You Probably Shouldn’t Say That. And Yet…(Groundbreaking Science of Disagreeing Well) | Julia Minson

0:00Jonathan Fields: So most of us are mildly too 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 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.

0:38Jonathan Fields: 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.

1:18Jonathan Fields: So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project.

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2:28We all belong outside. We're drawn to nature, whether it's the recorded sounds of the ocean we doze off to or the succulents that adorn our homes. Nature makes all of our lives, well,

2:39Jonathan Fields: better. Despite all this, we often go about our busy lives removed from it. But the outdoors is closer than we realize. With AllTrails, you can discover trails nearby and explore confidently with offline maps and on-trail navigation. Download the free app today and make the most of your summer with all trails. Good Life Project is sponsored by Amazon Health AI. So guys, we gotta talk about your secret late night internet searches. You know the ones, bumpy leg rash, hair loss, itchy burn, trying to figure out your body by endlessly searching for answers. We all do it and it never works. Thankfully, there's Amazon Health AI.

3:20Jonathan Fields: It can connect your symptoms with your medical history to offer personalized care 24-7. So call off the search. Amazon Health AI is here. Healthcare just got less painful. You make a sort of like a bold statement. We are in a disagreement crisis. Take me into this. Yeah, I mean, I think people are having a harder time than ever disagreeing about things that sort of matter to them. And, you know, some of that has changed because we have changed our expectations about what a reasonable conversation is and what are all the sorts of things we ought to be able to talk about, right? Like we used to have sort of unspoken, kind of spoken rules about how, you know, you don't talk about like politics, money and religion, right?

4:07Right. And now I think especially post the pandemic, there's this expectation that you can talk about anything. Right. You sort of like bring your whole self to work, your entire identity. You know, people see your like Zoom background, you know, the pictures of your kids, which candidate you're voted for. Like all of these things are sort of just out there. And so people are much more aware of disagreements than they used to be. Right. You sort of like have a good sense of where this person is coming from. And then there's a decision to make about whether you want to have this conversation or not have this conversation.

4:43And I think most of the time the answer is no, I don't want to have the conversation.

4:47Jonathan Fields: Is that a good thing or a bad thing that we are more almost like situationally aware of where people stand on a wide range of things that may matter to each of us? whereas in the past you know maybe we kind of sussed it out we're trying to figure it out but also it wasn't generally a reason to engage in a way that might cause friction or disagreement I remember reading this study quite a while back that looked at parents of kids who were dating somebody new and how much of a concern their political affiliation was and the two generations ago they're kind of like Yeah, like, whatever. It'd be nice if they were sort of like, like, well aligned with me, but it's not a huge thing.

5:34Jonathan Fields: Radically different now. I think also you don't have to go looking for it, like you just said. It's just out there. So is that a good thing or bad thing or just a thing? You know, I think it's a big thing, right? It's sort of like not just a thing, but then is it good or bad sort of depends on how we handle it. I think it's definitely bad when it causes you to sever relationships with people you really care about, you know, causes you to have, you know, avoid certain topics or sort of make assumptions about people. But it could be good because you could have these like incredibly interesting conversations, right?

6:11Like it could be something that really gives you insight into the world and gives you recognition for how other people think and how other people live. And I think we have this tension where, on one hand, we know a lot about people we disagree with. And on the other hand, well, we know who we disagree with, right? We know, like, the person wearing that T-shirt or wearing that hat is a person I disagree with. But then we actually know very little about them and how they think because we're afraid of approaching the conversation and we don't have sort of the right toolkit. Yeah.

6:47Jonathan Fields: Do you think that we tell ourselves that we do know them, though, and that we do know how they think and what they're thinking and like everything behind it simply because we just assume that into existence? Yeah. No, I think that's absolutely true. I think lack of actual information, right, often sort of like results in a bunch of stereotypes. Yeah, because I think we just like we have this, we love to pattern recognize, right? Sort of like, if you say this, or if you wear this, I'm now going to say like, okay, these 18 different things about you are true. And maybe some of them are, but so often, they're not, especially when we make so many assumptions about how people show up based on how they show up online.

