On Disagreement

Disagreement is part of life and business. Disagreement is, probably, a fundamental to change and growth. After all, if we are always in agreement, we would never challenge ourselves and others to think differently, to consider something new.

But we struggle with disagreement, too often we deal with it poorly. We may seek to avoid it, burying our heads in the sand, never considering a different point of view. Alternatively, we acquiesce, though we still disagree and are not aligned in what we are trying to achieve. Too often, we treat disagreement as if we are being attacked, seeking to defend ourselves and our positions. Our strategies for dealing with disagreement tend to be fight or flight.

None of these are acceptable strategies–at least if we want to grow and progress.

So how do we deal with disagreement? How do we seek to resolve disagreements? How do we continue to disagree without being disagreeable?

First, each of us have very different backgrounds, experiences, and beliefs. These shape our views on everything we experience. Two people will have very different reactions to the same thing.

What causes disagreement?

• Differing values and beliefs. These are a result of our upbringing and life experiences. They may be influenced by cultural/traditional issues, religious beliefs, moral and ethical values, ideologies. These are what forms who we are as people. Violating these values and beliefs drive much of disagreement. If, for example, we believe we are being treated in a way that violates these, or we are being asked to do something that violates these; we react defensively and negatively.
• Conflicting interests. We act within our own self interest. When our self interests are in conflict with those we engage, we tend do disagree. We each want to advance our own interest, often at the sacrifice of those we interact with. If, for example, we are sellers driven by achieving our goals, our self interest is meaningless to our customers. Until we align our interests, we cannot make progress. Likewise, if our self interests as leaders are not aligned with those of our people, we will never be able to attain the levels of teamwork and performance that is possible.
• Misunderstanding and miscommunication. So much disagreement comes from simple misunderstanding and miscommunication. We express an idea or position poorly, we misinterpret what is being said and we react without really understanding.
• Lack of information or knowledge. The people with whom we disagree, or even ourselves may not have the knowledge or information to understand the points of view of others. This lack of knowledge–or different information assumptions, create a gap to effective communication. Until we bridge that gap, we will disagree.

As I’ve alluded to earlier, there are a number of strategies for dealing with disagreement:

• “I’m right, you’re wrong,” tends to be a dominant response to so much disagreement. When we feel threatened, we can become aggressive or defensive in our response. And if each party responds in similar ways, our ability to move past our disagreements become increasingly difficult.
• “Bury our heads in the sand,” or avoidance is a common reaction. We withdraw from the conversation. We do everything we can to avoid confrontation or conflict, perhaps because of our experiences with people choosing the previous strategy for dealing with disagreement. We choose to ignore those things that are in conflict with our own views, often despite overwhelming evidence that we might need to change.
• Engaging in open, constructive, and collaborative conversations. Actively, seeking common ground, but if necessary, respectfully agreeing to disagree.

Clearly, if we want to drive change, if we want to grow and improve, the latter strategy is probably the most effective. Yet, too often, we see, particularly within our own organizations, the first strategy being deployed,

How do we get better at dealing with disagreement? Most of this is familiar ground, but bears repeating:

• Disagreement is about ideas, not a person. One of the biggest mistakes I see people make is they make the disagreement about the person. They are good or bad. Look at how we may refer to customers or people within our own organizations, “They are turkeys, they are clueless, they are incompetent. they are jerks (Well, in my case, sometime I am)…….. We cut off any chance of agreeing when we make the disagreement about who a person is, rather than the ideas they are presenting.
• Active listening. Too often we listen with an agenda, hearing things we want to hear, or listening for disagreement, rather than focusing on what is really being said. We fail to probe for clarification and deeper understanding. We have to drill down deeply to understand what’s driving a particular point of view and why people might see things a different way. Rather than our normal react/respond mode, we owe ourselves and others a much deeper understanding of the differences, how they occur, what they mean, and why they are important.
• Emotional intelligence. Displaying genuine empathy, self awareness, self regulation. Seeking to understand more deeply why a person or why we are taking certain positions or seeing things in a certain way. It’s often said, “We make decisions with our hearts and rationalize them with our minds.” We are more likely to be able to deal with disagreement if we understand how a person feels about the issue and what it means to them.
• Perspective taking. There are a couple of aspects to perspective taking. One is trying to see the issues through the other person’s eyes. What’s causing them to take a certain position? Also, it’s the ability to put some “distance” from our own positions, recognizing a different perspective might be interesting or useful.
• Respect and open mindedness. This is somewhat related to the previous point. Regardless of whether we agree of disagree, if we don’t respect the views of others, we will fail to establish a platform for coming to agreement. It’s also critical to be open minded, to recognize we may not be right, or we might shift our point of view. Possibly we didn’t really understand. Perhaps we lacked understanding, data/facts, or knowledge of specific issues. We know open mindsets are critical to learning, growth, and change.
• Seeking common ground. Rather than focusing on where we disagree, if we first find areas where we agree, we build a foundation for moving forward. Some years ago, my neighbor and I had very different political views (and we still do). It was difficult to have conversations other than purely meaningless social exchanges. One day, however, we found common ground. It was an issue in our community both of us felt very strongly about. We worked on it together, building trust. We have since learned we have far more agreements than disagreements. And where we disagree, we do so respectfully.
• Leveraging compromise and conflict resolution strategies. Sometimes we will not be able to be in complete agreement, but we can find strategies for moving forward. There are areas of common interest (for example the case I cited with my neighbor). There may be acceptable compromises where we can find ways of moving forward.
• Sometimes, leveraging others to mediate. Too often, we get too close to issues, we can’t hear what is being said, we may be stuck. A person that may have some distance from the perspectives we and others might have can help us see past our differences.
• Agreeing to disagree, possibly walking away from each other. Sometimes, despite everything we and those with who we disagree have tried, despite leveraging the methods outlined above, we can’t come to agreement. At that point, we have to disagree, we have to walk away from each other. In doing this, we must each accept responsibility for the consequences of failing to reach agreement. While it’s a useless exercise, if we seek to assign “blame,” it must fall equally on the each party. We are, collectively, at fault for our failure to find some way to agree and move forward together.

Every time we engage with another human being, we have the potential of being in disagreement (though I do have fights and disagreements with myself). The way we learn, grow, achieve is to acknowledge these happen and to proactively seek how we might come into agreement.

Absent this, we achieve nothing.