Kenny (Baas) SchweglerIf you're an architect or tech lead, making authoritative decisions based on your technical expertise is probably what got you to where you are. That probably still feels like the right thing to do.
That's exactly what makes it tricky.
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We're trained, explicitly and through years of professional reinforcement, to have strong opinions, drive toward outcomes, and be the person who knows the answer. But the decisions we make rarely affect only us. They affect the teams who have to live and work within them, often for years.
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Most people in the room will follow your lead before they've had a chance to think. Not because they agree, but because that's how social influence works.
Robert Cialdini's research on authority shows that when someone in a position of authority demonstrates a preferred solution, even without explicitly saying "do it this way", the social pressure on those lower in the hierarchy to conform is substantial. It operates largely below conscious awareness.
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Robert Cialdini's research on authority shows that when someone in a position of authority demonstrates a preferred solution, even without explicitly saying "do it this way", the social pressure on those lower in the hierarchy to conform is substantial. It operates largely below conscious awareness.
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In architecture sessions, this is compounded by what researchers call status characteristics theory. People quickly form status hierarchies based on available cues: job title, seniority, confidence, fluency with technical jargon. Higher-status participants speak more, get interrupted less, and have their contributions treated as more credible, independent of the actual quality of those contributions.
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Your conviction that you know the answer becomes, paradoxically, the thing that prevents the group from finding a better one.
In my work, I rely heavily on collaborative modelling and the Architectural Advice Process to create and hold space for finding better ones with the group. But if fear of speaking up is already baked into the culture, these practices alone won't get you better decisions. They only work when people actually feel safe enough to use them.
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Which is ultimately the deeper question: how do we change the conditions, not just the practices?
#SoftwareArchitecture #CollaborativeModelling #DomainDrivenDesign #TeamTopologies #FacilitatingArchitecture