Why You’re Bad at Disagreeing (And How to Fix It)

JULIA MINSON: What I always tell people is that a constructive disagreement is a disagreement that leads the two parties to want to talk to each other again. So it's not reaching agreement. It's not building consensus. It's not finding a negotiated compromise. It's can we disagree but in a way that makes you want to talk to me and makes me want to talk to you at some point in the future? [MUSIC PLAYING] ALISON BEARD: Today we're speaking with Julia Minson of the Harvard Kennedy School. She's the author of the book How To Disagree Better and co-author of the HBR article "A Smarter Way To Disagree. " Julia, welcome. JULIA MINSON: Thank you. It's great to be here. ALISON BEARD: So why do teams and organizations need to do a better job of disagreeing? JULIA MINSON: Well, I mean, disagreement is such a crucial skill for any organization. The reason we bring people together into teams is because we want their opinions. If I didn't want another person to express their views, why am I paying for their presence in the room? There's a great quote by William Wrigley Jr. like the Wrigley Field and the Wrigley chewing gum guy, who said, "When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary. " ALISON BEARD: And so what do teams normally get wrong? Is it they're not disagreeing enough or they're disagreeing in unhealthy ways? JULIA MINSON: So I mean, honestly, I think it's both, because it's a system. So when we don't feel like our ideas are going to be received with appreciation, with receptiveness, we don't want to speak up. And so we can advise leaders and team members all day long about how disagreement is important. But it's important in these fairly abstract ways. It'll be good for the company. team. But the cost to me as an individual, if I disagree with my boss or team member, is very immediate and very real. And so people are always making this trade off between do I want to speak up for the good of the future and have a difficult and unpleasant and risky conversation right now? So there's a real tension there. ALISON BEARD: Yeah, I imagine that personality differences and cultural differences also come into pretty significant play here also. JULIA MINSON: Yeah, so I think there's always kind of different factors that predict how well we are at any skill. And so disagreement is like musical ability. Some people are just better at it than other people. But all of us can get a lot better with a little bit of training and attention to how we're doing it. ALISON BEARD: Yeah. And so do you encourage the leaders that you work with to embrace disagreement, to encourage it among their team members? JULIA MINSON: So what I really work on with leaders is a skill set that I call receptiveness to opposing views. And it's basically engaging in any disagreement in a way that shows the other person that you are thoughtfully considering their perspective. Because I can tell you that you should disagree with me all day long. But if you work for me, you're going to say, well, does she really mean it? Am I going to get ostracized? kicked off this project? So I have to show with my behavior that I really mean it. And the way I show it is by showing you that I'm really thinking about what you're bringing to the table, and I'm really engaging with it instead of just saying, oh, you should disagree, because disagreement is good for us. ALISON BEARD: Given that most of us probably do have a distaste for disagreement, particularly in workplace settings and particularly in times that feel divisive and so you don't want to bring that divisiveness to the office, what's the first step in just overcoming that hurdle as a leader yourself, even before you start encouraging it on your team? How do you get into the mode of, OK, disagreement is healthy and I actually want it here? JULIA MINSON: Leaders have a tremendous amount of agency and leverage by modeling the type of behavior that they want to see. So if I can change my own behavior to demonstrate receptiveness to opposing perspectives, then my team members see it. And it's really useful to model the behavior we want to see in very public settings. Because if I'm having a one on one conversation, then I have shown one person that I'm receptive to their views. If I'm having a regular team check in, then every Tuesday, I'm showing 10 people that I'm receptive to their views. And so as I start showing and behaving in the way that I want other people to behave, then I am telegraphing to the world, this is the type of thing that's welcome here

