Why do team members get offended by your challenges?

Why do people get offended by our challenge voice? 

The challenge voice is one of the voices we most readily recognize; it’s the voice that stimulates our prehistoric brain most easily.  It triggers our most primitive reactions – flight, fight, or freeze.  Typically, when we are challenged, we know we have been so.

When people react badly to a challenge, it’s often because they didn’t see it coming or it wasn’t skillfully applied and leaves others feeling attacked.  As a leader, we need to learn not only to deliver skillful challenges but also to be able to accept them!

The challenge voice is designed to make us stop and think; to interrupt what we know from our own perspective and switch our thinking to another point of view.  It helps us make better decisions and create a wider perspective.

What stops us from using challenge effectively? 

Some of us may have tried in the past to challenge and been met by defensive behavior or unwelcomed return attacks, resulting in us avoiding using this voice again.  Some organizations have gone through a past history where challenge has created a toxic culture which makes it feel unsafe to challenge others for fear of recreating that working environment.

How can YOU get better at embracing the challenge voice?

For teams that have had bad experiences of challenge and where it sends them into a state of silence (freeze or flight), help the team understand that this voice is an important part of allowing us to progress.  In the first instance, signpost the challenge by saying things like “I’d like to challenge that point…” “My challenge to you is…” – This allows the receiver to know that something we may not want to hear is coming.

Once we’ve been through the challenge cycle, have a bit of reflection time with the team asking questions like “Which part of that challenge felt most uncomfortable”,  “Was that a reasonable challenge?”, “Which part of this challenge felt unreasonable?”.  These sorts of questions allow both the challenger and the team to practice how they challenge effectively.  Be sure you are open to the feedback without getting defensive and potentially attacking back otherwise, you will lose the trust of the team.  9/10 times, when teams think about what was unreasonable about a challenge, they recognize the answer is nothing, and that they just don’t like being picked up on something they missed!

If you yourself are someone who challenges openly but experiences a lot of attacking or defensive behavior in return, it’s likely that your challenges are not landing effectively and you may be unskilfully applying.  Again, signposting is one way to soften the blow.

Ensure that when you are challenging you keep it away from the personal and always use facts to help ground the challenge.  Give others time to formulate their answer and respond, you don’t need to challenge everything!

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