Disagreeing with a Key Team Member: A Survival Guide

Posted on January 22, 2025

Projects solicit many opinions and viewpoints. Good project managers seek these viewpoints and use them to evaluate alternatives and make clear decisions. However, this can get tricky when your preferred approach to addressing an issue conflicts with the approach of a respected team member. Here are steps to take to make this situation as stress-free as possible.

Contrast your experiences. Decisions should be derived using experience and intuition about potential alternatives. It’s important to note that your experiences and intuition are valid, and those of your team members are equally valid. Understanding the basis of their experience and what drives their intuition and contrasting it to yours should be used to weigh the options you both put on the table.

Ensure all of the “truth” is on the table to be considered. First, compile all the facts you and your key team member can confirm. Then, compile the beliefs and intuitive thoughts they trigger. Contrast those thoughts to past experiences to identify facts from past projects that validate the intuition. 

Confirm that ego doesn’t affect your decision-making. Project decision-making isn’t about who is right or wrong. Nor is it a competition. It’s about compiling the biggest collection of thoughts and experiences and using those to generate the best decision. If the best decision is made, the project wins. And if the project wins, the project team wins.

Determine the approach to take if you cannot agree. When managing a project, a no-decision creates an outcome, and it’s rarely the best outcome. A decision needs to be made, even if a disagreement results. Discuss how you both can be comfortable going forward when in dispute with a key team member. Comfort can come from additional tracking approaches or communications that confirm progress and show how the outcome is developing. Doing so when in disagreement helps a) ensure you and your team member’s opinions are valued and b) allows you to change your decision if the outcome you intended isn’t coming to fruition.