The birth of an idea you’ve had, it’s first release into verbal language in front of others, is a vulnerable moment. A moment not fit for the devil nor his advocate.
You need to un-invite the devils advocate to these tender moments. That attitude and outlook is not welcome in the birthing room.
The devils advocate’s favorite words are “yeah, but…”
Anyone off the street can play the devils advocate, could tell you why something won’t work. Much harder to find people who will imagine why it will work.
The devils advocate doesn’t have to have sound reasoning, but only to plant doubt by any means necessary.
The devils advocate voices dissent early, but will go along with the idea. That way no matter if the idea works or not, he gets to trumpet victory.
In this way, the devils advocate is always right but never owns any true responsibility either way. The best he can feel is luke warm.
The devils advocate doesn’t view it as his job to offer alternatives.
The devils advocate is socially acceptable. But unacceptable to remarkable people and groups.
The devils advocate is afraid of losing what he has. His goal is the status quo.
The devils advocate uses “I” and “you” while speaking, but rarely “we”.
The devils advocate sees his list of reasonable objections as reasons to stay put and do nothing…not realizing that no valuable idea doesn’t have a list of reasonable objections.
Playing the devils advocate is fear based dialogue.
Saying “I just don’t like the idea” is 100 times better than playing the devils advocate because at least you’re pointing to yourself as the road block and not trying to cover it up by pointing to something else.
Having differing opinions on a team is great. Challenging an idea is vital.
But this will come two or three or four conversations down the line, where the purpose of the conversation will be for everyone to challenge the idea in order to make it stronger…not to passive aggressively dissent.
At this point, it’s not playing the devils advocate, because everyone is united in the goal…the goal is to poke holes and see if this idea can hold up. And everyone is excited about the outcome, either way.
Completely different conversation.
In 1587 the devils advocate term was coined. It was his job to be a skeptic during the sainthood application process. But the devils advocate had an opponent called….the promoter of the cause.
Let’s start playing Promoter Of The Cause instead.
