You Probably Shouldn’t Say That. And Yet…(Groundbreaking Science of Disagreeing Well) | Julia Minson

Learn how to say what you think without blowing up your relationships. Most of us have been there. A conversation that starts completely normally and somehow ends with you lying awake at 2am wondering how it went so wrong, again. Whether it is a partner, a teenager, a colleague, or someone on the other side of a political divide, the cost of disagreement done badly is one of the quietest, most cumulative kinds of pain there is. Julia Minson is a behavioral scientist and professor at the Harvard Kennedy School who has spent years studying the psychology of disagreement, researching how people handle opinions, judgments, and beliefs that differ from their own, and what it actually takes to navigate those moments without losing the relationship in the process. Her book How to Disagree Better https://amzn.to/4eSQ605 distills that research into a practical, science-backed guide for anyone ready to do the real work of staying connected across difference. In this conversation, you will discover: The single most common mistake people make at the start of a disagreement that almost guarantees it will escalate into a full argumentThe HEAR framework, a four-part behavioral science tool for expressing your view firmly without triggering defensiveness or shutting the other person downWhy leading with facts and data backfires when you are talking to someone who already disagrees with you, and what to use instead that dramatically increases trustA critical practice for building disagreement skills on low-stakes conversations first, so you are not white-knuckling it when the big moments arriveWhy empathy is wonderful in theory but unreliable in the heat of the moment, and what to focus on instead that actually shifts the dynamic If you are tired of watching important relationships quietly erode one hard conversation at a time, this episode is for you. Press play and let's figure out how to disagree better, together. You can find Julia at: Website https://www.juliaminson.com/ | LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-minson-5b511b150/ | Episode Transcript https://www.goodlifeproject.com/podcast/dr-deepika-chopra-validation-neuroscience-resiliency Next week, we're sharing our conversation with Dr. Nicole LePera, New York Times best-selling author of Reparenting the Inner Child, about why so many of us feel stuck in patterns we can't seem to escape, no matter how hard we try. And what's actually happening in your nervous system when that happens. It's a grounding, hopeful conversation. Check out our offerings & partners: Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel https://jonathanfields.substack.com/aboutVisit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes https://www.goodlifeproject.com/sponsors/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jonathan Fields?

  So most of us are mildly to severely allergic to conflict, to disagreement. We fear the conversation going off the rails, getting hurt, misunderstood, or causing harm, failing to convince somebody to our point of view, or being maybe hated because we disagree. Problem is, there are times in our lives, moments where it's actually really important to disagree, but how we do it, having the ability to disagree with skill, it makes all the difference. And it turns out, most of us were never actually taught how to disagree well. We were taught how to win, or how to avoid. Neither one of those serves us or the people that we're talking with. My guest today is Julia Minson. She's a behavioral scientist and professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, and she has

• 0:44Jonathan Fields?

  spent years building the actual science of how to disagree and stay connected, especially with the people who matter most. Her book is How to Disagree Better, and this conversation is packed with things I genuinely wish I had known decades ago. You'll learn why your instincts about persuasion often backfire, what a behavioral tool called the "Hear" framework can do for your most charged conversations, why personal stories beat data when talking to someone who already disagrees with you, and how to practice all of this in ways that actually stick. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project.

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• 3:00Jonathan Fields?

  You make a sort of like a bold statement. We are in a disagreement crisis. Take me into this.

• 3:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, I think people are having a harder time than ever disagreeing about things that sort of matter to them. And, you know, some of that has changed because we have changed our expectations about what a reasonable conversation is and what are all the sorts of things we ought to be able to talk about, right? Like, we used to have sort of unspoken, kind of spoken rules about how, you know, you don't talk about like politics, money, and religion, right? And now, I think especially post the pandemic, there's this expectation that you can talk about anything, right? You sort of like bring your whole self to work, your entire identity, you know? People see your like Zoom background, you know, the pictures of your kids, which candidate

• 3:50Speaker 06

  you voted for, like, all of these things are sort of just out there. And so people are much more aware of disagreements than they used to be, right? You sort of like have a good sense of where this person is coming from, and then there's a decision to make about whether you want to have this conversation or not have this conversation. And I think most of the time, the answer is no, I don't want to have the conversation.

• 4:13Jonathan Fields?

  Is that a good thing or a bad thing that we are more almost like situationally aware of where people stand on a wide range of things that may matter to each of us? Whereas in the past, you know, maybe we kind of sussed it out, we're trying to figure it out, but also it wasn't generally a reason to engage in a way that might cause friction or disagreement. I remember reading this study quite a while back that looked at parents of kids who were dating somebody new and how much of a concern their political affiliation was. And the two generations ago, they're kind of like, yeah, like, whatever, it'd

• 4:56Jonathan Fields?

  be nice if they were sort of like, like well aligned with me, but it's not a huge thing. Radically different now. I think also you don't have to go looking for it, like you just said, it's just out there. So is that a good thing or a bad thing or just a thing?