and this is the values that we have as an organization. ALISON BEARD: Yeah. So I definitely want to dig into how you demonstrate receptiveness to others' views and opinions and disagreement. But first, let me just ask you, there are leaders who say, yes, I love disagreement, but what are the biggest mistakes that they make in modeling disagreement to others? Like, what are the problems that you see out there in the world? JULIA MINSON: So I think people who say that they love disagreement, they probably do love disagreement, but they are not recognizing that they're a minority. Most people don't love disagreement. That's one difference. The other thing is that if you're a leader who loves disagreement, you might be forgetting about the status differences that give people different opportunities to act on the way they prefer to act. So a colleague of mine and I were doing a training in a hospital system a couple of months ago, and that hospital system had one of these leaders that loves disagreement. And then when we got there and we were talking to some of the other employees, fairly senior people, they basically said, look, when the executive team disagrees, it sounds like mom and dad fighting. And so the people who were in the position of power felt very comfortable with it, but everybody looking on didn't feel nearly as great about it. So appreciating the fact that other people have different circumstances than you do and different preferences than you do, I think, is a really useful thing to do. ALISON BEARD: And what are some other ways that you think leaders subconsciously suppress disagreement while thinking that they're doing a good job of embracing conflict and embracing viewpoints? JULIA MINSON: So I think a really high level, upstream way that we suppress disagreement is by hiring people that we agree with. And it's a very funny thing, because of course you should hire people you agree with, because those are the smart people, because they agree with you. ALISON BEARD: Maybe they're the smart people. JULIA MINSON: Right. I work at a school of public policy. And so a lot of our students manage large public organizations, and many of them are very ideology driven. They went into public service because they have a mission. And so they will say things to me like, well, Julia, I work at an environmental nonprofit. Should I be hiring people who don't care about the environment? I'm like, yeah, you should, because otherwise everybody at your organization is drinking the same Kool-Aid. And that, I think, feels quite counterintuitive to folks. By the time you have a team in place that feels really comfortable, you might have a problem. ALISON BEARD: So your research has identified reasons why most of us are pretty bad at understanding other people's perspectives. So just outline what you found about that. JULIA MINSON: Sure. So a lot of my work is grounded in an old social psychology theory called naive realism. The idea behind naive realism is that people think that they get it. They naively believe that their perceptions are a reflection of an objective reality. I see the world as it is. I am a smart, reasonable, good person who basically, like, I'm with the program. And that makes sense, because how else could you get through the world? The problem with naive realism is that when we encounter disagreement, we have to say, well, if I'm a smart, reasonable person who basically gets it, why are we disagreeing? And the obvious answer to that question is that the other person doesn't get it. And because they don't get it, I am going to fix them. And of course, fixing then takes different forms. So sometimes you say, well, let me tell how it really is. Let me show you the report. data. Let me give you the customer feedback, and then you will see that I'm right and you're wrong. And that often doesn't fly because of course, the other person, they also think that they get it, and they've seen the data, and they've interpreted the data in a different way. And they have years of experience that dictate their understanding of the situation. ALISON BEARD: And they prioritize different things. JULIA MINSON: Exactly, exactly. And so when just telling people facts doesn't work, you jump to a couple other conclusions that are even more nefarious, which one is, well, maybe they're not that smart. They went to the lesser business school, and so we can forgive them for not being very good at understanding complex relationships. Or even worse, they are biased.

