The Expert Agreement, is an agreement that my brother and I use for our business relationship but I think it can also apply to personal relationships.

It goes like this, we want to encourage each other to step up and lead whenever necessary, or at least to inject into the conversation a different or diverse view, especially in areas that we would not normally do so. This effort has enormous benefit to the team environment, taking the pressure off the typical leaders to always be coming up with options. Stepping up does not mean that we automatically accede to them but if they lay out a compelling case and no one else has, and they are willing to take responsibility for the decision then this becomes an option to move forward, if we have time constraints, or just seem to be at logger heads. It is basically a “suck it and see” option or “worth a try”.

This is another option to compromise in which case we all lose to gain. By agreeing to the Expert Agreement, we are agreeing to “compromise” which is not then a compromise but strategic agreement on how we can always move forward, if necessary.

So we then have the standard agreement, compromise and the expert agreement.
I certainly prefer the first and the last options before compromising myself and our team.

*Just a note on compromises and why I think they are so problematic. When two people make a compromise and the result does not turn out as hoped there is no one responsible for the decision as both people made it even if it was suggested by one person in particular, it was a compromise (com promise). The Expert Agreement is exactly the same as a compromise only one person is ultimately responsible, with the other responsible for supporting the agreement.