• 5:08Speaker 06

  You know, I think it's, it's a big thing, right? It's sort of like not just a thing, but then is it good or bad sort of depends on how we handle it. I think it's definitely bad when it causes you to sever relationships with people you really care about, you know, causes you to have, you know, avoid certain topics or sort of make assumptions about people. But it could be good because you could have these like incredibly interesting conversations, right? Like it could be something that really gives you insight into the world and gives you recognition for how other people think and how other people live. And I think

• 5:51Speaker 06

  we have this tension where on one hand, we know a lot about people we disagree with. And on the other hand, well, we know who we disagree with, right? We know like the person wearing that T-shirt or wearing that hat is a person I disagree with, but then we actually know very little about them and how they think because we're afraid of approaching the conversation and we don't have sort of the right toolkit.

• 6:14Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah. Do you think that we tell ourselves that we do know them though? And that we do know how they think and what they're thinking and like everything behind it? Simply because we just assume that into existence?

• 6:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely true. I think lack of actual information, right? Often sort of like results in a bunch of stereotypes.

• 6:33Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, because I think we just like we have this. We love to pattern recognize, right? It's sort of like if you say this, or if you wear this, I'm now going to say like, okay, these 18 different things about you are true. And maybe some of them are, but so often they're not. Especially when we make so many assumptions about how people show up based on how they show up online.

• 6:55Speaker 06

  Right.

• 6:55Jonathan Fields?

  Which is often just complete delusion. It's not like just outright fiction or storytelling or just a partial representation. Use the conversation a number of times. In a moment or an experience where people show up and they don't have the same point of view. I would venture to say that if they engage, most of them are not going to label that as a quote conversation. They'll probably call it an argument, a disagreement. Does that language matter?

• 7:26Speaker 06

  I think it matters because, you know, I think, I think different, there's many, many different engagements we could have when we disagree with a person, right? So I think of a disagreement as, you know, I hold different beliefs or I hold different preferences, right? Like I like cats, you like dogs, right? Or I think that we should parent in a stricter way and you think that we should parent, you know, in sort of a more, you know, loose, you know, supportive, whatever, whatever way you want to call it, right? I predict that, you know, the stock market will go up. You predict that the stock market will go down. All of those are disagreements. We don't necessarily need to argue about it

• 8:10Speaker 06

  because many of those things, we could sort of go away believing are different things and have an interesting conversation and say, hey, you know, you believe what you believe, I believe what I believe. That was interesting. Like, I understand now why you expect this thing to happen or why, you know, you believe this is the right way to parent or whatever the case may be.

• 8:32Speaker 06

  When we often end up in argument or in conflict, it's because we feel like it is, for whatever reason, our job to convince the other person, right? And so that often happens in families. It also often happens in the workplace where your behavior is interdependent. Right? So we can't like have radically different approaches to parenting the same child. Or you know, you can't do the same project two different ways. Right? And so when you have to convince the other person, it is more likely to become an argument because, you know, things have to be reconciled. But there are many, many situations in life where you can just have a conversation and sort of like learn about the other person's perspective,

• 9:17Speaker 06

  and you don't need to change their mind.

• 9:19Jonathan Fields?

  So would you say then that the the main distinction between a disagreement and an argument is that in an argument, the the goal is to win? Whereas in a disagreement, the goal is more just to sort of like hear and be heard?

• 9:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, so I think I think an argument is a type of disagreement. Right? So a disagreement is just like a thing where we have different perspectives and then you decide what to do with it. Right? So we could learn from each other. We could argue about it. We could just change the topic and not talk about it at all. Right? Like, that's sometimes totally fine, too. I think what happens, and it's very interesting, once you start paying attention to this, people sort of fall into an argument mode. Right? Like, you hear something that Yeah, like you hear something you disagree with, and you sort of can't help yourself. You have to correct the other person, and you have to sort of help to see them how things really are.

• 10:18Speaker 06

  And then often that is not, you know, it's not appreciated because, of course, they're quite happy thinking about the world exactly as they've always thought about the world. But noticing that tendency in yourself, I always find it to be a very interesting exercise because it just keeps creeping in.

• 10:36Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah. So then, in an argument, when I use the phrase to win before, what we're really talking about there is to persuade somebody that your point of view is the right point of view.

• 10:48Speaker 06

  Correct. Correct.

• 10:50Jonathan Fields?

  Why is that a bad thing?

• 10:53Speaker 06

  Well, it's mostly an unrealistic thing, right?

• 10:57Jonathan Fields?

  Okay.

• 10:57Speaker 06

  So because part of what happens is that if you're going to persuade somebody that you're right, that implies that they're wrong. And most people don't like to be wrong. And they usually have good reasons to believe whatever it is they believe, right? They have some, you know, life experience or some evidence or something they've read that convinces them to hold the beliefs that they hold. And so in any argument, once the goal becomes persuasion, that means that somebody has to be the winner and somebody has to be the loser. And so at best, you know, your odds of success are 50 50. But, you know, quite often you sort of have the argument and both people walk away and nobody's convinced.

