Dissent or Entertainment?

In any organization or group, dissent is valuable.  We need to be challenged in our thinking and practices to combat our own biases.  Improvements often come from the dissenting voice and the reaction of the group as a whole.

Usually, only a few people take on the role of dissent.  Some people are comfortable with the confrontation that dissent implies.  When their challenges are well-thought out, or if they are the fruit of experience and intuition, benefits come from incorporating their ideas in the discussion.  As a leader, one of our responsibilities is to seriously consider the challenges and their implications, even beyond the views of the group. While group-think can beat down a dissenter, good managers take the dissent, examine it for real worth, and support the dissenter’s valuable contributions.

Problems arise, however, if the dissenter is just enjoying the personal pleasures of being contradictory.  Poking holes in everything is not constructive: it wastes time and discourages less confrontational team members from contributing.  Now, as the leader, our responsibility is to consider the cumulative effect of the dissenter's challenges and to weigh them in the balance of progress and critical thinking.  If an individual has descended from thinker into entertainer, as managers we must move into the counseling role, which is always done in private.  Within a day or two, the individual should be counseled about the need to bring creative ideas into a discussion without destroying the ideas of other participants.  As with all counseling, refusal to change requires the manager to maintain or even increase the pressure to be a team member who contributes critical thoughts in a positive, constructive manner.