7:28Right.

7:28Jonathan Fields: which is often just complete delusion. It's not outright fiction or storytelling or just a partial representation. Use the conversation a number of times. In a moment or an experience where people show up and they don't have the same point of view, I would venture to say that if they engage, most of them are not going to label that as a, quote, conversation. They'll probably call it an argument, a disagreement. does that language matter? I think it matters because, you know, I think, I think different, there's many, many different engagements we could have when we disagree with a person, right?

8:11So I think of a disagreement as, you know, I hold different beliefs, or I hold different preferences, right? Like, I like cats, you like dogs, right? Or I think that we should parent in a stricter way and you think that we should parent, you know, in sort of a more, you know, loose, you know, supportive, whatever, whatever way you want to call it, right? I predict that, you know, the stock market will go up, you predict that the stock market will go down. All of those are disagreements. We don't necessarily need to argue about it because many of those things we could sort of go away believing are different things and have an interesting conversation and say, hey, you know, you believe what you believe, I believe what I believe.

8:54That was interesting. Like, I understand now why you expect this thing to happen or why, you know, you believe this is the right way to parent or whatever the case may be. When we often end up in argument or in conflict, it's because we feel like it is, for whatever reason, our job to convince the other person, right? And so that often happens in families, it also often happens in the workplace where your behavior is interdependent, right? So we can't, like, have radically different approaches to parenting the same child, or, you know, you can't do the same project two different ways, right? And so when you have to convince the other person, it is more likely to become an argument because, you know, things have to be reconciled.

9:43But there are many, many situations in life where you can just have a conversation and sort of like learn about the other person's perspective and you don't need to change their mind. So would you say then that the main distinction between a disagreement and

9:57Jonathan Fields: an argument is that in an argument, the goal is to win, whereas in a disagreement, the goal is more just to sort of like hear and be heard? Yeah. So I think an argument is a type of disagreement, right? So a disagreement is just like a thing where we have different perspectives, and then you decide what to do with it, right? So we could learn from each other, we could argue about it, we could just change the topic and not talk about it at all, right? Like, that's sometimes totally fine, too. I think what happens, and it's very interesting once you start paying attention to this, people sort of fall into an argument mode, right?

10:40Like you hear something for me.

10:42Jonathan Fields: Yeah. Yeah. Like you hear something you disagree with and you sort of can't help yourself. You have to correct the other person and you have to sort of help to see them how things really are. And then often that is not, you know, it's not appreciated because of course they're quite happy thinking about the world exactly as they've always thought about the world. But noticing that tendency in yourself, I always find it to be a very interesting exercise because because it just keeps creeping in. Yeah. So then in an argument, when I used the phrase to win before, what we're really talking about there is to persuade somebody that your point of view is the right point of view.

11:21Jonathan Fields: Correct. Correct. Yeah. Why is that a bad thing? Well, it's mostly an unrealistic thing, right? Okay. Because part of what happens is that if you're going to persuade somebody that you're right, that implies that they're wrong. And most people don't like to be wrong. And they usually have good reasons to believe whatever it is they believe, right? They have some, you know, life experience or some evidence or something they've read that convinces them to hold the beliefs that they hold. And so in any argument, once the goal becomes persuasion, that means that somebody has to be the winner and somebody has to be the loser.

12:02And so at best, you know, your odds of success are 50-50. But, you know, quite often you sort of have the argument and both people walk away and nobody's convinced. And so I think on average winning is quite rare.

12:19Jonathan Fields: So what is then a better end goal for a disagreement? What should we be working towards, if not necessary, to persuade the other person that your take is the right take? So I think that's actually sort of a very profound question with many different answers, because, and I think that's something that people really don't think about very hard, right? You're in a conversation with somebody. You discover that you hold different beliefs. And then there's sort of a question of what do I need to accomplish here? You know, and it could be that you don't need to have the conversation at all, right? Like you're at a holiday work party.

