These are the types of workplace conversations that can spark heated disagreements between employees, he says Steven L. Franconeriprofessor of management and organizations (courtesy) at the Kellogg School who studies how people can have more intelligent and calm disagreements. He has a theory about why emotionally charged arguments seem to be on the rise.
“We’re used to assuming that disagreements must be imbued with anger and hatred, and that the person we’re disagreeing with is either being unreasonable or deliberately misleading,” he says. “We need to learn how to have better arguments.”
Enter Point Taken, a game developed by Franconeri that models conversational interventions aimed at helping people overcome destructive disagreements. Based on the critical thinking technique of “argument mapping,” the game uses octagonal tiles, money, and cooperative fact-checking missions to teach people how to have arguments that are healthy and productive, rather than polarizing and ineffective.
Franconeri has tested Point Taken with employees in a variety of settings, including a venture capital firm, a nonprofit for underserved youth, and a group of U.S. military officers. In any case, he has seen definite improvements in the way people deal with or resolve disagreements.
But you don’t have to play the game to play by its rules. Here are five principles of productive disagreement to consider during your next conversation at work.
Reframing the target
Although we all enter conversations with our own information, stories, opinions, biases and blind spots, Franconeri notes that the goal of talking to someone isn’t to “win” or convince them you’re right. Introducing any disagreement with the intention of converting them to your point of view can signal to the other person that you do not intend to listen.
“That’s a recipe for a fight that’s not going to change anyone’s mind,” says Franconeri. “In fact, it can drive two people even further apart.”
Instead, make it your goal to gather information, broaden your perspective, reduce any preconceptions you may have and, quite simply, learn. Think of it as an interesting exercise in challenging your own logic by understanding someone else’s.
Law students and intelligence analysts are trained to practice this habit, Franconeri adds. In fact, it’s so important to critical thinking that it asks anyone who plays Point Taken to sign an informal contract stating that they won’t try to convince another person of their views.
“If that’s your intention, then you’re in the wrong mindset to learn and find common ground with other people,” he says. “This is clearly against the rules of the game.”
Model of emotional regulation
When you feel strongly about an issue, it’s natural to get emotional when discussing it. But Franconeri advises people to fight that urge. Becoming more and more emphatic will not advance an argument and may allow irrationality to creep into a discussion.
Instead, make a conscious effort to stay calm and force yourself to “play both sides” by focusing on where you agree before exploring where you both disagree. “This will calm your inner emotional brain,” says Franconeri, and invite your “outer, cognitive, intellectual brain to think through the arguments more clearly.”
Modeling this behavior for others also encourages them to imitate it. And if they don’t, it reflects badly on them, not you.
“That’s not easy, by the way,” adds Franconeri. “It takes a lot of inhibition to tone down your emotions when you hear things you don’t agree with. It takes inhibition to suppress that rebuttal you’ve been dying to say.”
Putting emotions aside can also allow solutions to emerge. Example: workers at a nonprofit organization for at-risk teens couldn’t resolve a heated disagreement about their instructional programming until they started talking about it in a calm way.
“In the end they realized that their real disagreement was only about one course,” says Franconeri. “But it took time and a reduction in their emotions to figure that out.”
Focus on the issue, not the person
As conflict professionals suggest, treat the word “you” as taboo in the context of an argument. In other words, don’t say, “you only think that because…” or “you only think that because…”.
Along similar lines, avoid using the words “always” or “never,” which suggest that you’re thinking in a biased or authoritarian way. Many senior leaders have been trained to see this as a sign of sloppy thinking, says Franconeri.
Keep your focus on the topic, which will encourage you and the other person to analyze it as a group. “It gets you out of that angry-dinner-table-argument framework and into a collaborative mindset,” Franconeri explains.
What if, during the dispute, a fact claimed by one person is disputed by the other? In Point Taken, each player is issued “fact check” cards that they can play to request verification of the plausibility of a point by conducting online research. It’s important to share the belief that events matter, says Franconeri.
“It’s about showing respect for each other and showing that the other person matters and that the way they think matters,” he says. “That’s the priority, rather than changing their mind on an issue.”
Slow down
Conversations, especially when they involve charged topics, can be challenging simply because we have to do so many things at once. It’s hard to formulate an argument, listen to someone else, and offer a rebuttal on the fly, especially as you receive new and unexpected information. In addition, verbal memory is limited.
“You might remember the last two things you said and forget the other three,” says Franconeri. “And then you remember the last thing they said and forget the other five.”
In an ideal world, we’d have time to gather our thoughts before having a particularly controversial discussion. In Point Taken, this is done by having each player write down their reasons for holding a point of view before sharing with the other player. This helps people slow down and think more deliberately. It also makes it easier to recognize when we agree or disagree with the finer points of another person’s argument.
But if there’s no practical way to write down your ideas, Franconeri offers two tips to slow down the conversation. First, developing phrases like, “so, if I heard you right…” before repeating what you’ve heard someone say allows the other person to feel heard while giving you time to absorb new information. Second, playing devil’s advocate by arguing from the opposing side makes it easier to remember and understand someone else’s point of view. It also allows the other person a chance to add context or clarify their position.
“Workforce culture and teamwork can improve as employees learn how to think more slowly and carefully,” says Franconeri. “Given time to reflect, people are more likely to realize that their colleagues are, in fact, mostly reasonable people with reasonable opinions.”
Stay open and humble
Try to enter a conversation with a sense of openness, curiosity, and intellectual humility. Otherwise, if someone says something you don’t understand, you may immediately jump to the wrong conclusion. “We often just assume that the lack of clarity is just a lack of thought or bad intentions on their part,” says Franconeri.
She recommends asking for clarification when needed and making sure you fully understand someone’s opinion before offering your own. On the other hand, when asked to clarify your points, avoid doing so in a way that could be offensive to the other person. Bottom line: be open to other people’s opinions and the possibility that your opinion is wrong.
The humble approach gives people the opportunity to realize when they have made false assumptions about another person’s point of view. Some find that the source of their disagreement is something simple or small, such as differences in how an issue is defined. Scoring rounds often end with the players agreeing to disagree while identifying the points on which both players agree. It’s common for players to discover that they agree on a lot more than they first thought.
This transparency can help us identify unconscious biases—in ourselves and others—and begin to challenge or change our own views based on what we’ve learned.
“It’s good to be able to see things not in binaries, but in complexity, and to be able to absorb other possible positions that are different from your own.”
