I’m delighted to share a guest post from Daniel Buhr in the series on Disagreement. Daniel was one of the co-authors of the book Energize Your 
Leadership. He works in health and safety at a Fortune 500 Company and shares his passion for leadership at cybuhr.com and @Cybuhr on Twitter.
Heels dug in? Check.
Ears closed? Check.
Mind made up? Check.
Bring on the discussion, I’m ready. There’s no way I’m going to lose this one!
Everyone comes from a different life experience and has witnessed, researched, or considered things you haven’t. -REALLY!
But far too often we are too busy, proud, judgmental, and afraid to dive in and try to discover what those things are.
This morning I watched this unfold on a friend’s Facebook feed:
I was recently visiting with someone about the goals of young professionals in a specific location. She said that everyone wants to be a manager.
So I asked why:
She said they want to sit behind a big desk and sign things.
Instantly I visualized a “manager” sitting behind a big desk with their feet resting on the desk reading a newspaper. A clap of his hands and someone comes running with a hot beverage. A loud shout results in several people running into his office – varying ages, heights, and ethnicities – all cowering in fear. “Yes Boss…” (True story!)
Over the past few months I’ve had several opportunities to visit with groups of people whose lives are being impacted by policies they don’t like or agree with.
Most of them have communicated their concerns with the first level key stakeholder – hoping for a fast change. Now it’s clear that although that person cares, change can’t happen from that level.
So individually some of them have:
Collectively their over-riding belief is that the key-stakeholder can’t be trusted and change just isn’t going to happen.
So most have stopped communicating while others never bothered to communicate directly with the one person that can make change happen.
At the same time, they are still so troubled by the situation that each time the topic comes up, almost all of them continue to express lots of frustration and absorb the not so positive energy of those around them.
So why persist?
I was leading a small team in a culturally diverse city in the U.S. when two of my employees asked why all the titled leaders on our leadership team were white.
I was raised in a part of the country that was not culturally diverse, today – nearly a decade after their question 89% of the population in my home state is white and 95% of the county that surrounded the town I grew up in was white. As a result, it was a question I didn’t see coming and one I did not have a good answer for.
[Tweet “If you seek to lead well… You will consider uncomfortable questions.”]
My reactions:
