The Importance of Civil Discourse with Milan Kordestani

0:01Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Imperfect Action. Today, we'll be breaking down the importance of civil discourse. To drop these value bombs, I brought Milan Kordostani into EO Fire Studios. Milan is an entrepreneur, writer, and author of I'm Just Saying. He is also a three-time company founder focused on building sustainable businesses that drive positive social change at scale. And today, Fire Nation, we're to talk about what it means to maintain civil discourse in today's world.

0:41Talk about how people hate confrontations and how to get around that. We'll talk about the biggest challenges when it comes to online social media interactions and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Milan and our sponsors. As business owners, it's part of our job to stay ahead of the curve. And with AI stealing the show these days, it's time to study up. But where do you even start. Start with HubSpot. HubSpot's AI power tools, including their content assistant and ChatSpot, are changing the way you create content and communicate and serve your customers. Take HubSpot's content assistant as an example.

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1:57Milan, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. I believe that most people disagree with the fact that they need to release their ego to become successful. Hello, Fire Nation. Good to be here. Milan is going to rock the mic and talk about the importance of civil discourse. And I want to just start off by kind of setting the theme here, setting the ground. What does it mean to maintain civil discourse in today's world? Civil discourse is this idea that the majority of conversation should be focused around finding common ground with the people that we're conversing with.

2:42And a lot of today's conversation is talking at each other. It's debative, it's divisive, And really this idea of civil discourses is approaching conversation with a willingness to understand other people's perspectives better so that we can create common ground and, you know, really have a progressive society. Now let's talk about confrontations because most people, not all, but most people hate confrontations. So let's talk about why it's important for people to engage in civil discourse with those who have different views. Confrontation is an inevitable part of our lives. I think that what makes humans really unique is our ability to connect and collaborate to really compound greatness.

3:34Like we are able to work together to make a lot more output than we would as individuals. And that's why we live in societies and that's why we're social and why we communicate. And so a part of that is our ability to, you know, be able to have conflicts with one another and create common ground, be able to, you know, still understand each other well enough to move forward and collectively move society forward. And so, you know, those conflicts are inevitable, whether you're at the workplace and you're trying to achieve like a business goal together with team members that come from different walks of lives and especially in a remote world.

4:08You know, knowing how to deal with the conflicts when they happen is important because it's not you can't really avoid them forever. You know, like at every point in life, there will be some conflicts with humans and not getting scared and showing up confidently and having the courage to take them on correctly is what I believe is really important. Now, what is the problem with only spending time and hanging out with people who have the exact same views as yourself? Is that dangerous? You know, the social media companies would say that, you know, this is inevitable. Like we are going to generally attract people who we think the same as us and create our social groups based on people who are similar to us.

4:54And for that reason, they create algorithms that are tailored to what you like so that you stay on the platform and they can keep feeding you ads and making their money off of that engagement and those eyeballs. But in truth, I believe that diversity is super important in your friends, in your work, in wherever you are. like having different opinions that are going to question and bring new ideas and aren't afraid to bring a different perspective from maybe a different culture, a different upbringing, whatever it may be, because that inevitably, I think, makes the whole, the collective, the team much stronger.

5:30Now, you did bring up social media. So let's dive in there. I want to talk about some of the biggest challenges that you see when it comes to not just maintaining civility in online interactions and social media, but, you know, really improving these online interactions? It's a really complex issue to be able to improve discourse on social media. And part of why I wrote this book, I'm just saying is because I believe that it starts at the individual level and like how we approach our conversations, whether they're online or offline, you know, in person. And so it's a matter of knowing when to enter into a conversation, what if you're trying to make a point or, you know, if you're going in trying to understand people better.

6:17Civil discourse advocates for having very clear intention in why you're engaging in conversation with someone. And I think a lot of the times on social media, we miss the nuance. We miss that intention because we're not, you know, getting emotion there. We're not necessarily getting body language. We're not getting a lot of the factors that help us understand a person and what they're trying to convey to us to allow us to then respond appropriately. And so a lot of times we end up getting a lot of division, a lot of hate, a lot of trolling and anger on social media, which is unfortunate because I think there is also a lot of greatness in social media and our ability to connect, to help each other and inspire one another and educate.