• 11:40Speaker 06

  And so I think on average, winning is quite rare.

• 11:44Jonathan Fields?

  Hmm. So what is then a better end goal for a disagreement? What should we be working towards if not necessarily to persuade the other person that your take is the right take?

• 11:57Speaker 06

  So I think that's actually sort of a very profound question with many different answers because, and I think that's something that people really don't think about very hard, right? You're in a conversation with somebody. You discover that you hold different beliefs. And then there's sort of a question of what do I need to accomplish here? You know, and it could be that you don't need to have the conversation at all, right? Like you're at a holiday work party. You recognize that you disagree with somebody about, you know, politics or, you know, some, you know, scientific thing that you know nothing about.

• 12:41Speaker 06

  And you're like, you know what? That's interesting. I'm going to read up on this and then see if I want to pursue this. Or I don't care about this and let's talk about, you know, television, right? Or you could imagine a different situation where you say,

• 12:59Speaker 06

  You know, I really value this person. I value this relationship. They might know something that's useful to me and I'm going to try to learn from them. Right? I'm going to try to understand where they're coming from. I'm going to try to understand their reasoning. You know, I might not change my mind. I might not fully kind of buy into what they're saying, but I could understand it well enough that, you know, like if I said it back to them, they would say, yeah, that's my point of view. Right? Or you could imagine a situation where you really do need to persuade them because you have to find some path forward. Right? So there's a multitude of goals you could

• 13:41Speaker 06

  have and the exercise of thinking about why am I in this conversation, I think is a really useful exercise.

• 13:47Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I mean, that makes sense to me. It's I'll often, if I think about a conversation that I feel like I kind of need to have, or I'm going to be in a social or a work situation where I just know it's going to happen. And I have a sense that, you know, there's going to be a disagreement in points of views. Before I engage, I'll often ask myself, and I'm curious what you think of this, this approach. I'll ask myself, what is the, what is the outcome that I'm looking to make happen in this interaction? You know, if I, and if, like you said, if I'm, if I'm a deep believer in a particular point of view that I think is really, really important for other people to buy into, whether it's in a business

• 14:31Jonathan Fields?

  context, a social context, like an activist, whatever it may be, or just a family member, like I really want you to see the world this way. I'll, I'll, I'll tell myself, you know, like it really does matter to me a lot that, that I can convince them to my point of view. Whether I'm right or not is a whole different issue to start with. Like, I could be completely on the wrong page. And so, and sometimes I am. But oftentimes it'll also be like, you know, I'll have an answer where I realize the outcome that I'm looking to make happen really is not going to be possible, especially in the context. And, and at that point, I'm just kind of like, then what's?

• 15:13Jonathan Fields?

  Why would I invest energy and angst and suffering in actually engaging on this level?

• 15:19Speaker 06

  Yeah, you know, it doesn't even have to be. I mean, we talked about, you know, some outcomes, right? There's other ones where you could be like, look, this person is a potential business partner or a potential manager or is my manager, right? My goal is to sound smart. Like, that's my only goal. I'm going to just try to be impressive, right? And so you could imagine that if that's your goal, you would pursue the conversation differently, right? Or, you know, like, I have this happen all the time. I think in family situations, disagreements sort of sneak up on you. You know what I mean? Like, you're sort of in your kitchen making dinner, just like having a normal evening,

• 16:02Speaker 06

  and then your kids say something and you're like, oh.

• 16:08Speaker 06

  Right?

• 16:09Jonathan Fields?

  This never happened to any parent listening right now.

• 16:11Speaker 06

  Right, right, right, right, right. And so then, the goal isn't like to tell them that, well, the goal might feel like it is to tell them that, you know, whatever it is they just did was a terrible idea and they probably shouldn't have done it and, you know, it's probably going to, you know, whatever, ruin their grade in English. There's sort of a longer term goal, which is, my kid is talking to me and telling me about her day. How do I, you know, convey some information while preserving the far more important long-term goal of keeping her talking to me and keeping her sharing and sort of like maintaining the trust, right? And so

• 16:53Speaker 06

  knowing, again, like what you're after in the conversation and in the relationship, I think is a really big deal.

• 17:01Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, and I so agree with you there. And as you're describing that, I love this idea of sort of like having almost like there's a potentially a short-term or more immediate goal, but I'm also, I want to think about the long-term impact, like, like, five, you know, five iterations down the road or a month from now, a week from now. But I wonder if this also shows up in a, in a tough way in a work context where There's a power dynamic where you know, somebody has a certain amount of control over your destiny. And this is like, pretty much everybody who's in an entry level or first couple of years in their career. Sometimes you're really synced well, you share beliefs and you're on the same page and your values align and you feel like you're gonna have open, honest conversations and they're receptive. Other times, it's completely not that at all.