They don't want to get it. If they admit that I am right, it will look bad for them. Their budget will get cut or their staff will get cut, or they will have to recognize that I'm a better fit for this leadership position. And so they are just intentionally not seeing the light. And so once you tell that story to yourself inside your head, it's very hard to have a respectful conversation between adults. ALISON BEARD: And at the same time, we also don't see how they are perceiving us, which is with all those same judgments. JULIA MINSON: Exactly, exactly. That's exactly right. ALISON BEARD: So one of the main points of your book and your article is that to disagree better, you need to focus on not your mindset or your emotions, but on your behaviors. We recently did a podcast with Amer Kaissi of Trinity University, who talked about the importance of positive intent mindset. Why do you think that narrowing down on behaviors, rather than what you're thinking and feeling ahead of time, is most important? JULIA MINSON: Because honestly, a very practical way, I am focusing on ROI. So I think that if we all had positive intentions and warmer evaluations of our counterparts and had better emotional self-control, the world would be a better place. It's just that's really, really hard work, and it takes a very long time. And there's something that gets in the way, which is interpersonal perceptions. So if I think the kindest, nicest, best intentioned things towards you, there's still two things that have to happen for that to impact our interaction. One is I have to be able to express all that. I have to express it consistently and with signals that you understand. And then you have to interpret the signal. And so at every step along that chain, we lose information and we misinterpret each other. So what often happens is I prepare for a conversation that I expect to be difficult by saying, I'm going to be really patient, and curious, exercise intellectual humility, and I'm going to show empathy. And then I walk into the conversation, the person starts talking, and half of my intentions are out the door. Because I'm still trying, but I am not a Buddhist monk, so I don't have amazing control over emotions. I just have medium decent control. And then I try to show my empathy and curiosity, but I might accidentally ask a snarky question. I didn't intend it to be snarky, but it came out to be snarky. And then you are reading all of this, and of course, this is a disagreement. So you have negative expectations about me. And so the question that I asked that was kind of snarky, that wasn't intended to be snarky, comes across as super snarky to you. And so I'm doing all this work in my brain, but what you're perceiving is not good. And so if that's the problem that we're trying to solve, then we need to get closer in the production chain to the thing that we want, which is the perceiver to experience us as being empathetic and curious and engaged with their perspective. And so that's behavior. ALISON BEARD: Yeah. Now, this does presume that the goal of the person in the disagreement is to come to a common happy place as opposed to just win the argument. So what do you say to people who are like, well, no, I actually want to win, so why should I approach things that way? JULIA MINSON: Yeah, OK, I'm so glad you brought up goals, because it's either my second favorite topic or it's tied as being with my favorite topic. The goal of winning an argument is generally unrealistic. When you are imagining your winning argument and the other person saying, oh, I'm sorry, Julia, you were right. I'm wrong. You're so smart. It's never going to happen. ALISON BEARD: My husband's really going to enjoy this conversation, I have to tell you. OK, go ahead. JULIA MINSON: Because in any argument, again, the math is that both people are living that fantasy. So at best, your odds are 50/50, which are not great odds. But in reality, most conversations, if a person feels like they're being argued into a corner, they're just going to walk away. They're going to roll their eyes and they're going to say

I don't need this. And I think that's something we often forget in conversations. It's an opt in, voluntary activity. And so if the other person doesn't like how you're treating them, the easiest thing for them to do is to just walk away. Probably the most familiar example of all of that is teenagers. But there are a lot of settings. So for example, in health care. If you're a health provider and you're trying to persuade a patient to do something they don't want to do, get a vaccine or take their blood pressure medications or get a particular set of tests, if they don't want to do it, they will leave your office and they will just never show up again. And so that's the real risk. And so I think we need to be very, very careful and thoughtful about what our goals are, how realistic they are, and what they might lead to inadvertently. ALISON BEARD: And in a workplace setting, you might not walk away. You might see whoever has less power in that situation-- I mean, would see a client walk away. But whoever has less power would perhaps agree with you and then walk away feeling hugely resentful, maybe talk about you behind your back, say you're a terrible boss, and then eventually leave, which is costly to the organization. JULIA MINSON: Exactly, exactly. ALISON BEARD: OK, so when we talk about behavior change, what exactly do you want people to do? JULIA MINSON: The kinds of behaviors we care about are behaviors that are visible and interpretable. So there's all kinds of behaviors I could be doing that you don't notice or you can interpret correctly. And it turns out that the thing that is the most visible and the most interpretable in a disagreement is words. So this is another place where a lot of my research diverges from popular wisdom, which is that I think body language is not the thing we should be focusing on, because body language is very easy to misinterpret. ALISON BEARD: Or not even notice. JULIA MINSON: Or not even notice, because again, we are not trained actors, so our nonverbal signals are really, really messy. Language is also easy to misinterpret, but we are far more consistent at interpreting each other's language than we are at interpreting nonverbal behavior. So if we want to clearly communicate engagement with opposing views, we need to use our words. ALISON BEARD: And do we need to get better at articulating our own views as well as soliciting the opinions of