ask for the edges of the venn diagram

A rational employee of yours might keep quiet about a difference of take or opinion they have if they mostly agree with you. It can feel costly to disagree with your boss, especially if you’ve worked in low-feedback, high-politics environments where leaders didn’t take kindly to feedback.

The great people you manage, then, likely have insights they won’t share without direct permission. And even that permission might seem suspect to them.

One prompt I’ve found useful for getting folks to pipe up is a Venn diagram. In person or on a video call, I’ll model the two circles of the Venn diagram with my hands held up - one hand = one circle. Then I say something like, “From our discussion so far, it seems like we have some similar views. I’m eager right now to find the places where our views differ. Imagine there’s a Venn diagram - tell me what is on the edge, where the circles don’t overlap.”

-Eric