On disagreement in comms

You may well be despairing at the state of online debate. If the brand you work with sits on one side of a culture war or the other, you may have had to deal with a barrage of disparaging comments from people whose world view is diametrically opposed to yours (and your brand’s), about whom you have repeated internal discussions on whether to engage or not on social, and whether to address via traditional comms. Employees will get caught up in it and you, in comms, find yourself talking between the people team, the executive and marketing to figure out what to do about it. Perhaps even disagreeing on what’s best to do with it.

Addressing this kind of disagreement – whether through external comms or through facilitating the internal discussions required to navigate it – is far from easy, and I’m not here today to present any quick fixes. I am here, however, to recommend a book.

Conflicted: Why Arguments Are Tearing Us Apart and How They Can Bring Us Together by Ian Leslie is an effort to understand the state of the disagreement, and what can be done to bridge the divide in our culture through communications to drive more productive, healthier, happier outcomes. Whilst the book spans society as a whole, there are some key takeaways for brand communicators I wanted to mull on here. In the meantime, if you want a broader perspective on the book, I did a little thread here.

So, some thoughts I felt were particularly relevant to challenge those of us in comms and brand might need to tackle, internally and externally:

1. Disagreement is not inherently bad: there is an unspoken assumption that disagreement is bad, is… disagreeable. Ian makes the point that the Socratic purpose of disagreement was to further understanding; Socrates asked difficult questions not to be difficult for the sake of it, but because in taking that tack, he uncovered deeper truths and more considered perspectives. So as long as the disagreement is not inherently personal, not rooted in ‘relationship conflict’, there may be a power to it.
2. Disagreement is not the basis for a zero sum game – it is not all about a win-loss interaction. Ian even takes issue with the idea of ‘compromise’, which implies sacrifice on both paths. Why not consider that disagreement can lead to new, better positions? Whilst in many cases, you may not choose to change your position, in others greater understanding may lead to you evolving your world view. This greater understanding may change the way you / your brand chooses to engage with an issue.
3. Apologies and changes of position have to have cost to feel genuine. Too-quick-apologies or shifts in position do not appear consistent with the strength of position you may have taken in the past, as your position evolves. And there has to be a basis/rationale for the change that seems credible. I’m trying to imagine, for example, what Brewdog might need to do to truly, convincingly address the world it has changed in the wake of the recent former employee letter… well, that’s a doozy.
4. Gauge your culture to assess the power and place of disagreement – if you’re operating in a culture that doesn’t support productive disagreement, it can be difficult to escape that paradigm. Disagreements will often be dotted with ‘let’s take that offline’, making disagreement taboo, or, perhaps worse - something not to be had openly. Worse because this leads to an environment of ‘office politics’ – where disagreements happen around the edges of meetings, and the ‘room where it happens’ – where important decisions are taken - fragment.
5. Building a culture of productive disagreements will lead to better creative output. The notion that ‘no idea is bad’ in a brainstorm is so entrenched in modern creative culture, despite the fact that most people involved in any kind of brainstorm ever know it is inherently untrue. But we maintain it because, we tell ourselves, disagreeing with an idea as it is voiced will discourage people from contributing. Ian says, instead, why not try to build a culture where this kind of disagreement is seen as a way of improving the ideas articulated, and in so doing generating a culture where everyone is more comfortable with this kind of disagreement. In practice I think this kind of cultural shift would be tough but I think it’s a powerful argument.
6. Sometimes, it’s just not worth debating – there are those who are and will remain intractable no matter what effort you make to understand their position. Debate will not help against absolute dogma.

Managing disagreements, within or beyond a corporate boundary, will never be a trivial challenge. And there are huge cultural differences (some noted in the book) – for example, us Brits seem far less willing to directly engage with disagreement than, for example, our US counterparts.

In this context, I found many of the perspectives shared in this book really eye opening – and the guide for productive disagreement it closes with, whilst it may appear obvious on first reading, will challenge us all in our outlook and practice in the process of disagreeing. Professionally and otherwise, given the research the book cites on marriages alongside a wealth of other things (in short, marriages in which there are more open disagreements are healthier and last longer, proven by the data)…

Love to hear your thoughts in the comments, or HMU on email. If you’ve read the book, I’d love to get your perspective on it.

There’s a lot more of value in the book than I’ve captured here – on high context vs. low context cultures, on how to empathise with actual criminals, on the power of constraints and the risk of normalising your perspective. As I concluded my Twitter thread on it…