• 17:45Jonathan Fields?

  And, and you're stepping into a conversation where your, your brain is saying, um, I don't really respect or even like this person, but they control my destiny in this organization, at least in the near term, and that may be a couple of years. So I have to show up in a very particular way and I believe something very different than what they believe and what they're telling me or asking me to do, but I need them to like me. That's tough.

• 18:16Speaker 06

  You know, so it's, it's interesting and we can kind of think about it from both the perspective of like, you know, the more senior person on the organizational hierarchy and the more junior person on the organizational hierarchy, right? Because in the end, I think there's sort of a dynamic that's created within a particular team or within a particular relationship, right? I think often we talk about these, we talk about these behaviors as if it's sort of like an individual choice, right? Like, you know, be more receptive or be less argumentative or, you know, do this or do that.

• 18:57Speaker 06

  Whereas in reality, I think people are very, very responsive to the environment that we all shape together, right? And so, quite often, you know, we expect people who are more junior, we want people who are more junior to sort of speak up, right? And sort of say, like, if you, you know, if you see something, say something, right? But creating the environment where that, where people truly believe that that's appropriate and welcome, I think takes a lot of work and a lot of time. And, you know, and then like on the flip side, right? If you are the junior person and you disagree with something.

• 19:39Speaker 06

  One thing that I have sort of found in my research is that there is nothing that makes people sort of happier, more appreciative than when they feel that you're truly curious and interested in their perspective. And so if you disagree with your boss, but you can bring yourself to say, hey, you know, I am really concerned about this approach to this project, but I'm very curious about why you think that this is the right way to go about it. Like, you know, these are the risks I see, but I, I'm, you know, I'd like to understand how you're thinking about those because I'm sure that like you've thought hard about this.

• 20:23Speaker 06

  So can you, you know, can you tell me more? Right?

• 20:27Speaker 06

  And so there's a way of articulating your disagreement, but also asking with, you know, what appears to be genuine curiosity that people just love.

• 20:40Jonathan Fields?

  And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

• 20:44Jonathan Fields?

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• 21:28Jonathan Fields?

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• 21:44Jonathan Fields?

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• 22:29Jonathan Fields?

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• 23:08Jonathan Fields?

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• 23:49Jonathan Fields?

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• 24:10Jonathan Fields?

  It kind of brings us to this topic that you talk about and you write about this notion of what you describe as naive realism. We love to believe that we are objectively right, just like from what's happening here?

• 24:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, it's not even that like we love it or we hate it. It's just it's hard to be any other way, right? So the idea about the idea of naive realism is that people believe that their observations and their sort of assessments of the world are authentic and, you know, objective and reasonable. And, you know, we naively believe that our views reflect like an objective reality, right? That there is a thing out there and I get it. And part of the reason why it's so hard to not believe that is because of being incredibly, incredibly inefficient, right?

• 25:09Speaker 06

  Like, how can you possibly stop every five seconds and say to yourself, well, you know, maybe I feel that way today because I didn't get enough sleep, right? Like, I'm really cranky, not because this person is super annoying, but because I'm very tired, right? Or like, I feel great about this, not because this project plan is brilliant, but because I had a wonderful lunch, right? So we we are very used to going through life, kind of acting on our beliefs and our impressions. And, you know, it's like the thing they say about how the fish doesn't know it's in water, right? And most of the time, it works fine, right?

• 25:52Speaker 06

  Most of the time, we are mostly right about most things. The problem is when we run into another person who disagrees with us and we then have to reach a conclusion about what is the cause of that disagreement. And so if you start with the assumption that I am right because I get it, because I'm a reasonable, objective person who sort of sees the world in a reasonable, objective way, then the most reasonable inference is that the other person is wrong, right? Like, And then, and then the question becomes, what, what flavor of wrong are they? You know, and it can be, you know, they're misinformed, right?

• 26:36Speaker 06

  They haven't been told, they haven't read the right things, they haven't thought about it hard enough. Or it could be, you know, they're lazy, they are self-interested, they just don't care. They can't afford to see the truth because it would reveal something terrible about themselves. So, you know, we kind of make up this whole story about why it is the other person believes whatever it is they believe.

• 27:04Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, and I mean, I think we're all, we all do this, even though we'd like to think that we don't, you know? It's like, there is one objective truth, I know what that truth is, and anyone who doesn't see that, all those reasons that you just listed, it's gotta be one of those, or maybe a collection of those. Okay, so if we, when, not if, when we experience a situation where, you know, we're face to face with somebody who shares a different point of view, and we feel like we actually want to express our point of view, and we want to table this. We don't necessarily want to raise it to a level of an argument, but, you know, a disagreement feels like something that done quote, "right," could be healthy.

• 27:44Jonathan Fields?

