Agreeing to disagree
How good are you at disagreeing with others? I don’t mean how good are you at having a different opinion from others – that’s quite easy. I’m talking about being able to take in an opinion and then to express your own view when it’s very different.
When we started Sync, we had an online forum for people to discuss and debate. We knew that just because we were all disabled people that didn’t mean we’d all agree on everything. Why should it? We also wanted to open up a channel where people could reflect and question. Being a leadership forum, we expected the discussions to be calm and moderated, with people genteelly agreeing to disagree when issues arose. We’d forgotten how passionate people are, how much they care about their opinions, and how different words mean different things to different people. We also forgot how divided we become when we realise not everyone thinks in the same way as we do, how quickly we can take sides and use our power to exclude, as well as include, the opinions of others.
Passion, opinion and belief are all crucial to leadership, and so is the ability to disagree and work with conflict.
This article explores the idea of conflict – those moments when two, or more, disagree. How can we approach these moments and get the best of out them? How can we model respect for others, whilst simultaneously getting our point across? How do we listen and really take on what someone is saying, when we are convinced they are wrong, wrong, wrong?
And particularly for Sync, does being a disabled person mean we deal with this differently?
What do you do in the face of conflict?
Many people find dealing with conflict difficult and painful, and as a result, many try and either avoid conflict or deny that there is any conflict (changing the subject or waiting until it goes away). Others react emotionally, often becoming aggressive, abusive, hysterical or frightening or alternatively adopting a victim state and blaming others. A number of people abdicate all responsibility in the face of conflict – making excuses and letting someone else deal with it. Ouch! Recognise yourself in any of those?
The above responses to conflict all have one thing in common: They are non-productive. All of them are destructive in some way, often to yourself, sometimes to others and sometimes to the very situation that needs to be resolved or discussed. There are better ways of dealing with difference, but like anything, you have to work at it to become skilled.
Your response to conflict will depend on many things – and not just the source of the disagreement itself. Like everything else, we’ve learnt (consciously or unconsciously) how to deal with differences of opinion, how to behave during arguments. Think through how you often behave. Can you see any links to:
- the way your family dealt with conflict
- the kinds of behaviour you admire in others
- your job, or the status you feel you have in your work (people in higher-status positions usually feel freer to engage in conflict and are less likely to avoid confrontation)
- your ‘unwritten rules’ – these might be your personal ‘rules’ about how you choose to live your life, or those underpinning your workplace/group/sector
- whether you are male or female - males are generally still encouraged to be more confrontational than females *your experiences of disability – many disabled people are conditioned to avoid conflict and maintain the status quo; others become so used to being in conflict that everything becomes ‘conflict’; sone experience barriers that might impact on how they deal with conflict.
Within disability there are two stereotypes to try and avoid: being the quiet oppressed one who would never disagree because they don’t have the confidence to do so, or, being the bolshy political one, who is always finding something to fight about. I don’t know how many of you remember the fab song by Ian Stanton called ‘Chip on Yer Shoulder’ where people used to ask the song’s central character to be a ‘quiet little crip, without a chip…’
What’s good about conflict?
Conflict isn’t always bad. We get into conflict when we are passionate about something; when we care enough to make a difference. Think about a lioness defending her cubs or a dog defending its territory. This passion, this sense of belief, is a good thing.
Most of us have lines that can’t be crossed, things that link directly to our values and are at the very heart of who we are what we believe in. If our values are challenged, it is natural and right that we become conflicted and far better to speak up and challenge than to keep quiet and try and live with the conflict inside us.
The question then isn’t about avoiding conflict and differences of opinion, it's about how can we manage conflict positively?
Learning to listen
I can't help thinking that this would be a better world if everyone would listen to me.
Lucy Van Pelt in Charles Schulz' Peanuts
One way is to really learn to listen. Often we jump in so quickly, we’ve not really heard what the other person is saying, we’ve just loaded our own assumptions and judgements on what we think they are saying.
Really listening means putting your opinions and thoughts to one side for a moment so you can try and understand someone else’s perspective. This is hard when you are convinced you are right and they are wrong.
There is lots on the internet about active listening – it’s a technique that helps you listen and helps others feel really listened too. Very briefly, active listening means you name the feeling that the other person is conveying and you state the reason for the feeling. It shows you have understood what they are saying, not that you agree with them.
Active listening isn’t the only tip out there for managing conflict. A quick whizz around Google also gives the following:
Stick with “I” statements; avoid “you” statements.
Avoid name-calling and put-downs (such as “any reasonable person could see that...”).
Soften your tone.
Take a time-out (“Let’s take a break and cool down”).
Avoid defensive or hostile body language (rolling eyes, crossing arms in front of body, tapping foot) - or CAPITIAL LETTERS and bold items, if typing
Don’t jump in and cut across what someone is saying – wait your turn
Be specific and factual; avoid generalities.
What do you want? What do you really want?
At a deeper level, your ability to manage conflict often depends on what it is that you want.
If you just want to be ‘right’, ‘win’ and ‘get your point across’, then you can practice all the suggestion above but they won’t ring true. To truly get the best from conflict and disagreement you have to be prepared to flex, to shift, to stretch. There is a great quote from the Zen master Seng-ts'an:
"If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against, the struggle between for and against is the mind's worst disease."