13:05You recognize that you disagree with somebody about, you know, politics or, you know, some, you know, scientific thing that you know nothing about. And you're like, you know what? That's interesting. I'm going to read up on this. and then see if I want to pursue this. Or I don't care about this. And let's talk about, you know, television, right? Or you could imagine a different situation where you say, you know, I really value this person. I value this relationship. They might know something that's useful to me, and I'm going to try to learn from them, right? I'm going to try to understand where they're coming from.

13:45I'm going to try to understand their reasoning. You know, I might not change my mind. I might not fully kind of buy into what they're saying, but I could understand it well enough that, you know, like if I said it back to them, they would say, yeah, that's my point of view. Right. Or you could imagine a situation where, you know, you really do need to persuade them because you have to find some path forward. Right. So there's a multitude of goals you could have. And the exercise of thinking about why am I in this conversation, I think, is a really useful exercise.

14:20Jonathan Fields: Yeah, I mean, that makes sense to me. I'll often, if I think about a conversation that I feel like I kind of need to have, or I'm going to be in a social or a work situation where I just know it's going to happen. And I have a sense that, you know, there's going to be a disagreement in points of views. before I engage, I'll often ask myself, and I'm curious what you think of this approach. I'll ask myself, what is the outcome that I'm looking to make happen in this interaction? You know, if I, and like you said, if I'm a deep believer in a particular point of view that I think is really, really important for other people to buy into, whether it's in a business context, a social context, like an activist, whatever it may be, or just a family member.

15:08Jonathan Fields: I'm like, I really want you to see the world this way. I'll tell myself, you know, like, it really does matter to me a lot that I can convince them to my point of view. Whether I'm right or not is a whole different issue to start with. Like, I could be completely on the wrong page. And sometimes I am. But oftentimes it'll also be like, you know, I'll have an answer where I realize the outcome that I'm looking to make happen really is not going to be possible, especially in the context. And at that point, I'm just kind of like, then why would I invest energy and angst and suffering in actually engaging on this level?

15:51Yeah, you know, it doesn't even have to be. I mean, we talked about, you know, some outcomes, right? There's other ones where you could be like, look, this person is a potential business partner or a potential manager or is my manager, right? My goal is to sound smart. Like, that's my only goal. I'm going to just try to be impressive, right? Right. And so you could imagine that if that's your goal, you would pursue the conversation differently. Right. Or, you know, like I have this happen all the time. I think in family situations, disagreements sort of sneak up on you. You know what I mean? Like you are sort of in your kitchen making dinner, just like having a normal evening.

16:35And then your kids say something and you're like, oh,

16:41Jonathan Fields: right. This never happened to any parent listening, right? Right, right, right, right, right. And so then the goal isn't like to tell them that, well, the goal might feel like it is to tell them that, you know, whatever it is they just did was a terrible idea and they probably shouldn't have done it. And, you know, it's probably going to, you know, whatever ruined their grade in English. There's sort of a longer term goal, which is my kid is talking to me and telling me about her day. how do I, you know, convey some information while preserving the far more important long-term goal of keeping her talking to me and keeping her sharing and sort of like maintaining the trust, right?

17:24And so knowing, again, like what you're after in the conversation and in the relationship, I think is a really big deal.

17:34Jonathan Fields: Yeah. And I so agree with you there. And as you're describing that, I love this idea of sort of like having almost like there's a potentially a short term or more media going, but I'm also, I want to think about the long-term impact, like, like five, you know, five iterations down the road or a month from now, a week from now. But I wonder if this also shows up in a, in a tough way in a work context where there's a power dynamic where, you know, somebody has a certain amount of control over your destiny. And this is like pretty much everybody who's in an entry level our first couple of years in their career.

