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Transcript
Hey everyone, in this episode I want to talk about why it can be important for you as a leader to speak last and how that can benefit your discussions and ideas and decisions and all the things that come about in meetings and so on, speaking last can be very beneficial.
See, sometimes as leaders, when we come up and present a position or have a problem we’re trying to solve or a decision trying to make, we give our opinion first and then get other people’s opinions based off that.
The problem with that is, first of all, do you know the first person to speak anchors the conversation? So if, for example, everybody’s trying to guess a number of marbles in a jar that’s in front of you, especially if you as a leader say, “Oh, I think it’s 500,” generally people are going to put numbers close to what you have said because you’ve anchored the argument or anchored the position of the first number. Especially as the leader, you can anchor what everybody, their ideas and stuff, say.
Some of the more extreme ideas are far out there may not be said because you’ve anchored the idea to a certain degree, especially as the leader. Also because you’re the leader, sometimes people fear disagreeing with you.
Hopefully you can create the environment where people feel safe speaking up, feel safe disagreeing, feel safe. Hopefully that’s like a normal, but sometimes it takes time to build that and to be able to, people feel comfortable sharing feedback and disagreeing with you as leader.
Its important sometimes to not speak first because then people will be afraid to say what they would normally say or to disagree or share an idea or perspective because they don’t want to disagree with you.
As a leader, it’s good to speak last. If you’re bringing up an issue, bringing up a situation, get other people’s opinions first. Don’t nod, frown, shake your head, whatever it may be. Talk to people, let everybody else talk first and then once everybody else is, oh, and ask questions. So as they’re talking, ask questions, try to get more information, their viewpoint, and then at the end, then that’s when you speak. That’s when you might share your opinion.
The thing is, you not only get a lot of different, better viewpoints based off that because they’re not trying to please you or to make you happy or they’re not fearful of disagreeing with you because you haven’t spoken yet. So they’re giving more of a variety of opinions because of that.
And then you may have different viewpoint because you’ve heard everybody else and then you can speak, make your decision, whatever you need to do at that point, share your opinion, but you’re just joining in at the end and giving everybody else a chance first. It also kind of could build influence and also help people know that their input is valid and can help build ownership in what’s going on.
But the anchor thing can still happen even with anybody and it depends, sometimes, it may not be that big of a deal depending on situation. But if you really want to not have anything anchored, like if you really want to get any kind of extreme viewpoint from anybody, David Marquet in Leadership Is Language, gave this suggestion.
He said that you could, in a sense, have note cards. There’s different ways You could do it. But basically you get everyone to write down their opinion on something first before anybody says anything. You get everybody to write down their opinion. You could do it in an online thing, whatever it be.
Everybody turns those note cards in and then you read all the note cards and then you have all the viewpoints because even if say, say, Jeannie gives an opinion about something and George has an opinion that’s way different, George may not feel comfortable. Hopefully he does, but he may not feel comfortable speaking that up because it’s so different than what somebody else or what everybody else is saying.
If you want to remove that fear of going way out there, disagreeing with everybody else or saying opinion different from people, then sometimes you may want to use like a note card or something for everybody to share opinion first, then talk based off those note cards.
Just a couple ideas. Either way, it’s good as leaders to speak last. Hope this helps. See you next time.
