Five Ways Leaders Can Turn Pushback Into Progress

Effectively responding to pushback may well rank as one of the most important competencies that leaders can possess, and it’s especially critical during times of transition, like returning to the office post-pandemic. Such resistance to an organizational policy, directive, or decision can take many forms, ranging from voicing concerns and raising questions to active opposition and sabotage.1

Effective leaders think of pushback as an opportunity to boost their team’s learning while moving their organization forward. The objective should be to increase people’s understanding and build support by tempering both advocate enthusiasm and contrarian pessimism. This deeper level of understanding, while not necessarily satisfying to all in the moment, fosters a climate of candor, humility, adaptation, and trust, thereby subtly steering pushback away from latent disruptive tendencies.

Drawing on decades of research, C-suite observations, and interviews, we’ve identified the major mistakes leaders make when encountering pushback and offer five guidelines to help them better respond.

What Doesn’t Work

Leaders make three primary mistakes when facing ambivalence, disagreement, or resistance:

Suppressing uncertainty. Pushback increases uncertainty when questions are raised that might not have immediate answers or perspectives are introduced that might have recently emerged or been sidelined or overlooked. Some leaders respond to uncertainty-induced pushback by marginalizing concerns, offering placating assurances, or invoking authoritarian voices. Such practices offer false certainty that undermines trust in the long term.

According to our research, even employees who seek more certainty in their work lives want their organizations to embrace uncertainty.2 Effective leaders avoid the temptation to paper over uncertainty, even when they face demands for a level of certainty that simply doesn’t exist. Even if they don’t know the answers now, they can provide an operating level of certainty by discussing how they will find those answers.

Ignoring power dynamics. Leaders with positional or acquired status directly or subtly influence the nature of the pushback. Highly authoritarian power structures tend to drive pushback underground. Likewise, more subtle power signals can suppress open discussion of legitimate concerns. Leaders might then wrongly equate silence with agreement. Some people will feign acceptance while others sow dissent in the “meeting after the meeting,” thereby revealing and often amplifying people’s fears.

We had an opportunity to observe one seasoned executive group’s reaction — which consisted of tepid and token feedback — when their CEO proposed a new initiative. The CEO, sensing a lack of candor, probed for more input. One frustrated executive eventually blurted out, “We don’t share our thoughts on this issue because you are going to do what you are going to do, regardless of what we say.” This remarkably candid comment suggested a deeper challenge: How do powerful people with strong views on particular issues encourage candor? Effective leaders take active steps to mitigate disruptive dialogue — discussed below — because they recognize that inherent power dynamics greatly influence the quality of any discussion.

Assuming that the loudest voices represent a consensus. Pushback takes many forms: Some of them are obvious, like complaints or employee petitions, while others are more subtle, like queries in meetings or a lack of engagement. Leaders are often tempted to pay more attention to the most vocal employees, assuming the people with the biggest megaphones represent majority opinion. They may or may not.

When the loudest or most politically powerful voices dominate the discussion, such dynamics often create an inaccurate impression of the level of support or divisiveness. Effective leaders recognize the peril at either extreme: the enthusiasts glossing over concerning issues or the contrarians undermining potential support.

Recommendations for Engaging With Pushback

Effective leaders not only avoid suppressing uncertainty, ignoring power dynamics, and assuming that the most vocal represent consensus opinion — they also take active countermeasures that reflect the following guidelines.

1. Set ground rules for the conversation. Ground rules like the following drive expectations, temper disrespectful advocacy, and increase the value of pushback opportunities for everyone:

• Seek to understand viewpoints you don’t agree with. When discussing contentious issues, many people’s first instinct is to offer an instant rebuttal or counterpoint. Resist that temptation by demonstrating a willingness to engage with a differing point of view. Simple tactics like asking questions or rephrasing someone else’s argument — particularly those with which you disagree — can temper the rebuttal and almost magically enhance the conversational tone. Likewise, statements like “Tell me how my idea might be wrong” or “I may have missed something; please say more” signal openness to new ideas.
• Respectfully disagree with others. Respectfully framing the disagreements with language such as “Let me offer another perspective” sets the right discussion tone while also encouraging those who are more hesitant to speak up. Reluctance to share differing points of view often signals an underlying trust deficit. Sometimes leaders need to encourage others to share their concerns despite the inherent power differences in the room.
• Avoid polarizing, stake-in-the-ground assertions. Advocating with too much certainty may well trigger power-dynamic issues. Indicating probability levels, such as “I’m 95% certain on this fact,” often stimulates more robust debate.
• Depersonalize pushback. If a decision is labeled as “the CEO’s program,” many people will self-censor and avoid raising concerns out of fear of offending the person in power. Depersonalizing pushback by recording concerns on a whiteboard, without attribution, mitigates this power dynamic while tempering strong emotions.
• Shift your opinions and reactions as the discussion evolves. Employees often need to be reminded that changing their opinion after considering new evidence or gaining a fresh perspective is not a sign of weakness. No one should fear a loss of face for shifting their opinion. In fact, effective leaders highlight when their opinions shift by making a statement such as “I see an issue that wasn’t on my radar screen.” As the dialogue emerges, reframe key issues to underscore new perspectives.