6:58So, you know, it's a complex place to be. So what would you say is the most productive way to be interacting on social media? What have you seen that seems to actually work? I find that listening on social media is really important. Like when you see a post that goes up that's inevitably going to be divisive, let's say it's a political post from a news company or a news publishing company, and you go in and you see this, instead of just jumping in with your opinion, to honestly go in and scroll through the comments, which I think is a new habit that people have been building. Because news used to always be one way, right?

7:38It was on TV or radio and print. And then you would go home and discuss it face to face with your family or friends. But social media now allows you to respond pretty immediately. And to see what other people are saying in real time about that, depending on when it's gone live, right? And so I think looking, seeing how people are responding, choosing very intentionally when you want to jump into a conversation is really important. And beyond that, it's actually getting out of the comment section. And that's, I think, why TikTok has done really well is like some of these features like duetting content where you can literally just jump in and show your face and give some sort of emotion and response is a really more human way of interacting with people digitally.

8:20Fire Nation, we have a lot to talk about around this topic. When we get back from thinking our sponsors. Success Story, hosted by Scott D. Clary, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Success Story features Q &A sessions with successful business leaders, keynote presentations, and conversations on sales, marketing, business startups, and entrepreneurship. One of Scott's recent episodes was with none other than Jack Canfield, where they discuss adapting to life's twists and turns. Listen to Success Story wherever you get your podcasts.

8:54So Milan, we're back and the reality is this. Some people find social media and just the anonymous nature of it very divisive. Do you see a path forward where social media can actually bring people together? And if so, what is that path? One of the companies that I've founded and incubated is this publication called The Doe. and we actually were in an entirely anonymous publishing company. So people would come to us and say, I have this story I want to share, and I'll go through the process of vetting that this story happened to me and who I am to the publication, but I don't want the world to know my name because I'm scared of what my family will say, what my employer might say, so on, like this fear of retribution digitally.

9:40And so we call that cancel culture. And so what we would do is we would publish these stories, And they were really interesting perspectives from all walks of lives. A lot of LGBTQ stories, a lot of stories from within certain industries like tech or athletes on certain teams that can't talk about what's going on within the culture or the politics of a team. And when we would publish these stories, it would create this immense amount of connection for other people. Like one of the stories was a story of how a father never wanted to have kids and his wife pressured him into having children and he never loved the kids.

10:16And this sounds like a really dark, sad story. But what ended up happening when we published this story was over like, you know, 200 people. I think we almost got to a thousand comments actually on this on Instagram. And, you know, different dads and family members are coming in saying like, I am this person or I recognize this person. And this now gives me more empathy for that person. And now I understand a different perspective from, you know, someone who is like this. And it was, it's really interesting to see how some of these perspectives that are sometimes dark or sad or just very different and unique can spark a lot of civil discourse, connection and common ground and common understanding with people who we normally wouldn't interact with.

10:57So I do think that there's an opportunity to do, you know, to conduct great civil discourse on social media and to have difficult conversations that are productive. but I think it has to be really intentional about how we do that and the types of audiences that we're curating, which tends to be really difficult, I think, for a lot of large publishing companies that claim to be unbiased or not have a specific niche, but are usually subtly pushing some sort of agenda and not talking about it. Well, let's get right into that then, because if we want to effectively communicate with people who are having different viewpoints than us.

11:36And we don't want to result to insults. We don't want to result to personal attacks because we know that's just going to devolve into a mess. How do we effectively communicate? One of the main principles I talk about is this idea of active listening in the book. And like I mentioned earlier on in this podcast, this idea of ego and trying to crush your ego as much as you can in conversation, because a lot of what creates uncivil conversation is this need to be right and this need to prove a point, which usually stems from some sort of ego. And ego, I don't mean this in like a bad, like egotistical type of way, but oftentimes it's like, okay, what experiences from our lives have biased us towards this point and not wanting to hear someone else's perspective.

