Most leaders try to create alignment by convincing — laying out the brilliant plan and telling everyone to march in a line. Then they wonder why no one is marching. Joe’s point is that even a convinced team hasn’t bought in: the conclusion isn’t alive in them because they didn’t do the work to reach it, so they’ll forget it in five minutes.
“The way that you create alignment isn’t by convincing as much as it is by handling objections.”
Real alignment comes from wanting the team’s objections, not suppressing them. Every objection is a chance to make the solution a little better. When people get to wrestle with the criteria, voice their doubts, and have those doubts listened to, reflected, and solved, they’ve contributed to the solution — and that contribution is buy-in. They’ll execute far better on something they helped build.
Joe connects this to the “no doctrine” he teaches for sales: just as you want a customer’s objections to surface and be handled, you want a team’s objections to surface and improve the work. This also dissolves the false binary between micromanagement and no oversight — autonomy inside clear criteria, with objections welcomed, is the third option.
Related Concepts
- Delegate the solution criteria, not the solution
- Safety enables productive conflict rather than preventing it
- Alignment always beats effort
- Make it safe and expected to say no
- Every ‘no’ is new information that creates clarity
- Hearing objections before deciding — even if you decide the same thing — changes everything
- Work patterns mirror relationship patterns