He is recognising that when we get locked into seeing things as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ we get caught up in the battle and often lose sight of the wider context and what it is exactly that we are fighting over. ‘Winning’ can easily become more important than the issue at stake.
This isn’t about strategically choosing which battles to fight, or losing a battle but still winning the war. This is about genuinely looking at the whole picture and being willing to reassess your viewpoint depending on the new information available. Not something that’s easy to do when you are caught up in the moment.
How do you argue well?
Our responses to what we disagree with often fall into one of six different responses. The first four are usually futile, but the ones we most use!
Name-calling - the lowest form of disagreement. Always says more about the person calling someone names than it does about the person they are supposedly ‘attacking’.
‘Ad Hominem’ – this is where you attack the person themselves, not the argument, so you say things like, ‘oh you would say that’. It doesn’t mean what they are saying is wrong, but it implies it. If there's something wrong with the person’s argument, you should say what it is; and if there isn't, what difference does it make who they are?
Responding to tone – rather than tackling the issues, people instead attack how someone writes or speaks. This is still a weak way to disagree, especially as tone is so hard to judge. Someone who is sensitive about some topic might be offended by a tone that to others seemed neutral.
Contradiction – this is at least a response to what was said, rather than how or by whom. However, the lowest form of response to an argument is simply to state the opposing case, with little or no supporting evidence.
Counterargument – usually the first form of convincing disagreement. Counterargument is contradiction plus reasoning and/or evidence.
Refutation - the most convincing form of disagreement is refutation. It's also the rarest, because it's the most work. To refute someone you probably have to quote them; you have to find a passage in whatever you disagree with that you feel is mistaken, and then explain why it's mistaken. It's got to be focused on their central point though. If you just refute a list of minor details in what someone is saying or has written then this can be seen as petty.
Do remember that different people do have different opinions. Even if you disagree well (avoiding name calling or attacking their tone and properly evidencing when you refute someone) it doesn’t make you right and them wrong!
Avoiding the boiling point
It's better to prevent unnecessary conflict than to manage conflict once the bubbles start spilling over. That’s why it can be useful to try and ensure issues can be aired before they become too pressing.
So how can you make sure you bring issues out in the open before they become problems?
One key is managing - even encouraging - healthy conflict. As a leader, one of the most successful strategies you can employ is to create a culture around you that enables others to ask the difficult questions and talk about the often un- spoken stuff.
As Gandhi said: Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.
Think about it. How many times have you chosen to be quiet about something that's bothering you, usually out of politeness. What happens? You end up griping about it behind closed doors or at home. Or in meetings, when people ask about questions in the face of a suggested plan or decision, silence is taken to mean agreement - then you find out later that there is unhappiness about or resistance to the decision or action. Perhaps you've felt attacked personally in a disagreement and so decide not to put yourself in the line of fire again – but this impacts on the way you see yourself and how you feel about the world in general.
We are usually so worried that disagreements will result in escalation, destructiveness, and time wasting that we don’t like to take action until its too late – when it usually does mean that things escalate, become destructive and take huge amounts of time and energy to unpack.
So how can you manage healthy conflict?
Acknowledge and reward people who have the courage to disagree constructively. Thank people who express different views and opinions; get into dialogue with them
Lead by example – teach those around you to embrace healthy conflict. If you respond positively when people challenge you and encourage people to voice differences of opinion this will soon start spreading. Make sure people don’t think that they will be in trouble or get grilled, ignored or avoided for disagreeing with you.
Get personal. Develop your personal skills and use your emotional intelligence and pass on these skills to those around you too.
Make it part of what you do. Why not make asking for different views part of what you do? When planning, ask if people have other ideas for ways of doing things. In evaluation, really ask people to talk about what didn’t work for them. Yes it takes time, and yes you may not always like what you hear, but they are great ways of really being engaged. Have a clear way that people can disagree with you – invite comments, emails, calls – and respond to them.
Be aware of triggers. Everyone has certain things that set them off. It’s those ‘red rag to a bull’ things. Know what your triggers are, and learn to be sensitive to them. Try and recognise when they are being pulled. Find out what the triggers are for those who work around you – and try to avoid the temptation to set them off!
Slow down. Particularly in the cultural sector at the moment, we are becoming so focused on doing stuff quickly and "efficiently" that sometimes we don’t really have the time to listen to different points of view. But think about it. Compared to the time it takes to re-examine a decision that isn't working or back-track on a plan that's meeting quiet resistance, it can be time well spent. You can also slow down with your responses – got some bad news, or a difficult email? Wait 24 hours before you respond. It could be all the time you need to think of a new way forward or even to frame your response more effectively.
Remember, managing conflict well isn’t about trying to agree all the time; its just about agreeing on the ground-rules about how to disagree!
Please don’t be fooled into thinking I’m great at managing conflict and encouraging people to disagree. But having researched for this article, I am going to try and work some of its advice into the work that I do. So please feel free to add comments below that completely disagree with everything I’ve said here. I welcome them!
Jo Verrent (Sync project manager)