18:07Jonathan Fields: Sometimes you're really synced well. You share beliefs and you're on the same page and your values align and you feel like you can have open, honest conversations and they're receptive. Other times it's completely not that at all. And you're stepping into a conversation where your brain is saying, I don't really respect or even like this person, but they control my destiny in this organization, at least in the near term. And that may be a couple of years. So I have to show up in a very particular way. And I believe something very different than what they believe and what they're telling me or asking me to do.

18:44Jonathan Fields: But I need them to like me. That's tough. You know, so it's interesting, and we can kind of think about it from both the perspective of like, you know, the more senior person on the organizational hierarchy and the more junior person on the organizational hierarchy, right? Right. Because in the end, I think there's sort of a dynamic that's created within a particular team or within a particular relationship. Right. I think often we talk about these we talk about these behaviors as if it's sort of like an individual choice. Right. Like, you know, be more receptive or be less argumentative or, you know, do this or do that.

19:30Whereas in reality, I think people are very, very responsive to the environment that we all shape together, right? And so quite often, you know, we expect people who are more junior, we want people who are more junior to sort of speak up, right? And sort of say, like, if you, you know, if you see something, say something, right? But creating the environment where people truly believe that that's appropriate and welcome, I think takes a lot of work and a lot of time. Um, and, you know, and then like on the flip side, right, if you are the junior person and you disagree with something, um, one thing that I have sort of found in my research is that there is nothing that makes people sort of happier and more appreciative than when they feel that you're truly curious, uh, and interested in their perspective.

20:27And so if you disagree with your boss, but you can bring yourself to say, hey, you know, I am really concerned about this approach to this project, but I'm very curious about why you think that this is the right way to go about it. like, you know, these are the risks I see, but I, I'm, you know, I'd like to understand how you're thinking about those because I'm sure that like you've thought hard about this. So can you, you know, can you tell me more? Right. And so there's a way of articulating your disagreement, but also asking with, you know, what appears to be genuine curiosity that people just love.

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24:04Jonathan Fields: it kind of brings us to this topic that you talk about and you write about this notion of what you describe as naive realism um we love to believe that we are objectively right just like from what's happening here yeah i mean it's not even that like we love it or we hate it it's just it's hard to be any other way right so the idea about the idea of naive realism is that people believe that their observations and their sort of assessments of the world are authentic and, you know, objective and reasonable. And, you know, we naively believe that our views reflect like an objective reality, right?

24:51Like there is a thing out there and I get it. And And part of the reason why it's so hard to not believe that is because it would be incredibly, incredibly inefficient, right? Like, how can you possibly stop every five seconds and say to yourself, well, you know, maybe I feel that way today because I didn't get enough sleep, right? Like, I'm really cranky, not because this person is super annoying, but because I'm very tired, right? Or like, I feel great about this, not because this project plan is brilliant, but because I had a wonderful lunch, right? So we are very used to going through life, kind of acting on our beliefs and our impressions.

25:39And, you know, it's like the thing they say about how the fish doesn't know it's in water, right? Right. And most of the time it works fine. Right. Most of the time we are mostly right about most things. The problem is when we run into another person who disagrees with us and we then have to reach a conclusion about what is the cause of that disagreement. And so if you start with the assumption that I am right, because I get it, because I'm a reasonable, objective person who sort of sees the world in a reasonable, objective way, then the most reasonable inference is that the other person is wrong.

26:18Right? Like, and then the question becomes, what flavor of wrong are they? You know, and it can be, you know, they're misinformed, right? They haven't been told, they haven't read the right things, they haven't thought about it hard enough. Or it could be, you know, they're lazy, they are self-interested, they just don't care, they can't afford to see the truth because it would reveal something terrible about themselves. so you know we kind of make up this whole story about why it is the other person believes whatever

26:57Jonathan Fields: it is they believe yeah and i mean i think we're all we all do this even though we'd like to think that we don't you know it's like there is one objective truth i know what that truth is and anyone who doesn't see that all those reasons that you just listed it's got to be one of those or maybe a collection of those. Okay, so if we, when, not if, when we experience a situation where we're face-to-face with somebody who shares a different point of view and we feel like we actually want to express our point of view and we want to table this. We don't necessarily want to raise it to a level of an argument, but a disagreement feels like something that done, quote, right, could be healthy.