others? JULIA MINSON: So I think that's a great question. What tends to happen is that people are very, very focused on articulating their own views, and they just don't spend enough time soliciting and really engaging with the opinions of others. What I often notice in courses and workshops is that as soon as I ask people to engage with other perspectives, they start playing like amateur therapists. And so then they ask questions and they never express their own views. They go completely to the opposite extreme, which is unrealistic in real life, because in real life, at some point, you need to say what you believe. So I think one of the ideas that I really want to get across to folks is that you can do both. You can express your beliefs and you can engage with the ideas of other people. And those two things are not at odds with each other. You should be able to do both in equal measure. ALISON BEARD: Yeah. And so how do you start training people to pay more attention to their linguistic behavior, to what they say? JULIA MINSON: Pay attention to your linguistic behavior. Being aware of that is step one. And then thinking about what are you trying to do? accomplish? What I always tell people is that a constructive disagreement is a disagreement that leads the two parties to want to talk to each other again. So it's not reaching agreement. It's not building consensus. It's not finding a negotiated compromise. It's can we disagree but in a way that makes you want to talk to me and makes me want to talk to you at some point in the future? And so that's the goal. What are the words we use? ALISON BEARD: So I'd love to walk through just a few role play scenarios here so our listeners and viewers just get an idea of what language you're actually talking about. So say I'm a middle manager who disagrees with my executive level boss on a decision. How should I approach that? JULIA MINSON: So the first thing I would do, and I suspect it's going to be true for every role play you put in front of me, is try to understand the other person's perspective better. People often jump into persuasion mode. If I explain to them how things really are, then they will recognize the correctness of my view. And maybe that's true, but you have

no idea where they're coming from, and you're just as likely to, frankly, make a fool of yourself, because you're arguing without insight about the other person's perspective. So I would start with really exploring the other person's view, which takes time and usually takes more time than we expect it to. But it really protects you from making your own argument with no awareness of the landmines. ALISON BEARD: Yeah. So what language specifically would I use, again, if I'm a subordinate talking to a boss? JULIA MINSON: So I would say something like, I'm really glad we're having this conversation. I'd like to understand more about your perspective. So I don't know what we're talking about in this scenario. Let's say we're talking about a product launch. And let's say the boss thinks that the product can be launched sooner, and I think we need more time. I might say, help me understand why it's important to launch it on this particular timeline. We as the team have some concerns about the timeline, but you have been doing this for a long time, and I'd like to hear your vision for how this can get accomplished. And you try to ask follow up questions that, again, show curiosity and show your desire to learn about the other person's perspective. Because the big risk is that they're going to say something you don't agree with, something you see as unrealistic, or unfair to the team, and then you're going to start arguing. You went in being, oh, I'm going to learn and I'm going to understand. But then as soon as the other person says one thing, you start arguing. You have to be more patient. ALISON BEARD: That's really hard, though. So if my trigger is the boss saying, well, why wouldn't you be able to get that done in a week's time? And they're not respecting my opinion. How do I disagree better with them when they're not disagreeing better with me? JULIA MINSON: Yeah, so it takes quite a lot of self-control. I absolutely agree with you there. It takes self-control and it takes time. I think about the goal of modeling receptiveness as a North Star. And the North Star is supposed to be your guiding principle that you don't get distracted from. And what often happens in conversation is I go in with that guiding principle and somebody says, well, why can't you get it done in a week? And I get distracted by that feeling of, oh, I'm being disrespected. Or let me tell you why we can't get this done in a week. And so you really have to exert some self-mastery to stick to the goal and say, well, I have some concerns, but I would like to hear why it's so important to get this done in a week. What is at stake for the team, for you, for the organization? Maybe we can figure something out. But let's discuss where we're coming from and what our priorities are. So don't take the bait, I guess, is what I'm saying. ALISON BEARD: So I suspect that the scripts will all be the same for all other scenarios. But just if you're dealing with a peer or an employee on your team, they should all be handled in the same way? JULIA MINSON: Yes, although here's how status plays into it. In some sense, the boss scenario, you have the least ability to just power your way through. Because in the end, the boss is still the boss. So trying to understand and trying to really make that person feel like you're paying attention to their requests is a more sure way to get your way when you are the lower status person. If you're the higher status person, you can just shove your way through. But then the risk is that you're now back to modeling the negative behavior that you don't want to take hold on your team, and you have just told the lower status person there's no point disagreeing with me, because I won't listen anyway. ALISON BEARD: And then they might treat their colleagues or their subordinates that way. JULIA MINSON: Right. Or next time they observe something that's potentially catastrophic, they don't bring it to you, because there was no point. ALISON BEARD: So when you're training people to do better at this, what does it look like? Do they do role plays? Do they memorize scripts? How does it work? JULIA MINSON: Yeah, so what we do in workshops, we talk a little bit about psychological theory, naive realism, the importance of expressing your desire to learn.

