When Leaders Don’t Agree With Organizational Decisions

By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN

One of the challenges in any leadership role is that you will sometimes be asked to implement policies, procedures, and practices that you disagree with. New managers often ask me how they should deal with this and whether they should share their viewpoints with the staff. While expressing your displeasure and proving your advocacy to staff may be tempting, that strategy is rarely a good idea. It can sometimes backfire and leave you looking like a disempowered leader.

A better approach is to look at this through a different lens. Throughout your leadership career, you will experience times when an organizational strategy selected is not one you would have advocated for and maybe even believe might fail. I experienced this when a Medical Center Director shifted the organizational structure from departments to interdisciplinary service lines. The decision was made unilaterally after attending a National VA Leadership meeting and listening to another executive talk about the benefits. There was no discussion about whether this change in organizational structure would be the right one for our medical center which was very different than the one discussed at the conference.

I watched the reactions of the executive leaders, who were told that their roles would soon be dramatically changing. Most were very angry. As I studied our Medical Center Director, who was usually pretty rational and sought input before making drastic changes, I realized this situation was different. He had made a decision that was not open for discussion. As they say in the military – the ship had left the dock and was not turning back around. As leaders, we had a choice: to be on it or leave. There was no middle ground.

As a leader, I have always believed that there are things in your circle of influence and others that are not. The decision to change to a service line structure was in my circle of concern but not in my circle of influence. Our nursing staff and the leaders who reported to me were devastated. I was strangely at peace, believing I needed to make the best of a not-great situation. I developed a position Jeff Bezos described as “disagree but commit.” While a decision is being made, everyone involved is empowered to disagree and debate. But once a decision is made, everyone must support it.

Sometimes, your concerns may prove wrong in the long term, but not in this situation, as the medical center eventually returned to the original structure. Watching other leaders taught me that you can waste much energy emotionally reacting to things you can’t control. As a leader, there will always be organizational decisions sometimes at the systems level that you vehemently disagree with. I tell frontline leaders as they share change with staff – allow them some time to vent but don’t feed into the complaining. Once the venting is over, it is time to move on and be future-focused and solutions-oriented. When the ship has left the dock, you must either be on it or disembark.