27:39Jonathan Fields: You have a framework, a way to step into this to help make this unfold in a way that feels more constructive than destructive. Take me into this. Yeah, absolutely. So one of the ways I think about conversation as sort of a researcher, right, I think about in kind of like a fairly mechanistic way. And I think about conversation being made up of two activities. One, where you're sort of soliciting information and you're trying to understand the other person. And the other when you're trying to explain your perspective and you're trying to convey information, right? And so the first part is that I think most of the time we are way, way, way too eager to state our perspective before we have any idea what exactly we're disagreeing about, right?

28:29So the first piece of sort of advice that I give to folks, which is very much in line with our earlier conversation about goals, is spend a lot more time trying to understand what it is the other person is all about before you try to argue for anything. Right. But let's say you spend a decent amount of time trying to understand what they're all about and you feel like you get it and you feel like, you know, they have affirmed that you get it. Then there is sort of this time to say what you came to say, because, you know, people normally want to share their view, not only be sort of somebody's unpaid therapist.

29:07Right. And so then there's a risk, and the risk is that you're going to start making your own argument and you're going to lose all the goodwill that you have built up in the course of all the listening and all the question asking and all the curiosity, right?

29:23Jonathan Fields: And I think we've all done it. I'm raising my hand. Of course, I've done that. Right, right, right, right, right. Yeah, that's exactly right. So what we have developed in our research is a toolkit that we call the HEAR framework, which is an acronym that helps you remember some behaviors that you can use when you're arguing your own point, but you sort of don't want to set the conversation on fire. And so the HEAR framework is, you know, H-E-A-R as in I hear you. The H stands for hedging your claims. So it's words like sometimes, maybe, some people, perhaps, right? So for example, I might want to say COVID vaccines are safe and effective, right?

30:12Right. True, strong statement. You know, I believe it. It's the kind of thing that I'm liable to say in a conversation. But I could also say most physicians tend to believe that COVID vaccines are largely safe and effective. Right. So I hedged in three different places. I said most tend to and largely. And the ironic thing is that the statement is actually now more true because it sort of captures like the nuance of the real world. The E in here stands for emphasizing agreement. So it's phrases like we both want to or I am also interested in or I agree with some of what you're saying. And the logic is that we don't want to switch teams.

31:04We don't want to show that we have changed our mind, especially if we actually haven't. But we want to highlight some things that any two humans can agree on. Right. So we both want to work in an organization where all employees feel fairly treated. Right. It's like that is hard to disagree with. And it sort of puts us on the same page. Um, the A stands for acknowledgement. So, uh, acknowledgement is, uh, basically taking a few seconds to restate your counterpart's point of view before you leap into your own argument, right? And acknowledgement is usually sort of flagged with phrases like, I understand that, or I hear that you are saying that, or, you know, uh, you seem to believe, you know, X, Y, Z.

31:59Right. So a lot of the time people say things like, I hear you, but here's why, you know, we can't take Jerry to school at 10 o 'clock in the morning. Right. Instead of actually showing with your behavior that you heard the other person. Right. Like, I hear that Jerry's been up doing homework until, you know, midnight and you are really concerned about the amount of sleep that he's not getting. But I don't think it's good practice to, you know, let him skip school until 10 o 'clock in the morning. Right. So I showed my counterpart that I really was listening when they were talking. And then finally, the R stands for reframing to the positive.

32:47So it's replacing some of the contradictory and negative words like no, can't, won't, terrible, hate, right, with more positively valenced words like great, wonderful, thank you, appreciate, right? So I might want to say, I hate it when people interrupt me. Please don't. Right? Or I could say, I really appreciate it when people let me finish my sentence.

