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I don’t know about you, but I’ve never met someone who says, “I love disagreements.” In fact, most of us try to avoid them because they feel uncomfortable, and we feel like there’s so much at stake, our relationship with that other person, our career or our reputation. And so we don’t ever develop the comfort and the skills we need to disagree in a productive and professional way. We often think about all of the ways things could go wrong, but what we don’t think of is what would happen if we stay silent? What if I don’t voice this disagreement? What if I don’t share my opinion? What if they don’t see the flaws in their logic or the mistakes they’re making in their assumptions? Those often have equally big consequences.
Welcome alternative perspectives
There are lots of positive outcomes that come from having a well-managed disagreement, especially if you’re able to retain some emotional self-control in the process. For example, you might have better work outcomes. There’s this idea that we have creative friction where we have to hash out our different perspectives on something, where we can say, “Here’s how I might do it differently,” or “Here’s how someone else might see this situation.” That friction, which might not always feel comfortable in the moment, can lead to breakthroughs, innovations, new ideas. Chances are, whatever we’re working on is going to be better as a result, and you wouldn’t get any of that if you just insisted that we all agree all the time.
We also tend to have stronger relationships with people who we know we can disagree with. Another positive benefit is an inclusive work environment. If you think about it, so many organizations invest time, money, resources into encouraging a work environment where people can bring their full selves. But if you have a work environment in which people aren’t allowed to disagree, you’re essentially hindering them from expressing their true thoughts and feelings. That can be really detrimental to inclusion and trying to make sure that people can bring their full selves to work.
Normalize disagreement
One way to make disagreeing easier on yourself and on the people you work with is to set the expectation that disagreements, even conflicts, are a normal, inevitable part of working together, that it’s perfectly fine to not always see eye-to-eye or to challenge one another’s perspective.
The idea is that you want to make it okay long before you have the disagreement, so that when you do have a disagreement, it’s much easier to express that because it’s a norm you’ve already set on the team. You might agree with your boss, for example, that there will be moments where you have differences of opinion, and ask for their advice on what’s the best way for you to express those.
One tactic that I like to use is to, in the moment, ask the person if it’s okay if I share my opinion. Now, I’m not really asking for their permission. I’m just prepping them to hear what I have to say. That sounds like this. “I see that a little bit differently. Would it be okay if I shared my viewpoint on that?” Now, 99% of the time, people are going to say yes, or they’re going to nod. And so now they’ve bought into the idea that they want to hear what you have to say, and they’re going to be more primed to actually accept it. So using that just simple communication tactic can sometimes make things just a little bit smoother when it’s time to express your disagreement.