like you being good at your job, while you end up the only person holding the full picture.
THREE. ONE PERSON A LONG WAY FROM EVERYONE ELSE
They are usually doing something the team needs, catching a risk early or pushing for an option nobody else raised, and it has never been named as a contribution. They get described as the negative one, or the one who runs too far ahead. Rooms learn fast, so eventually they stop.
Not every team is one of these three. The combinations that sit in between behave differently again.
SOMETHING YOU CAN DO THIS WEEK
Listen to the shape of the objections next time something is genuinely at stake. Some are about exposure. What are we risking here. Others are about the cost of standing still. What do we miss if we wait.
Both are reasonable questions about the same decision, and most rooms run heavily on one.
WHAT WE ARE COVERING ON THURSDAY
Your Team Has a Pattern Nobody Has Named Yet. Forty five minutes, plus time for questions.
What different combinations predict about the way a team decides when the stakes are real, and where each one is most likely to get things wrong. Once the pattern has a name, you can work with it deliberately. Until then it carries on shaping decisions while you troubleshoot the symptoms.
Free, Thursday 10 September, 5:30pm AEST. Registration includes the free Motivational Mindset Assessment, so you arrive with your own result in hand. Register even if you cannot make the time, because the recording goes to everyone who registers. Details in the comments.
Based on the regulatory focus research of Heidi Grant Halvorson, PhD and E. Tory Higgins.
So, which of the three is your team? One, two or three in the
#Neuroscience #Leadership #LeadershipDevelopment #TeamPerformance
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Register for Your Team Has a Pattern Nobody Has Named Yet here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/D8AER1QXT4SQQFgOkd9-yQ#/registration
Free, forty five minutes, Thursday 10 September, 5:30pm AEST. Registration includes the free Motivational Mindset Assessment so you arrive with your own result in hand.
If you cannot make the time, register anyway. The recording goes to everyone who registers.