Show Notes
New manager tips usually tell you to watch out for the person who argues with everything. This episode is about the person you should actually worry about: the one who agrees with everything. Every idea you bring them gets the same answer. Love it, let's go. It does not matter if it is your best idea or your worst one.
We call that loyalty. We call that person our right hand. It is not loyalty. Most of the time it is a good employee who figured out, somewhere along the way, that agreeing with you was safer than disagreeing with you. And we taught them that, without meaning to, one small "yeah, but" at a time.
The research backs this up. In a 2012 paper in the Academy of Management Journal, Ethan Burris found across three studies that managers rated employees who challenged their ideas as weaker performers than employees who went along with them, and in one study rated the challengers as less loyal. We are all wired to pay for the easy yes.
In this episode John Espinosa walks through The Easy Yes, three moves to get your go-to person's real thinking back.
ONE. FIND THE LAST NO. Ask yourself when your most trusted person last told you no about something that mattered. Watch for two early signs: they always ask what you think first, and they change when you change. Then be honest about what you did the last time they disagreed.
TWO. ASK BEFORE YOU SHOW YOUR HAND. Take your answer out of the question. Say "here's the problem, what would you do" instead of "here's what I'm thinking, what do you think." Get their take in writing before they see your face, and sometimes give them the job of making the case against you.
THREE. PAY FOR THE PUSHBACK. Your attention, your praise, the good projects and the next conversation are the currency, and right now they go to agreement. Thank the pushback even when you do not take it, put it in the review, and when they are right, change the plan and say who changed it.
This is people management at the level most managers never look at: not who performs, but what you are quietly rewarding in the people closest to you. ------------------------------ Get my coaching frameworks behind the scenes. One idea and one small shift to your inbox every week. Start here: https://www.thejohnespinosa.com/start-here
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