The next time you catch yourself nodding along to something you disagree with, stop and calmly enter the argument instead.
That’s advice from Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Learning how to effectively disagree — without simply saying “no” — can strengthen your relationships and make you more persuasive, Grant recently told the “What Now? with Trevor Noah” podcast.
“So often, people are told, ‘Just compromise. Pick your battles in relationships,’ that they end up treating them as fragile,” said Grant, in an episode that published on August 15. Then, “we never build the calluses for the bigger [conversations].”
That doesn’t mean you should name call or strong-arm your way into getting other people to seeing your point of view. Effective disagreements don’t need to cause lasting conflict: Calmly assert your point of view, genuinely listen to the other side and engage in a give-and-take conversation, Grant wrote in his 2021 book “Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know.”
“Although productive disagreement is a critical life skill, it’s one that many of us never fully develop,” Grant wrote. “Being able to have a good fight doesn’t just make us more civil, it also develops our creative muscles.”
Learning how to disagree can improve or create new ideas and set you apart as an original thinker, he added. Plus, effective leaders are often authentic and good at having difficult conversations constructively, research shows — helping you maintain a reputation as an agreeable person who’s liked by co-workers and job recruiters, without becoming a pushover.
Here are Grant’s top three ways to get better at disagreeing:
Keep conflicts task-oriented
Disagreements fall into two categories, Grant said: task and relationship conflicts. A task conflict focuses on a specific issue: What’s the quickest way to increase our company’s revenue? In HBO’s “The Sopranos,” was Tony Soprano good, evil or morally ambiguous?
A relationship problem often assigns an identity to a person: If you think Tony is bad, you’re ignorant. If you don’t like my solution to increase sales, you’re hard-headed. Those assumptions can keep us from moving forward and affect productivity, Grant wrote.
If you can defend your argument — while being open to other perspectives, and focusing on the task-specific problem instead of the other person — you might be able to brainstorm additional solutions together, Grant said.
“When a clash gets personal and emotional, we become self-righteous preachers of our own views,” Grant wrote. “Task conflict can be constructive when it brings diversity of thought.”
Frame disagreements as debates instead of arguments
If a conflict feels like it’s starting to get personal, ask the other person if they want to debate.
Saying you’re going to debate, rather than disagree, signals to the other person you’re willing to hear their ideas, Grant wrote: “[It] sends a message that you want to think like a scientist, not a preacher or a prosecutor — and encourages the other person to think that way, too.”
You don’t have to change someone’s mind, or vice versa, for a conversation to be effective. Hearing someone out is more productive than cutting the conversation off at the first sign of disagreement, Grant wrote.
Debates can also help you find common ground with the other person, without necessarily compromising your viewpoints, he added.
“A good debate is not a war [or] even a tug-of-war … it’s more like a dance,” he wrote. “If you try too hard to lead, your partner will resist. If you can adapt your moves to hers, and get her to do the same, you’re more likely to end up in rhythm.”
Be someone you’d like to debate with
If you’re confident the other person has something to gain from your argument, treat them as an equal. Skilled negotiators — the ones who are most effective at changing other people’s minds — are better at finding common ground and ask more questions than average negotiators, Grant wrote.
Good arguments often have just a few, strong points rather than a long list of relevant points, studies show. It’s called the dilution effect: weaker claims water down well-constructed arguments.
Disagreements don’t always lead to concessions or compromises. Often, you simply learn more about the other person, or the problem, and move forward, wrote Grant.
“Convincing other people to think again isn’t just about making a good argument — it’s about establishing that we have the right motives to do so,” he wrote.
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