"You Don't Seem Evil," Finding Common Ground Amid Profound Disagreement

There will be moments when you, as an upstander, want to go beyond preventing people from imposing their prejudices on others and invite them to consider how their stereotyping beliefs are harming your team’s efforts.?

If you decide to have such a conversation with someone about what you consider to be a prejudiced belief, be aware that the odds are you won’t convince the person to change their thinking.?

What, then, should be your goal in having a deeper conversation? Why engage? Here are some possible reasons.

To express yourself: Feeling free to express yourself is important psychologically. This is very different from wanting to change the other person’s mind. Matthew Stevenson put it well in Eli Saslow’s book Rising Out of Hatred: “It’s our job to push the rock, not necessarily to move the rock.”

To clarify your thinking: If your goal is to clarify and improve your own arguments rather than to change the other person’s mind, the conversation will be far less frustrating.

To find common ground: A prejudiced belief, no matter how profoundly you disagree with it, does not constitute the whole person. Sometimes, if you manage to find something you agree on—the importance of family, the pain of meetings that last forever, or even the job itself—you may find it easier to work with the person.?

Take the friendship between Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia as inspiration here. They disagreed with each other on many cases and were on different ends of the spectrum politically, but they were able to bond over their love of music and to work productively together.?

Recognize Your Shared Humanity

I once gave a talk to a group that was pursuing a set of policies with which I vehemently disagree. In fact, I would argue their policies were prejudiced against women. However, I decided it was important to have a dialogue.

As I engaged in the Q&A part of the talk, I had the sudden thought, These people are not my enemies. I can disagree with them and still work with them.?

After the talk, a woman approached me and asked me about my stance on the various policies we disagreed about. “Hm!” she said. “You don’t seem evil.”?

We had a little laugh. She had so rarely spoken with an actual person who shared my beliefs. It was an important human moment, even though neither one of us changed our minds.

Focus On Collaborative Resolution

Once you’ve established that the person cannot impose their beliefs on others, you can decide whether you want to engage with the person further. Is this a “Good fences make good neighbors” situation or a “Let’s sit down and break bread together” situation??

If you decide it’s the latter, don’t go into it like a presidential debate, where there is a winner or a loser. Rather, think of it like a Rogerian argument. In his book Active Listening, psychologist Carl Rogers proposed an approach to disagreement that helps us move away from coercive expectations that we can “make” a person believe what we believe and toward a productive, collaborative resolution that respects the other person’s beliefs and individuality.

The goal is to confirm that both people understand each other. Rather than pro/con, winner/loser debates, Rogerian arguments require both sides to be able to articulate each other’s perspective and also to identify the points in one’s own argument that can be amended or adjusted.?

To clarify your thinking, you listen to the other person and argue with yourself. Rhetorical scholars Sonja Foss and Cindy Griffin have developed a similar strategy for disagreement with respect called invitational rhetoric.

One way to apply active listening / invitational rhetoric to a debate at work that gets too intense is to switch roles, arguing for the position you disagree with and asking the person on the other side to do the same.?

This is a good way to make sure that egos don’t get attached to ideas, to make sure that we are listening to each other and respecting each other. It also forces you to understand the conditions under which their belief could be reasonable. It makes you identify the unshared underlying assumptions that can produce two wildly different opinions on a subject in rational actors.

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Radical Respect is a weekly newsletter I am publishing on LinkedIn to highlight?some of the things that get in the way of creating a collaborative, respectful working environment. A healthy organization is not merely an absence of unpleasant symptoms. Creating a just working environment is about eliminating bad behavior and reinforcing collaborative, respectful behavior. Each week I'll offer tips on how to do that so you can create a workplace where everyone feels supported and respected. Learn more in my new book Radical Respect , available wherever books are sold! You can also follow Radical Candor? and the Radical Candor Podcast more tips about building better relationships at work.