12:22And that can create a lot of division and divisiveness. And like you were saying, you know, like name calling or whatever it might be in conversation, which inevitably makes the other person stop listening and, you know, makes it much harder to actually come up with a win-win solution. And so it starts with this understanding that you want to conduct civil discourse because whether it's your spouse or it's at the congressional level or it's your friends, you don't want someone leaving a conversation always feeling like they're wrong or that they are, you know, less intelligent than you or whatever it may be.

12:56So you want to enter into most conversations with this practice of active listening, of listening to what someone else is saying because you're curious, because you're inquisitive and you want to understand people better and understand how they arrive at the perspectives that they do and how they arrive at the values that they hold tightly in their lives. And when you develop some sort of understanding of that person better through conversation, through questioning, it opens them up more to then, you know, being willing to find common ground with you as well, because they can see that you're willing to listen and that you're willing to understand them better before you come and respond and make your point.

13:33So those two factors, I think, are really big in being able to conduct better conversations and not letting them devolve into, you know, incivility. Let's talk about education. So what role do you think education can play in promoting the civil discourse that we're talking about and really foster understanding among all these different communities? Yes. So I think that given that this is an entrepreneurial show, my take on entrepreneurs and education is that we love to learn by making mistakes and by being very hands-on because we actually don't really like being told what to do or what is right or what is acceptable.

14:11And so a lot of that educational path that I recommend in this book or that I teach is learning through stories and other people's mistakes just so that you can prevent your own and really level up quickly. Because a lot of formal education, right, tends to be catching you up to speed, you know, to join the rest of society and humanity and make you an upstanding person. But beyond that, to be great, right, to be this excellent communicative person in your personal life and otherwise, I think that it really takes courage to be able to have difficult conversations and confidence in your own abilities.

14:50And that usually can only happen by intentionally learning about what the pitfalls are in conversation and what skills to hone versus the alternative, which is making tons of mistakes throughout your life and having a lot of conversations go wrong and then actually making you scared of being able to express yourself. And we see that a lot because, you know, having gone through this period of cancel culture and, you know, a lot of digital retribution for having opinions that differ, people are nervous to share their opinions and such. So I think whatever education it is, it needs to be inspiring of the courage that it takes to have difficult conversations.

15:31You wrote a book, I'm Just Saying. What does Fire Nation need to know about this book? Yes. So this book is really the culmination of a bunch of stories that I've learned building different startups and incubating different startups, along with a lot of personal stories. So I'm the child of two divorces, and I have about four younger siblings that span the ages of three, five, nine, and 14, along with an older sibling. And so there's a lot of interesting both work stories and personal stories in here that I use as examples for moments of greatness where I learned a lot from broken discourse or, you know, moments that upon reflection, I'm like, whoa, this was a mistake in my life.

16:18And this is how I want to approach that situation differently. So this book, you know, using those stories, I kind of weave all of the lessons I've learned and the tools that I believe could have helped me learn these lessons a bit better to become, you know, a bit more proactive in the conversations because ultimately better conversations, I believe the more successful we'll be in whatever it is we're doing. Fire Nation, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with MK and JLD today, so keep up the heat. If you want links to everything that we talked about, visit eofire.com, type Milan in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up.

16:59Milan, take us home, brother. What's the one thing you want to make sure our listeners walk away with from our conversation? Any call to action you have, and then we'll say goodbye. Yes, my call to action would be that the way that we create a world that embraces civil discourse is by inspiring people through our individual actions. So the way you show up to conversations, whether they're digital, whether they're in person, is what will change the world and inspire other people to be better in their conversations and to create a really solution-oriented world. Milan, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today.

17:36For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you, John. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Milan for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, successful entrepreneurs accomplish big goals. That's why I created the Freedom Journal to guide you in accomplishing your number one goal in 100 days. We're talking step-by-step. visit thefreedomjournal.com. And I'll catch you there or on the flip side. Success Story, hosted by Scott D. Clary, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Success Story features Q &A sessions with successful business leaders, keynote presentations, and conversations on sales, marketing, business startups, and entrepreneurship.

18:19One of Scott's recent episodes was with none other than Jack Canfield, where they discuss adapting to life's twists and turns. Listen to Success Story wherever you get your podcasts.