The 8 Steps to Disagree... and Get Even More Productive!

Spoiler alert: this text will discuss disagreements. It may happen you disagree with me. You may be feeling stressed already.

If that's the case, you need this article a lot. If you further disagree to that, then... run to buy the book, situation is really critical!

Intro

Buster Benson, in his best selling "Why are we yelling? The art of productive disagreement", wants to provoke us and challenge us to disagree. With him, or with anybody else. Is that a good idea?

According to the author, productive disagreements are not only a good idea but rather necessary, vital for our development as human beings and as society.

Coming from a family where people have a passion for disagreeing with each other, discussing, even yelling, I can relate to that. Many of our family lunches on Sundays included meat, rice and several people talking loud and over each other to make their points of view heard, trying hard to convince other very opinioned people for hours.

I remember how one of my aunts would defend a soon-to-be Brazilian president (same one she currently demonizes) against my father, who would give all the great reasons why the government in place was the best one and had to be re-elected (teaser: for the next elections, the two joined forces, despite how big the disagreement appeared to be back then).

It often felt draining, exhausting, sometimes like a marathon. You would be tired before it even started, even at younger ages when all I could really do was listen. Despite all that, it happened to help me substantially to develop in my profession, to allow myself to be in disagreement and find solutions to it, and even to follow a few tips from this book before I it was written!

My life experience and this book agree: disagreeing is good. How we handle the disagreements is a completely different thing, the key to success.

The 3 Myths

If you thought it was shocking to consider disagreements as a good thing, let's go back to the book and see the 3 myths about disagreements that put us off track.

1. "Arguments are bad": they are good! According to the presented and referenced research, teams and groups are more productive when there is a stable in-flow of disagreements, in a rate of 5 positive encounters to 1 negative encounter.
2. "Arguments can change minds": partially true. They can change your mind only if you allow it to. Since I love Greek mythology, I found the book's example amazing: Zeus chained Prometheus to a rock and put a big bird to eat his liver a tiny bit every day. Ouch. Did Prometheus change his mind? Nope... your partner, child, boss, colleague... will also probably not change theirs, unless they want to.
3. "Arguments end": if you have ever been in a romantic relationship, you know that already. They don't. They will sneak in back whenever you are not expecting, because we planted the roots very deeply. It's almost like a time travelling machine; all of a sudden you are back in the past in some conversation you didn't want to have anymore.

You see now: if you are not having disagreements, you are probably losing opportunities. If you are having disagreements, chances are that you are doing it in a way that will hurt yourself on the long run. What is the solution?

The 3 Realms of Disagreement and the 8 Steps for Productive Disagreements

The three realms of disagreement are a reference to what is true, what is meaningful and what is useful.

The author refers to head, heart and hands, which is smart ... but I feel it's just making it harder to remember later. To resolve the disagreement, think about:

• true = find out facts
• meaningful = balance personal taste
• useful = try it out

It's a smart way to figure out "what is going on" next time your partner starts yelling at you. Well, if there is yelling maybe it is already too late, but still an opportunity to learn and exercise.

Are you fighting because of a fact? For example, whenever you have been helping with the kids or not? Then you could agree on how measure it going forward. (true)

Or maybe you are disagreeing regarding covid vaccination? There are pros and cons, and if you think there is more of one than the other... consider this may be just your personal preference regarding which risks to take and who shall bear with the risks. How could you get into terms with the other person's preference? What is the impact on your relationship? How much is this truly meaningful to your relationship? (meaningful)

It could also be that the disagreement is about investment strategies. Maybe you are not accepting how much one should expose self to risk, and the best way to sort it out would be to run a few tests and simulations. (useful)

The key message: think about WHY you are having the argument. Then consider that whatever is behind could be a mix: it could be a challenge of the facts, but also have a twist of opinions.

Once you know why you are having the disagreement, it is time to see HOW to make the disagreement productive through 8 simple-not-so-simple steps:

1. Watch how anxiety sparks: that translates to... be mindful! Pay attention in your body and your reactions during the discussion. Are you getting emotional? How to deal with it: pause and acknowledge your anxiety. If you can do that in the open with the other participants of the discussion, even better. Then there will be space to discuss what the anxiety is about and manage it.

2. Talk to your internal voices: there are four of them. The voice of power, that will apply brute force to end a discussion and force a position. The voice of reason will appeal to logic and commonality across participants of the conversation and may resort on the voice of power when that fails. The voice of avoidance, or hiding, that often drives the yelling to toilets and showers and pillows - when people are alone and then need to let it air out. Then the most important, the voice of possibility - what are the alternatives? This is the voice we should seek to pursue and encourage. All four voices are important though, and our job is to address all of them consciously.