  You have a framework, a way to step into this, to help make this unfold in a way that feels more constructive than destructive. Take me into this.

• 27:54Speaker 06

  Yeah, absolutely. So, one of the ways I think about conversation as sort of a researcher, right? I think about it in kind of like a fairly mechanistic way. And I think about conversation being made up of two activities. One, where you're sort of soliciting information and you're trying to understand the other person. And the other, when you're trying to explain your perspective and you're trying to convey information, right? And so the first part is that I think Most of the time, we are way, way, way too eager to state our perspective before we have any idea what exactly we're disagreeing about, right? So the first piece of sort of advice that I give to folks,

• 28:39Speaker 06

  which is very much in line with our earlier conversation about goals, is, you know, spend a lot more time trying to understand what it is the other person is all about before you try to argue for anything, right? But let's say you spend a decent amount of time trying to understand what they're all about, and you feel like you get it, and you feel like, you know, they have affirmed that you get it. Then there's sort of this time to say what you came to say, because, you know, people normally want to share their view, not only be sort of somebody's unpaid therapist, right? And so then there's a risk. And the risk is that you're going to start making your own argument, and you're going to lose all the goodwill that you have built up

• 29:25Speaker 06

  in the course of like all the listening and all the question asking and all the curiosity, right?

• 29:28Jonathan Fields?

  And I think we've all done it. I'm raising my hand, of course, I've done that.

• 29:32Speaker 06

  Right, right, right, right, right. Yeah, that's exactly right. So, so what we have developed in our research is a toolkit that we call the HEAR framework, which is an acronym that helps you remember some behaviors that you can use when you're arguing your own point, but you sort of don't want to set the conversation on fire. And so the HEAR framework is, you know, H-E-A-R, as in I hear you. The H stands for hedging your claims. So it's words like sometimes, maybe, some people, perhaps, right? So for example, I might want to say COVID vaccines are safe and effective, right?

• 30:19Speaker 06

  True, strong statement. You know, I believe it. It's the kind of thing that I am liable to say in a conversation. But I could also say, most physicians tend to believe that COVID vaccines are largely safe and effective. Right? So I hedged in three different places. I said, most, tend to, and largely. And the ironic thing is that the statement is actually now more true because it sort of captures like the nuances of the real world. The E in here stands for emphasizing agreement. So it's phrases like, we both want to, or I am also interested in, or I agree with

• 31:03Speaker 06

  some of what you're saying. Right? And the, the logic is that, you know, we don't want to switch teams. Right? We don't want to sort of show that we have changed our mind, especially if we actually haven't. But we want to highlight some things that any two humans can agree on. Right? So we both want to work in an organization where all employees feel fairly treated. Right? It's like, that is hard to disagree with. And it sort of puts us on the same page. The A stands for acknowledgement. So acknowledgement is basically taking a few seconds to restate your counterpart's point

• 31:46Speaker 06

  of view before you leap into your own argument. Right? And acknowledgement is usually sort of flagged with phrases like, I understand that, or I hear that you are saying that, or, you know, you seem to believe, you know, X, Y, Z. Right? So a lot of the time, people say things like, I hear you, but here's why, you know, we can't take Jerry to school at 10 o'clock in the morning. Right? Instead of actually showing with your behavior that you heard the other person. Right? Like, I hear that Jerry's been up doing homework until, you know, midnight,

• 32:30Speaker 06

  and you are really concerned about the amount of sleep that he's not getting. But I don't think it's good practice to, you know, let him skip school until 10 o'clock in the morning. Right? So I showed my counterpart that I really Was listening when they were talking. Um, and then finally, the R stands for reframing to the positive. So it's replacing some of the contradictory and negative words like no, can't, won't, terrible, hate, right? With more positively valenced words like great, wonderful, thank you, appreciate. Right?

• 33:10Speaker 06

  So I might want to say, um, I hate it when people interrupt me. Please don't. Right? Or I could say, I really appreciate it when people let me finish my sentence.

• 33:25Jonathan Fields?

  Hmm. Framing the positive.

• 33:27Speaker 06

  Framing the positive, right? And all of the, all the components of hear, H E A R, right? They all sort of require you to have heard the other person. And you're sort of showing with your behavior that you're keeping their perspective in mind as you're talking. So that's sort of the magic. You're kind of, you're demonstrating listening even as you're speaking.

• 33:52Jonathan Fields?

  Hmm. I mean, that all, that all lands is really true. It feels like it also, it's like you're making space for them to exist in the conversation.

• 34:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's right. That's exactly right, which is like literally the opposite of what we normally do in an argument.

• 34:06Jonathan Fields?

  Right. I mean, the hedging part of it, also part of what I heard when you were speaking is, um, rather than using absolutes, uh, you know, create the space, create wiggle room. Um, you know, so that they can, they, they can see that there's room for their point of view to exist, even if you're not saying you agree with it. Um, emphasizing, it sounds like what we're really emphasizing here is, is coming ground.

