Mark Scott: Why you can gain a lot by sitting down with those who don’t agree with you

Mark Silverman had a lot of voices in his ear in the early days of Big Ten Network.

The launch on Sept. 1, 2007, was a glorious day. But it was quickly followed by opinions from every direction as people with ties to the Big Ten Conference expressed their thoughts about what was and wasn’t working with BTN.

Patience wasn’t an option when it came to games not being broadcast or revenue being less than had been anticipated. Fans complained to their schools, the schools complained to the conference and the conference reached out to Silverman.

Fortunately, Silverman, who has been president from day one, was the cool head in the room. He did a masterful job of keeping his team on task, dealing with challenges as they came up and sticking to his vision of what he knew the network could be. The disciplined leadership has paid off with more than 300 affiliates and a presence in more than 52 million homes.

But Silverman did not just maintain an even keel in the face of criticism. He openly reached out to many of his critics and sought to gain additional feedback about the problems they saw at the network.

It’s a step many leaders are not willing to make.

 

Don’t be insecure

No one likes to be told that they are doing something wrong. Even those who say they embrace criticism or that they love it when mistakes are made must feel some sense of frustration when things don’t go right. It’s part of being human. So the ability to take criticism in stride and reach out to those who provide the negative feedback is a skill that many otherwise very successful people find hard to do.

In the case of Silverman, he saw it as an opportunity to make his organization stronger. So he contacted bloggers who wrote negative stories about BTN and set up meetings to discuss their concerns. He also went on talk shows and met with editorial boards and basically did whatever he could to gather feedback and use it to get better.

His approach going into these meetings was not to argue, nor was it to blindly accept every concern they had and always offer the perfect solution. It was to take what he believed would make BTN a great network, compare it to the opinions he was hearing and figure out the best response. If the critic was right, he was happy to make a change. If he didn’t agree with the opinion, he was comfortable not making a change.

Either way, he demonstrated a willingness to hear concerns and an approachability that would serve the network well.

When you have the confidence to hear criticism and even change course, you give your organization the chance to achieve great things.

 

Mark Scott is Senior Associate Editor for Smart Business Chicago. He is interested in the people and businesses making a difference in Chicago.

Reach him at (800) 988-4726 x216 or [email protected]