“I don’t get any respect,” Simon complained. “I was hired away from my old company because I was promised I would have my own team, run things the way I see fit. But, I get here and all I get is pushback from the team. All my ideas are challenged, sometimes behind my back. It’s almost toxic the way the team agrees with me in public and then goes back to the old way of doing things.”

“So, how do you think you will earn their respect?” I asked.

“Not sure,” he replied. “I had my manager come in and give a little pep talk to the team, including the part about how I was the new manager and they were supposed to do what I say.”

“And, you are telling me that didn’t work?” I smiled.

“It seems to have made things worse,” Simon lamented. “We have a big project that has been stuck for six months and the customer is threatening to cancel the contract and take it to one of our competitors. I know how to fix the bottleneck, but I can’t get the team to implement a new process. The more project pressure, milestone deadlines, the more they fall back on their old methods.”

“So, if you can’t tell them what to do, because that seems not to work, have you tried asking?” I continued to smile.

“You mean get on my knees and beg?” Simon snorted.

“You will have to come up with better questions than a lame request,” I said. “What happens if you open the team up with a question instead of a directive?”

“First of all, it will be time consuming. If I ask about a better way of doing something, they are likely to come up with all kinds of rabbit trails leading in the wrong direction.”

“But, it does open up the possibility of a better way than the old method, no?” I pressed.

“But the time,” Simon pushed back. “It will take a lot of time, time we don’t have.”

“Which would you rather?” I asked. “To spend an appropriate amount of time exploring alternative solutions, or an elongated period of time fighting the pushback to your solution?”