3. Develop honest bias: there are amazing books out there related to bias, "Thinking... fast and slow" being one of my favorites. The one takeaway from this and all other books we should carry is: we all have bias, a fully loaded cargo ship of them. The best we can do is acknowledge that, and then be open to acknowledge blind spots. If you can pair that with inviting for diverse opinions and listening carefully to carefully them, you are in the right track for developing an honest bias.

4. Speak for yourself: that's self-explanatory. Keep it to what you say and what you think, and then invite others to contribute. In that big business meeting, you need to bring in the insight from a colleague... then bring in the colleague to speak for him or herself. Avoid speculating what others think.

5. Ask questions that invite surprising answers: this is something I am working on myself. Sometime back I framed it as asking better questions, which is rather difficult to do, because labelling the questions as better or worse imply there are good ones and bad ones. I really like this frame better - questions that invite surprising answers. It means questions we know the answer for, or we think we have an answer for, are ruled out. We can spot the borders of our knowledge - and aim right there. I loved how the author framed questions as complete sentences and asking people to comment on the sentence; I will definitively try that out. That chapter brings author's story around the question "Do ghosts exist?". It's fascinating, have a look and let me know what you think.

6. Build arguments together: This is about bringing people together. As a fact, it can be used as strong argument why we can't or shouldn't have so many virtual relationships and the importance of having people sharing unique experiences together, even if it is a simple meal. It talks about the importance of being aware of other people's inner voices, and providing frameworks that favor the voice of possibility. Another interesting "add on" to the book is the reference to "The Monkey's Paw", by W. W. Jacobs. Call me ignorant, I just did not know that one before, and it is a great parable that we can use often through our lives.

7. Cultivate neutral spaces: I wouldn't go to China to deliver speeches against Communism. It wouldn't be a neutral space for that particular discussion, and I wouldn't be as open as I would have to be in order to have a productive disagreement. Likewise, a communist Chinese person would probably have reservations to speak freely against democracy in the USA. These are just examples - the book goes beyond. It talks about three levels: a place that allow for different ideas and perspectives, a place that allow people to come and go as they wish, and a place that evolves along with the conversation. We should aim to create those places.

8. Accept reality, then participate in it. Just like that.

Putting It All Together

If you can digest all realms, steps, actions, and what else, then you are ready to have productive disagreements. Going through the examples and reflecting on our own lives, there are two big advantages of following the models proposed:

(a) We can find more alternatives to solve a problem, and that means we can find a better alternative, one that is better accepted, or cheaper to implement or that provide more benefits

(b) It can also be used as a tool to foster creativity. A lot of the elements in the book, like bringing diverse backgrounds or watching out for bias, are well document elements in frameworks that help bringing innovation forward.

There is however a lot of work to be done. Every single chapter from the book could be a month of training followed by several months of implementation. The simplicity of the book shouldn't be confused with the complexity of integrating it to our lives.

Observations

Greek Mythology and Star Wars references... Buster got me right there! This is a very dense book, packaged with knowledge. I recommend a slow reading and digesting; the most you can practice some of what is said chapter by chapter, the better.

• Easy of reading: 3 stars. Accessible language, but I must say that many concepts throw in together with the many multiple numbering and category systems used made the flow a little hard to follow. I feel it misses some infographics, since there are many processes and sub-processes to be dealt with.
• Learning something new: 4 stars. There are plenty of references to research and a great deal of personal stories that are truly insightful, and that gives points to both bringing something new and making the reading engaging and interesting.
• Interesting and Engaging: 3 stars. The engagement may slip sometimes as at least for me I struggled to go back and forth and review some concepts to ensure I was processing the wisdom in the right way.

This is the kind of book that would be awesome as the basis for entire adult development programs, you have the script pretty much there and examples that can inspire you when creating your own experiments.

If you can practice what is there in this book, you will be amazed with new perspectives and will become a problem solver. I am not saying it will be easy, though.

The author has been a product lead in large, successful organizations like Amazon and Twitter, so I am pretty convinced he had his fair share of arguments to deal with. This would have been a question I'd like to ask him if I could - why is that there aren't more examples from his professional experiences in these giants described in the book? It would have been interesting.

Your turn now - think about the last time you had a big, ugly disagreement. What would have you changed? Could you apply some of the concepts above? Is there anything you would like to try next time you have an argument?

Let me know in the comments and remember to leave your Like and subscribe to this newsletter for more book reviews!