You Probably Shouldn’t Say That. And Yet…(Groundbreaking Science of Disagreeing Well) | Julia Minson
5/4/202650 min
Learn how to say what you think without blowing up your relationships. Most of us have been there. A conversation that starts completely normally and somehow ends with you lying awake at 2am wondering how it went so wrong, again. Whether it is a partner, a teenager, a colleague, or someone on the other side of a political divide, the cost of disagreement done badly is one of the quietest, most cumulative kinds of pain there is.
Julia Minson is a behavioral scientist and professor at the Harvard Kennedy School who has spent years studying the psychology of disagreement, researching how people handle opinions, judgments, and beliefs that differ from their own, and what it actually takes to navigate those moments without losing the relationship in the process. Her book How to Disagree Better distills that research into a practical, science-backed guide for anyone ready to do the real work of staying connected across difference.
In this conversation, you will discover:
- The single most common mistake people make at the start of a disagreement that almost guarantees it will escalate into a full argument
- The HEAR framework, a four-part behavioral science tool for expressing your view firmly without triggering defensiveness or shutting the other person down
- Why leading with facts and data backfires when you are talking to someone who already disagrees with you, and what to use instead that dramatically increases trust
- A critical practice for building disagreement skills on low-stakes conversations first, so you are not white-knuckling it when the big moments arrive
- Why empathy is wonderful in theory but unreliable in the heat of the moment, and what to focus on instead that actually shifts the dynamic
If you are tired of watching important relationships quietly erode one hard conversation at a time, this episode is for you. Press play and let's figure out how to disagree better, together.
You can find Julia at: Website | LinkedIn | Episode Transcript
Next week, we're sharing our conversation with Dr. Nicole LePera, New York Times best-selling author of Reparenting the Inner Child, about why so many of us feel stuck in patterns we can't seem to escape, no matter how hard we try. And what's actually happening in your nervous system when that happens. It's a grounding, hopeful conversation.
Check out our offerings & partners:
- Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel
- Visit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsJonathan Fields· Host0:00
So most of us are mildly to severely allergic to conflict, to disagreement. We fear the conversation going off the rails, getting hurt, misunderstood, or causing harm, failing to convince somebody to our point of view, or being maybe hated because we disagree. Problem is, there are times in our lives, moments where it's actually really important to disagree. But how we do it, having the ability to disagree with skill, it makes all the difference. And it turns out most of us were never actually taught how to disagree well. We were taught how to win or how to avoid. Neither one of those serves us or the people that we're talking with. My guest today is Julia Minson. She's a behavioral scientist and professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, and she has spent years building the actual science of how to disagree and stay connected, especially with the people who matter most. Her book is How to Disagree Better, and this conversation is packed with things I genuinely wish I had known decades ago. You'll learn why your instincts about persuasion often backfire, what a behavioral tool called the HEAR framework can do for your most charged conversations, why personal stories beat data when talking to someone who already disagrees with you, and how to practice all of this in ways that actually stick. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. You make a sort of like a bold statement,