33:20Jonathan Fields: Framing the positive. Framing the positive, right. And all the components of here, H-E-A-R, right, they all sort of require you to have heard the other person. and you're sort of showing with your behavior that you're keeping their perspective in mind as you're talking. So that's sort of the magic. You're kind of, you're demonstrating listening even as you're speaking. I mean, that all lands is really true. It feels like it also, it's like you're making space for them to exist in the conversation. Yeah, that's right. That's exactly right. Which is literally the opposite of what we normally do in an argument.

34:01Jonathan Fields: Right, right. I mean, the hedging part of it also part of what I heard when you were speaking is, um, rather than using absolutes, uh, you know, create the space, create wiggle room, um, you know, so that they can, they, they can see that there's room for their point of view to exist. Even if you're not saying you agree with it, um, emphasizing, it sounds like what we're really emphasizing here is, is common ground. Yeah. You know, so if you want this policy and I want this policy, but if underneath that, the fundamental belief is we both want our families to be well and taken care of and safe, we can agree on that, right?

34:42Jonathan Fields: We just maybe see a different path to that. But like at the end of the day, isn't this really what we both want, right? You're going to both acknowledge that you're going to both nod along with each other. And I feel like, I wonder if you see this in sort of research also, when you find that common ground, it just makes it easier to see the humanity in the other person rather than objectify them as a point of view, like a walking, talking point of view, which we so often do. Right, right, right. So there's, you know, it's funny, because there's, there's actually a lot of research, especially in political science, right?

35:16So like, you know, a lot of a lot of what we know from research has to do with political disagreements, because it's just easier to study, because there's so many people on both sides, and they feel so strongly about it. But I think the kind of psychology of it is the same, whether you're arguing, you know, like, you know, between whatever legal and marketing or whether you're arguing between, you know, this parent and that parent or whether you're arguing about Democrats and Republicans. Right. And so what we know in political science is that people dramatically overestimate how much they disagree with the other side.

35:53Hmm.

35:54Jonathan Fields: So you can have. Yeah. So you can like ask people to predict the views of a typical member of the opposing party. And then you can go and you can ask, you know, a randomly sample member of that opposing party what their views are. And what we see is that on average, we overestimate disagreement. And what that leads to is a real antipathy towards them and an unwillingness to interact. Because why would I talk to this person who is just completely out there? And it turns out they're not completely out there. They're just a person like you. yeah that makes a lot of sense um the a in your framework acknowledge um this sounds like just deep listening active listening but not just active listening but then reflecting back to them some version of this is what i heard you say is that right um and we love it i mean when when It's so rare that I think so many people feel like somebody actually gives them the share of mind to genuinely let them be seen or heard.

37:07Jonathan Fields: That when it happens, I feel like it presents almost as a gift. And even if you never agree, simply knowing this person actually just really paid attention and they listened deeply and them sort of reflecting back to me and getting it right, that it does something to us. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think, you know, acknowledgement when it's done well is incredibly powerful. I think a lot of us are really lazy about it. You know, and there's a lot of like, you know, nodding and smiling and saying, uh-huh, you know, and you sort of pat yourself on the back for being a good listener. but the thing the the version that really does the job is the version where you go through the very awkward exercise of paraphrasing the other person's views and you know taking the time and then asking them if you got it right and then they're like well kind of it's sort of but he like here's the five other things i forgot to mention right so real acknowledgement is pretty labor intensive.

38:17Jonathan Fields: Yeah. But so powerful, right? I mean, it's got to be one of the most powerful things that you can do to feel some form of connective tissue with another human being, whether you agree with them on an issue or not. That last step also, the R for reframe. I feel like this is really interesting because culturally, so many of us are sort of, we've grown up or are surrounded by people in a community where we just default to the negative frame for so many things. It's kind of become our go-to. And in fact, sometimes it's celebrated. You're rewarded for sort of like interacting from a negative frame.

