How to tell your team about a decision you don't agree with

Priya runs a team of eight at a mid-sized firm. Three weeks ago the leadership group decided that from next month everyone comes into the office three days a week instead of two. Priya was in that meeting. She argued against it, at some length, and she lost. Now it is Monday, the team is in the room, and she has to tell eight people about a decision she doesn't agree with, and most of them already know roughly how she feels about it.

Most managers do a version of this a few times a year. It is one of the conversations managers bring to the Management Lab, and when it goes wrong it usually goes wrong in one of two ways, which look on the surface like opposites.

"Nothing I can do about it"

The first version starts something like this. "So, they've decided we're moving to three days from the first. I know. Nothing I can do about it."

In a narrow sense it is honest. What the team hears, though, is that the decision belongs to somebody else and Priya is passing it on. The person who could have carried their objections upstairs has just told them she isn't going to. Whatever they say next, she has already said she can't help.

For about ten minutes it feels fine, because everyone in the room is on her side and the grievance is shared. A month later somebody doesn't come in on the third day, and Priya has to hold a line she told the whole team she didn't hold. She has nothing to stand on, because she said at the start that it wasn't hers.

"I think this is a good move for us"

The other version is the one managers are often told to use. "I think this is actually a good move for us. It'll help with the handovers and we'll get more done together." Delivered with some energy, as if she believes it.

The team knows she argued against it. Some of them heard her do it three weeks ago. So it doesn't land as enthusiasm. It sounds like a manager saying what she has been told to say, and once a team has heard you do that they listen for it, so from then on the rest of what she says gets discounted, the project and the appraisal and whether the restructure really is off the table as much as the office days.

The plainer line

The replacement is plainer than either. "I argued against this and I lost. It's happening from the first, and I'm going to make it work for us. I'll tell you what I understand about why they went for it."

The first two lines ran two questions together, whether Priya agreed with the decision and whether she is going to hold it. The plain version gives the team a separate answer to each. She stays in the room as the person who argued for them, and she is also the person who will expect them to turn up on the third day. She has also given them the reasoning to ask about, rather than leaving them to work around her.

The last part of the line matters as much as the first. A manager who can say what the reasons were, even reasons she found unconvincing, has understood the decision. If she can't, she has only been told about it, and sooner or later somebody on the team will ask her something she can't answer.

What the team hears

In the Lab the pair swaps. The manager who has just played Priya sits down as one of the eight and hears the lines come back at her.

"They've decided", heard from a chair in the team, sounds like a door closing. Your first thought is who you should talk to now, since it isn't going to be her.

"I think it's a good move" sounds like a lie, and the next thought is what else she has said that wasn't true. You stop listening somewhere in the middle of the sentence.

The honest version is not comfortable to hear either. You are still annoyed about the three days. But it is the decision you are annoyed about, and the person delivering it is still someone you can complain to. Once you have heard it from the other side it is easier to see why the plain line holds up a month later, when somebody hasn't come in and Priya has to say something about it.

Where it gets rehearsed

Nobody in the Lab plays themselves and no real decision is used. Two managers play a scene built from a situation the group recognises, I stop it at the first line that goes wrong, we look at what that line did to the conversation, and the same pair runs it again from that point. Then they swap. The feedback is about what a line did, not about the person who said it. At the end each manager writes down one conversation they are going to have, and when, and keeps it.

If one of your managers has a decision to deliver this quarter that they argued against, the Management Lab page has the three hours set out step by step and the price at the bottom.