• 34:34Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 34:34Jonathan Fields?

  You know, so if you're like, you want this policy and I want this policy. But if underneath that, the fundamental belief is we both want our families to be well and taken care of and safe, we, like, we can agree on that. Right? We just maybe see a different path to that. But like, at the end of the day, isn't this really what we both want? Right? You're going to both acknowledge that you're going to both nod along with each other. And I feel like.

• 34:59Jonathan Fields?

  I wonder if you see this in sort of research also, when you find that that common ground, it just makes it easier to see the humanity of the other person rather than objectify them as a point of view, like a walking, talking point of view, which we sell often do.

• 35:13Speaker 06

  Right, right, right, right. So there's, you know, it's funny because there's, there's actually a lot of research, especially in political science, right? So like, you know, a lot of, a lot of what we know from research has to do with political disagreements because it's just easier to study because there's so many people on both sides and they feel so strongly about it. But I think the kind of psychology of it is the same whether you're arguing, you know, like, you know, between whatever, legal and marketing, or whether you're arguing between, you know, this parent and that parent, or whether you're arguing about Democrats and Republicans, right? And so what we know in political science is that people dramatically overestimate how much they disagree with the other side.

• 35:58Jonathan Fields?

  Hmm.

• 35:59Speaker 06

  So you can have, yeah, so you can like, ask people to predict the views of a typical member of the opposing party, and then you can go and you can ask, you know, a randomly sampled member of that opposing party what their views are. And what we see is that on average, we overestimate disagreement. And what that leads to is a real antipathy, right, towards them and an unwillingness to interact. Because, you know, why would I talk to this person who is just like completely out there? And it turns out they're not completely out there. They're just, you know, a person like you.

• 36:38Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. The A in your framework, acknowledge. This sounds like just deep listening, active listening, but not just active listening, but then reflecting back to them. Some version of, this is what I heard you say, is that right?

• 36:57Speaker 06

  Uh huh, uh huh.

• 36:59Jonathan Fields?

  And we love it. I mean, it's so rare that I think so many people feel like somebody actually gives them the share of mind to genuinely like let them be seen or heard that when it happens, I feel like it presents almost as a gift. And even if you never agree, simply knowing this person actually just really paid attention and they listened deeply and them sort of reflecting back to me and getting it right, that it does something to us.

• 37:32Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think, I think that's right. And I think, you know, acknowledgement when it's done well is incredibly powerful. I think a lot of us are really lazy about it. You know, and there's a lot of like, you know, nodding and smiling and saying, uh huh, you know, and you sort of pat yourself on the back for being a good listener. But the thing, the version that really does the job is the version where you go through the very awkward exercise of paraphrasing the other person's views and, you know, taking the time and then asking them if you got it right. And then they're like, well, kinda, it's sort of, but like here's the five other things

• 38:16Speaker 06

  I forgot to mention, right? So real acknowledgement is pretty labor intensive.

• 38:22Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, but so powerful, right? I mean, it's got to be one of the most powerful things that you can do to feel some form of connective tissue with another human being, whether you agree with them on an issue or not. That last step also to ours, you know, for reframe. I feel like this is really interesting because culturally, so many of us are sort of, we've grown up or surrounded by people in a community where we just default to the negative frame for so many things. It's kind of become our go to, and in fact, sometimes it's celebrated. You're rewarded for sort of like interacting from a negative frame. So it feels like such a simple thing. We frame that as a positive, but it's actually, my sense is for a lot of people, it's probably

• 39:05Jonathan Fields?

  reasonably, you gotta be really intentional about this because it's actually not your default mode.

• 39:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think I think you're right. I think culturally, it's not our default. Um, but there's some interesting um, gender and status dynamics around it, right? Because I think a lot of what we think of as sort of leadership behavior uh, and high status behavior is very male coded. And in fact, if you look at um, sort of the use of the here framework, like naturally, women tend to do this a lot more. You know, and so people say like, well, you know, aren't you asking like everybody to hedge? And you know, not be sort of direct and certain and you know, all of those things that we've been taught to do.

• 39:53Speaker 06

  And the answer is like, yeah, that's exactly, that's exactly what I'm advocating for. Because a lot of the communication advice that we have been fed uh, are the wrong tools for the wrong, for the wrong thing, right? So if I am, if I am standing up in front of a, you know, boardroom and I'm giving a presentation, certainly sounding confident and direct is good advice. But if I'm in a conflict, then that's a different job, right? That requires sort of a different toolkit. Uh, and sort of defaulting to this thing that we've been told is like the right way to communicate.

• 40:34Speaker 06

  Doesn't help in those types of contexts.

• 40:38Jonathan Fields?

  And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

• 40:43Jonathan Fields?

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• 41:24Jonathan Fields?

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• 41:33Jonathan Fields?

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• 43:19Jonathan Fields?