38:53Jonathan Fields: So it feels like such a simple thing. We frame it as a positive, but it's actually, my sense is for a lot of people, it's probably reasonably, you got to be really intentional about this because it's actually not your default mode. Yeah, I think you're right. I think culturally it's not our default, But there is some interesting gender and status dynamics around it, right? Because I think a lot of what we think of as sort of leadership behavior and high status behavior is very male coded. And in fact, if you look at sort of the use of the HEAR framework, like naturally, women tend to do this a lot more.

39:37You know, and so people say like, well, you know, aren't you asking like everybody to hedge and, you know, not be sort of direct and certain and, you know, all of those things that we've been taught to do. And the answer is like, yeah, that's exactly what I'm advocating for, because a lot of the communication advice that we have been fed are the wrong tools for the wrong thing, right? So if I'm standing up in front of a boardroom and I'm giving a presentation, certainly sounding confident and direct is good advice. But if I'm in a conflict, then that's a different job, right? That requires sort of a different toolkit.

40:22And sort of defaulting to this thing that we've been told is like the right way to communicate doesn't help in those types of contexts.

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43:38Jonathan Fields: visit ADT.com or call 1-800-ADT-ASAP or just click the link in the show notes. When every second counts, count on ADT. One of the things that you explore also, which touches on this is, I think when a lot of us are sort of like, if we've been told anything about how to step into a conversation that could become a disagreement, maybe even an argument, if it makes sense, is that, well, it's really important to come from a place of empathy. You don't necessarily agree with this. Yeah. So I think, you know, I mean, I think empathy is wonderful, right? We should all have more empathy. I just don't think that telling people to come into conversations from a place of empathy is very useful advice because it's way too easy to fake.

44:28It's too easy to fake. And it's hard to know how to do genuinely. when I'm in the middle of a heated disagreement, even with people that I, you know, deeply love, I don't feel a lot of empathy. Most of the time I feel, you know, anger and irritation. And so somehow resetting my feelings seems very, very hard. And I've been, you know, doing this for a long time. And, you know, I can find the empathy later, sometimes hours later, sometimes days later, but in the moment, it is awfully hard. What is, you know, far more effective is behaving in a way that conveys sort of curiosity and engagement, right?

45:18Even if you're sort of super annoyed on the inside, your counterpart really cannot read your mind. And that is both good and bad, right? So if you are, if you got the empathy kind of, you know, chugging along, chances are you won't get credit for it because they can't tell. But if you got no empathy, then it's okay because they still can't tell. What they can tell is what are you saying, right? And this is where, you know, the HEAR framework, right, is all about words. It's not at all about sort of body language or feelings or, you know, everything, everything that we do in my work is really based around language.

46:02Jonathan Fields: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. It's very practical. You might not necessarily be able to control your inner experience in the moment, but you can develop the skill set or use these sort of like specific strategies to at least have the interaction come out in a way that feels much more constructive. One of the other things that you talk about is the difference between disagreeing and leaning on facts versus stories. Yeah. So, you know, that's another one of those things that's very, very much focused on language. Right. What is the content that you're conveying? And again, kind of is a strategy that we can use when we're trying to make our point.

46:52Right. So I have a set of beliefs that I know is different from your beliefs. And so how do I convey my beliefs in a way that is maximally effective? Our normal toolkit relies on facts and data. So certainly in science and corporate and leadership settings, people sort of, like we have always been taught that you come with a big spreadsheet and people will believe you. And again, that's true when you're speaking to sort of an objective audience that, you know, is there to sort of, you know, make up their mind. That's not true when you are talking to somebody who already disagrees with you. Because one of the things that happens is they discount your data, right?

47:42They say, well, you know, you fudged it, you twisted it, you're omitting part of the story. They are skeptical at the get-go. What tends to be ironically more trustworthy is stories that reveal something about how you came to hold your belief and usually, you know, reveal a little bit of vulnerability, right? So, you know, a challenge you sort of had to deal with or a loss you experienced or a failure is often taken as, oh, if she is willing to tell me about that, then she must be an honest person. Right. It's essentially like it's a it's a signal of trustworthiness and it's sort of an expensive signal of trustworthiness.