And then we actually do-- we pair people up to actually disagree on an opinion they hold dear, which is hard, because first you have to find out what people truly believe. So what we have developed is a long list of issues that people can disagree about. And on that list are hot button political issues. personal decisions, like, should a person have children to have a happy and fulfilling life? On that list are managerial and leadership decisions. Can you fire an employee for what they said on social media? And we ask participants to give us their views, and then we match them with somebody they actually disagree with on a topic that's important. And then we put them through rounds of practice with the skills we give them to really try it on. ALISON BEARD: Very cool. When you've worked with leaders to do this, what improvements have you seen in terms of how people perceive them, how their teams operate, even performance? JULIA MINSON: We've actually done a lot of experiments where we look at how leaders are perceived who are more receptive. And it's a very interesting question, because a lot of leaders are concerned. If I'm receptive to opposing perspectives, won't people think that I'm uncertain? weak, that I don't have the courage of my convictions? And what we find very consistently is that receptive leaders are seen as better leaders. Because people want to feel heard, and even if I'm giving air time to an opinion you disagree with, I am coming across as a more thoughtful person. I'm better leader, even though I am talking to somebody you might not want me to talk to. ALISON BEARD: And then what about organization wide? If a company would implement this, every leader would model the right behavior, there might be training, what sorts of improvements would you expect to see? JULIA MINSON: So I would expect people, first of all, to just be happier at work, which matters, because so much of our mental distress comes from conflicts we've had that we worry about having handled poorly or conflicts we anticipate. And if you know that you have a toolkit for handling disagreement effectively, it just reduces all of that mental angst. I would expect people to make better decisions, because more voices are speaking up, and every fork in the road is really examined more carefully and more vocally. I would expect fewer disasters, because when people speak up, they're more likely to say, hey, here's a risk of this idea. Maybe we should do it a different way. So I think there's a tremendous amount of potential with honestly very little downside. ALISON BEARD: And is there a person that you've worked with or seen in your own life-- because I think a lot of the pushback on this might just be like, that's just not how I behave. So is there a person who you've seen just dramatically change the way they manage disagreement? Like going from a yeller to a questioner. Is there a good example you have? JULIA MINSON: Can I say myself? ALISON BEARD: Yes, please. Yeah. JULIA MINSON: So I have to tell you, I'm a first generation immigrant from Russia. And so I come from a culture of people who are very, very direct. I come from a family that's very, very direct and argumentative. And it's like, I will tell you how to live, because I love you and it's good for you. ALISON BEARD: I identify with that. JULIA MINSON: So a lot of people at Harvard do. And what I have found is that it leads other people to shut down. It doesn't matter how right I am. I'm a very smart person. I'm right a lot. But when the other person can just walk away from the conversation or can just sit there silently waiting for me to finish the rant, I know I'm not getting the best out of them. full power of their intellect and their ideas. ALISON BEARD: And it's important to say that your intentions are good. You want what's best for that other person. JULIA MINSON: Exactly. ALISON BEARD: I'm sure. But saying it directly to them

isn't always the way to make it work. JULIA MINSON: No. And it turns out people don't like to be fixed. And so it's been a real journey from my teenage self that had a very loud opinion about everything to my probably much more correct and accurate and smarter self, who is now, ironically, much quieter. I know a lot more, but I say a lot less. ALISON BEARD: Yeah, interesting. Julia, thank you so much for being here. It's been a pleasure. JULIA MINSON: Thank you.