  One of the things that you explore also, which touches on this, is I think when a lot of us are sort of like, if we've been told anything about how to step into a conversation that could become a disagreement, maybe even an argument, if it makes sense, is that, well, it's really important to come from a place of empathy. You don't necessarily agree with this.

• 43:40Speaker 06

  Yeah, so I think, you know, I mean, I think empathy is wonderful, right? We should all have more empathy. I just don't think that telling people to come into conversations from a place of empathy is very useful advice because it's way too easy to fake. It's too easy to fake and it's it's hard to know how to do genuinely.

• 44:06Speaker 06

  When I'm in the middle of a heated disagreement, even with people that I, you know, deeply love, I don't feel a lot of empathy. Most of the time I feel, you know, anger and irritation. And so somehow resetting my feelings seems very, very hard. And I've been, you know, doing this for a long time. And, you know, I can find the empathy later, sometimes hours later, sometimes days later. But in the moment, it is awfully hard.

• 44:37Speaker 06

  What is, you know, far more effective is behaving in a way that conveys sort of curiosity and engagement, right? Even if you're sort of super annoyed on the inside, your counterpart really cannot read your mind. And that is both good and bad, right? So if you are, if you got the empathy kind of, you know, chugging along, chances are you won't get credit for it because they can't tell. But if you got no empathy, then it's okay because they still can't tell. What they can tell is, what are you saying? Right?

• 45:19Speaker 06

  And this is where, you know, the here framework, right, is all about words. It's not at all about sort of body language or feelings or, you know, everything, everything that we do in my work is really based around language.

• 45:32Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. It's very practical. You might not necessarily be able to control your inner experience in the moment, but you can develop the skill set or use these sort of like specific strategies to at least have the interaction come out in a way that feels much more constructive. One of the other things that you talk about is the the difference between Disagreeing and leaning on facts versus stories.

• 46:02Speaker 06

  Yeah, so you know, that's another one of those things that's very, very much focused on language, right? What is the content that you're conveying? And again,

• 46:16Speaker 06

  kind of is a strategy that we can use when we're trying to make our point, right? So I have a set of beliefs that I know is different from your beliefs. And so how do I convey my beliefs in a way that is maximally effective? Our normal toolkit relies on facts and data, right? So certainly in kind of, you know, in science and, you know, corporate and leadership settings, you know, people sort of, like, we have always been taught that you come with a big spreadsheet and people will believe you. And again, that's true when you're speaking to sort of an objective

• 46:58Speaker 06

  audience that, you know, is there to sort of, you know, make up their mind. That's not true when you are talking to somebody who already disagrees with you. Because one of the things that happens is they discount your data, right? They say, well, you know, you fudged it, you twisted it, you're omitting part of the story. They are skeptical at the get go. What tends to be ironically more trustworthy is stories that reveal something about how you came to hold your belief. And usually, you know, reveal a little bit of vulnerability, right? So, you know, a challenge you sort of had to deal with,

• 47:43Speaker 06

  or a loss you experienced, or a failure is often taken as, oh, if she is willing to tell me about that, then she must be an honest person, right? It's essentially like it's a, it's a signal of trustworthiness. And it's sort of an expensive signal of trustworthiness because I am, you know, exposing something vulnerable about myself. And it doesn't mean that you can't also use facts and data. But adding in that kind of vulnerable personal touch seems to really increase trust.

• 48:24Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I wonder if there's also something in there, and I wonder if there's data on this, about the recall of data versus stories, you know, because I don't remember, I read a lot, I listen to a lot, I talk to a lot of people, and I get, I take an imetric ton of facts and data and numbers. I remember almost none of it. But if somebody tells me kind of like the equivalent in the form of a story that in any way moves me, I will probably walk around and remember that story without trying to remember it, and then also probably retell it.

• 48:57Speaker 06

  Right, right, right. And, you know, and people have used storytelling in, you know, marketing and advertising forever, right? Like, people know this. Really, the kind of recent new twist is thinking about how that works in, in a disagreement context.

• 49:15Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah. Is, we're having this whole conversation in the context of assuming that disagreements are sort of like, are and can be a normal, functional part of human interaction, rather than saying, I'm going to walk around and do everything I can to try and minimize the amount of disagreement that I have in my life. So if we assume that disagreement is going to happen, it's going to happen on a relatively regular basis, I'm somebody who has a point of view, I'm going to bump into people who don't see the world the same as me, and I would love to, I would love to actually have these conversations without being in fear of them just turning into battles every time. And just, even if it walks away

• 49:57Jonathan Fields?

  saying like, you know what, I shared my piece, they shared their piece, I think we both felt seen and heard, we don't agree any more than we did before, but I feel good that, like, we both said what we needed to say, and I actually kind of understand and like this person more than I did before. This is a set of skills that you've just shared with us. Like, this is not something that you have or don't have. This is sort of like a basket of strategies and skills. So somebody's joining us, and I like, I would love that to come more naturally to me in these moments. What would you tell somebody just sort of like on a regular day to day basis about thinking about is there a way to to practice these in some way so they start to come more naturally?

