Welcome back to the Look and Sound of Leadership, an ongoing series of executive

coaching tips designed to help you be perceived in the workplace the way you want

to be perceived. I'm Tom Henschel, your executive coach, and today we're talking

about agreement versus disagreement. This is part one of a 2-part podcast.

Sheldon leads a logistics team for one of the world's largest food distributors.

In our coaching, he repeatedly told me stories that went something like this. He would give explicit instructions to his direct reports about an action he wanted

them to take. Then, a day or two later, he'd find out they had done something completely different than what he'd expected.

He wanted me to help him fix his team.

I asked if he experienced them as rebellious or defiant.

He said, no, he actually experienced them as sincere hard-working

individuals who just couldn't seem to get things right. I asked if I could

challenge one of his assumptions. You mean my assumption that they're sincere?

He asked ready to defend his people?

No, I said.

Your assumption that your instructions are explicit.

Like many people, Sheldon assumed that because his instructions had made sense to him, they

must have made sense to his listeners.

Here's the analogy I used to explain this. Imagine I supervise a group of artists who are mature

talented professionals. I tell one of my artists that the background on a

particular sketch has to be light blue. As I tell her that, I picture which light blue marker

in my rack I'd use. My artist even says to me, right, light blue, got it. But what my artist has pictured in her head is a pencil that has a completely

different shade and texture and density than what I'm expecting. When she brings me her work,

...