Making Room for Disagreement
“It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.” — Epictetus
How can someone best disagree with you? It’s a question I’ve been pondering lately. Recently I’ve been in several conversations (and e-mail exchanges) where someone expressed a conviction so strongly that there seemed little room left for dialogue. The message, intended or not, was essentially: This is how it is. Any response other than agreement felt less like conversation and more like confrontation. I found myself wondering not only how I might engage differently with them, but something much more uncomfortable: When do I do the same thing to others?
I have plenty of convictions. Some come from experience, some from expertise, some from deeply held values, and some, undoubtedly, from assumptions I’ve accumulated along the way. And when I care deeply about something, I can become quite certain about it. I suspect most of us can. But conviction has a shadow side. The more certain I sound, the greater the risk that someone who sees things differently decides it simply isn’t worth saying so. I may leave the conversation believing there was agreement when what actually existed was silence, and perhaps a little more distance between us.
Psychological safety is often described as the belief that we can speak up, ask questions, acknowledge mistakes, or offer a different perspective without fear of humiliation or punishment. We usually think of this as something leaders create for teams, but it also exists between two people. Our words, tone, facial expressions, curiosity, and response to challenge continually answer an unspoken question: Is it safe to disagree with you? And perhaps psychological safety is revealed most clearly in what happens after someone takes the risk of doing so.
That has me wondering whether we should occasionally ask the people closest to us a remarkably vulnerable question: When I feel strongly about something, do I still leave room for you to see it differently? And perhaps follow with: Is there anything I do that makes that harder? Maybe we need to ask more questions before defending our position, give others time to formulate their thoughts, stop interrupting, soften our tone, or simply say, “I may be wrong. Tell me what you’re seeing.” The goal isn’t to become less passionate or abandon our convictions. It is to hold them in a way that leaves enough space for another person to bring theirs into the room, and for us to be open to changing ours.
This week, consider inviting your PeerRx partner or another trusted colleague to tell you whether they feel there is room to see something differently than you do. Then resist the temptation to explain, defend, or correct their answer. Just be open and listen. The strongest relationships aren’t those in which we always agree, but those in which disagreement doesn’t threaten connection. Perhaps one of the greatest gifts we can offer another person is not simply permission to disagree with us, but the experience of discovering that when they do, we move toward them rather than away. That’s the PeerRx way.