• 50:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, so you know, so I have my book just came out, How to Disagree Better. And one of the things that I really tried hard to do in the book is give people a lot of insight into what we know from behavioral science about these dynamics. Tell them stories so that they remember the sciences we just talked about. And then have very concrete exercises at the end of every chapter of, you know, saying, okay, let's be real, people are busy, you know, there's only so much time you're going to devote to this. So if you had, you know, 10 minutes a day or 10 minutes a week, like, how would you spend it?

• 51:16Speaker 06

  And, you know, the way I think about it is any kind of skill, you're going to do better building it in little chunks over time if it's not too unpleasant. Right? So if I said to you, you know, go find your uncle that like you always fight with over Thanksgiving and talk to them about, you know, immigration, nobody's going to do that. Right? Because it's too high of a bar and it's sort of too scary and too much of an investment. Right? Whereas if I say, okay, you know, memorize the here framework.

• 51:57Speaker 06

  And, you know, next time your teenager says they don't have time to take out the trash, use the here framework. Right? Or next time you want to get up at six and your, you know, spouse wants to sleep till 6:30, use the here framework. Right? Or like, so small, low stakes, daily disagreements. So it becomes a habit. And, you know, I do this a lot. Like, I do this in class. I do this in workshops I teach, where we put people through drills of it essentially. And

• 52:37Speaker 06

  It's really simple on the face of it. It's hard to make yourself do it and it's hard to get to the point where it feels very fluid. So really practicing it on low stakes interactions so that it kind of becomes a default is the right place to start.

• 52:55Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I'm wondering also even memorizing it even is a step that I think a lot of people wouldn't take. I wonder if even just taking the ATA or and what they each stand for. It's almost like take that like type it out on your notes app, take a screenshot and just make it your wallpaper on your phone. So just kind of like always there in the moment. So you can just kind of, okay, this is a moment where I should be doing that thing, that here thing. And you can just kind of glance at, okay, let me hedge a little bit, let me like not use that. So it's just right there all the time. But I love the idea of starting small, low stakes. And then, and then probably it sounds like having self compassion along the way.

• 53:38Jonathan Fields?

  Because like you just described, it's not going to just feel natural in the beginning. It's a matter of practice over time until it starts to feel more just intuitive to you.

• 53:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, and you know, and it's harder in, you know, higher stakes conversations. You know, when you're under stress, when you're tired, when you're cranky, when you had a cocktail, you know, when there's people sort of watching you. So, you know, I mean, I fail on a regular basis and then I'm like, oh, huh, okay. You know, let's try again. And, and I think that's the other thing is that I think people don't give other people enough credit for, you know, how forgiving folks can be. Right? So you can like just royally screw up a conversation and then say, hey, you know what? That didn't go as well as I hoped. Let's try again.

• 54:29Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah. Is there value in your mind of doing your own sort of like private postmortem on a conversation that went badly?

• 54:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think, I think there's a lot of value in it. I think there's even more value in doing it with somebody who, you know, who's a trusted, you know, friend or colleague or family member. And you sort of talk it through and you say, you know, I said this and then he said that. And then this felt really weird and then I didn't know what I should have said, you know, next. So I said something stupid and like, what do you think I should have said? I think having that extra mind is really, really helpful. And we, you know, we do that all the time in sort of informal ways. But if you say, look, I'm trying to work on this particular skill set. Right? I'm not trying to figure out how to score a point.

• 55:17Speaker 06

  I'm trying to figure out how to become more receptive to opposing perspectives. If that were my goal, what do you think I should have said? Right? And see what your, what your, you know, friend or colleague can come up with.

• 55:30Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I love that frame instead of like, what should I have said differently? So I could have really won.

• 55:38Jonathan Fields?

  A completely different ask there. Feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation. And this container of Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?

• 55:49Speaker 06

  To have interesting conversations with friends and family.

• 55:57Jonathan Fields?

  Thank you.

• 56:00Jonathan Fields?

  Hey, before you go, be sure to tune in next week for our conversation with Dr. Nicola Para, New York Times bestselling author of Reparenting the Inner Child, about why so many of us feel stuck in patterns we can't seem to escape, no matter how hard we try, and what's actually happening in your nervous system when that happens. It's a grounding, hopeful conversation. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts. So you don't miss any upcoming episodes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields, editing help by Alejandro Ramirez and Troy Young. Chris Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring,

• 56:46Jonathan Fields?

  chances are you did because you're still here. Do me a personal favor. A seven second favor and share it with just one person. If you want to share it with more, hey, that's awesome. But just one person, even then invite them to talk with you about what you've both discovered, to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter. Because that's how we all come alive together. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.

• 57:21Speaker 01

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• 57:51Speaker 07

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