2. Orient the team about pushback opportunities. Many meetings or initiative rollouts conclude with question-and-answer periods without first offering attendees an orientation on expectations around pushback. Absent clarity, people often make a variety of untested and unspoken assumptions that might not be accurate.

Some employees become disenfranchised by pushback opportunities because they think all of their ideas should be accepted in totality. They don’t expect reasoned debate or pushback to their pushback. That’s why wise leaders carefully orient employees about possible outcomes other than the accept/reject polarized extremes. They introduce other alternatives, such as tweaking the plan, introducing a test period, delaying implementation, modifying a decision, or rethinking the proposal.

3. Select the right forums and settings. Some settings, like town hall gatherings or online forums, tend to embolden more emotive expressions of opinions, posturing, and venting.3 Such situations might discourage useful inquiry and questions from those less inclined to engage in emotive scrums. The right venues and forums maximize the opportunities for insightful queries, deliberative discourse, and respectful debate. Typically, smaller groups of people who are equipped with the proper discussion parameters work best. Likewise, properly monitored online forums for smaller groups can encourage better pushback dynamics.

Leaders also need to be mindful that some people are reluctant to share concerns in front of others because they fear being viewed as poor team players or they lack confidence in how to express concerns or defend their views. To encourage people who are more reluctant to speak up, it’s often helpful to provide them with the meeting’s discussion points in advance and encourage them to write down their concerns and queries.

4. Focus on educating before advocating. Skilled educators soon learn to jettison the idea that a single good explanation will suffice to build understanding. Typically, they discuss their methods for arriving at their conclusions, including the opposing viewpoints and extant questions. This approach bakes uncertainty into conclusions, making room for further discussion and contrary views.

In contrast, advocates rarely discuss evidence or approaches that might contradict their firmly held viewpoints. They often trivialize or deride opposing views when they do entertain them. Advocates might short-circuit any criticism, downplaying uncertainty and reasoning that a brief explanation will enlighten others. Even smart executives often fall into this trap, overestimating the degree and depth of their educational efforts.

Advocating might play a role at some point after educating, but ultimately, effective leaders assume that allowing people to voice concerns reaps benefits. Short term, the pushback might result in tweaks that will increase long-term acceptance and smooth implementation.

5. Signpost inflection points. As decisions, initiatives, and policies evolve, a leader’s level of certainty and openness to pushback shifts. In the absence of leadership clarity about these inflection points, employees apply unspoken rules regarding pushback, such as the following:

• Rule A: If the leader has not made a final decision, then I can speak up and candidly share my perspectives.
• Rule B: If the leader has a strong position or has made a final decision, then I support it or shut up.
• Rule C: If I agitate on an issue long enough, leaders will yield.

If unspoken rules A and B undergird the pushback dynamics, then leaders might overestimate the degree of support for an initiative or decision. Why? Because employees operating under rule B assume that requests for feedback are for theater or designed to manufacture buy-in; they self-censor or offer only token opposition. Consequently, dissenting and potentially valuable voices go silent.

Rule C animates pushback dynamics in precisely the opposite direction, with endless debate; this fosters a culture of complaint after decisions have been tweaked, modified, or finalized. Effective leaders know that openness does not provide a license for never-ending discussion; after all, pushback to the pushback can go on forever.

The best way to inhibit these silent rules from taking root is to clearly signpost inflection points during pushback. Leaders who camouflage their sentiments in the name of openness undermine the candor of the entire conversation. Instead, effective leaders share their level of openness to tweaking proposed plans, proclaiming when their sentiments have shifted, and clearly signaling when the time for pushback has ended.

A Pushback Success Story

Laurie Butz, the CEO of Capital Credit Union, routinely uses these guidelines to lean into pushback to fully understand what employees believe they are losing as new initiatives roll out. For example, as the COVID-19 threat faded, she sought to restart face-to-face all-employee meetings to enhance inclusiveness and engage in more robust, thoughtful discussions about pending initiatives. She believes that the educational process goes in both directions, which requires more face-to-face forums that encourage adherence to more productive discussion ground rules than screen-enabled venting.

Yet that announcement was greeted with considerable pushback by employees who faced a long commute to the twice-a-year gatherings. Some used online surveys to voice concerns about the expense and time, while others expressed their discontent directly to their immediate supervisor, arguing that “Zoom meetings worked pretty well during COVID.”

Butz acknowledged these concerns while respectfully justifying the in-person gathering because, after all, “you could have a Zoom wedding, but something important would be missing.” Similar messaging was echoed in more personal channels by her “ambassadors” (opinion leaders).

Over time, the in-person meetings (1) increased employee engagement, (2) renewed employee interest in being a part of the process, and (3) spawned more thoughtful discussions of key issues. Quantitative evidence backed up these observations. For example, participation in all-employee surveys increased from 60% to 91% after the in-person meetings resumed, and 83% of survey respondents reported that they were “highly engaged in their work.” Anecdotal evidence also emerged: Employees often left the in-person meetings inquiring, “When will we have another opportunity to meet like this?”

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Suppressing pushback by repressing uncertainty, invoking power dynamics, and paying too much attention to the most vocal employees may well induce short-term conformity and compliance at the expense of undermining long-term trust. Adroitly and respectfully managing pushback involves an upfront time commitment that engages employees while supplying forward momentum. The bonus: Leaders learn to more subtly influence how employees interpret trends, events, and decisions and develop greater insight into emerging issues.