This is definitely a very difficult spaghetti to untangle, agreed. But IMO a very good start would be to never accept such polar statements in the first place.
"If you use extremist and simplistic generalizations you are not worth listening to in a discussion" would be the first policy I'd put into a team.
Balanced arguments with pro/con analysis is what makes an engineer senior and a contributor to an argument. Everybody else shouldn't participate the next time around.
Agreed. But the balanced people are the least vocal. As Bertrand Russel noted:
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and
fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and
wiser people so full of doubts."
I am someone who moved from a programer role into management. My appeal to the balanced senior engineers is to speak up more. We don't have to swing as much as economists, enough to frustrate President Truman to say:
"Give me a one-handed Economist. All my economists
say 'on hand...', then 'but on the other..."
But we can bring more nuance into discussions - especially calling out those among us with polar positions.
As a manager, you need to find a way to pull information from people: with some it's a team meeting,with others it's over a meal during the lunch,etc.
I even do this sometimes during the management meetings,when I see people clearly not quite happy about something but reluctant to speak,so I ask them directly what's on their mind and that's often enough for them to tell way more than you could have gotten by just expecting for them to speak up.
All of that is sadly true and it's a fundamental problem with humanity. I'd say that the only solution I am seeing is that the managers must proactively shut down the extremists early and hard.
If you demonstrate that you will not submit to extremists, I've found that a good chunk of the more balanced people are then encouraged to speak up.
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TL;DR: Silence the bad and loud voices, and the wiser and quieter voices will start speaking.
"If you use extremist and simplistic generalizations you are not worth listening to in a discussion" would be the first policy I'd put into a team.
Balanced arguments with pro/con analysis is what makes an engineer senior and a contributor to an argument. Everybody else shouldn't participate the next time around.