Agree to Disagree if you want to get better

 I suspect that much of what gets written about disagreement gets dismissed as soon as it is read. It's not that readers actively disagree. It's more that their brains feel safer with agreement and so they find ways to resist the suggestion that active difference is essential to getting better.

If you always do what you've always done, you won't always get what you've always got. The world will change around you and failure to evolve means failure to thrive. You need difference not just to grow, but to maintain. This is one of the rare instances where a pattern is more evident to our conscious minds than it is to the brains which set up our attitudes and behaviours.

There is no easy answer. The best advice is:

  1. Listen more than you talk. Sit with other ideas before you respond to them (easier said than done).
  2. Make ideas feel safer (to you or to others) by focusing first on common ground than new ground, over and over again.
  3. Look for models of disagreement that works. There are lots of good examples and some structures that can be replicated to make it easier to foster disagreement in your workplace. Some of them might even work at home!
Here's why you probably won't change: all of these take willpower. It will always be easier and more comfortable to hang out with ideas and mindsets like your own. You will always find other people to be smarter, more likeable and more attractive when they agree with you.

Photo by: Billy Pinig


Hanging out with disagreement will always feel less like a warm bath and more like a cold shower. But, it is a temporary discomfort in the service of better ideas and more workable solutions. Difference is the first step in adapting and evolving. 

Brace yourself and listen..

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