Learn to Disagree More Effectively
3/24/202631 min
Disagreement is essential to better decisions—but most of us either avoid it or handle it poorly. Julia Minson is a professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and she's spent years studying disagreement and what we get wrong. She explains why intent matters less than behavior, how leaders can model “receptiveness,” and why the goal of a good disagreement isn’t to win—but to keep the conversation going. Minson is the coauthor of the HBR article "A Smarter Way to Disagree" and author of the book How to Disagree Better.
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First 90 secondsAlison Beard· Host0:00
[background music] A new digital reading experience from Harvard Business Review is here. It's the HBR Interactive Issue. Swipe through pages, search each issue, and listen to articles with audio narration. The interactive issue is available now to all HBR print magazine subscribers. Not yet a subscriber to the HBR print magazine? Subscribe today at hbr.org/interactiveissue. I'm Alison Beard.
Adi Ignatius· Host0:38
And I'm Adi Ignatius, and this is the HBR Idea Cast.
Alison Beard· Host0:41
Adi, how do you like to handle disagreement at work?
Adi Ignatius· Host0:52
I don't think I handle it very well. I'm very conflict-avoidant, so I do an end run around disagreement and try to resolve the issue in some other way.
Alison Beard· Host1:02
Hmm. That's the opposite of me. I think that I'm sort of... It's not that I welcome disagreement, but I don't mind it. And so if I have an opinion, even if I know it might ruffle some feathers, I express it, and I sometimes worry it's going to get me fired, but it hasn't yet. So [laughs] um, the point is, though, we know that conflict and debate is good for teams and organizations, so it's useful for all of us to figure out how