48:37because I am exposing something vulnerable about myself. And it doesn't mean that you can't also use facts and data, but adding in that kind of vulnerable personal touch seems to really increase trust.

48:54Jonathan Fields: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I wonder if there's also something in there, and I wonder if there's data on this, about the recall of data versus stories. Because I don't remember. I read a lot. I listen to a lot. I talk to a lot of people. And I get taken a metric ton of facts and data and numbers. I remember almost none of it. But if somebody tells me kind of like the equivalent in the form of a story that in any way moves me, I will probably walk around and remember that story without trying to remember it. And then also probably retell it. Right. Right. Right. And people have used storytelling in marketing and advertising forever, right?

49:33Like people know this. really the kind of recent new twist is thinking about how that works in a disagreement context.

49:44Jonathan Fields: Yeah. We're having this whole conversation in the context of assuming that disagreements are and can be a normal functional part of human interaction, rather than saying, I'm going to walk around and do everything I can to try and minimize the amount of disagreement that I have in my life. So if we assume that disagreement is going to happen, it's going to happen on a relatively regular basis. I'm somebody who has a point of view. I'm going to bump into people who don't see the world the same as me. And I would love to actually have these conversations without being in fear of them just turning into battles every time.

50:26Jonathan Fields: And just even if it walks away saying like, you know what? I shared my peace. They shared their peace. I think we both felt seen and heard. We don't agree any more than we did before, but I feel good that we both said what we needed to say. And I actually kind of understand and like this person more than I did before. This is a set of skills that you've just shared with us. This is not something that you have or don't have. This is sort of like a basket of strategies and skills. So somebody's joining us, and I would love that to come more naturally to me in these moments. what would you tell somebody just sort of like on a regular day-to-day basis about thinking about is there a way to to practice these in some way so they start to come more naturally yeah so you know so i have my book just came out how to disagree better and one of the things that i really tried hard to do in the book is give people a lot of insight into what we know from behavioral science about these dynamics, tell them stories so that they remember the science, as we just talked about, and then have very concrete exercises at the end of every chapter of, you know, saying, okay, let's be real.

51:37People are busy. You know, there's only so much time you're going to devote to this. So if you had, you know, 10 minutes a day or 10 minutes a week, Like, how would you spend it? And, you know, the way I think about it is any kind of skill, you're going to do better building it in little chunks over time if it's not too unpleasant. Right. So if I said to you, go find your uncle that you always fight with over Thanksgiving and talk to them about immigration, nobody's going to do that because it's too high of a bar and it's sort of too scary and too much of an investment. Whereas if I say, okay, memorize the HERE framework and next time your teenager says they don't have time to take out the trash, use the HERE framework.

52:38Or next time you want to get up at 6 and your spouse wants to sleep till 6.30, use the HERE framework. Right. Or like so small, low stakes, daily disagreements. So it becomes a habit. And, you know, I do this a lot. Like I do this in class. I do this in workshops I teach where we put people's drills of it, essentially. and it's really simple on the face of it. It's hard to make yourself do it and it's hard to get to the point where it feels very fluid. So really practicing it on low stakes interaction so that it kind of becomes a default is the right place to start.

53:25Jonathan Fields: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I'm wondering also even memorizing it even is a step that I think a lot of people wouldn't take. I wonder if even just taking the A-T-A-R and what they each stand for, it's almost like type it out on your notes app, take a screenshot, and just make it your wallpaper on your phone. So it's just kind of like always there in the moment. So you can just kind of, okay, this is a moment where I should be doing that thing, that here thing. And you can just kind of glance down, okay, let me hedge a little bit. Let me not use that. So it's just right there all the time.

53:59Jonathan Fields: But I love the idea of starting small, low stakes. And then probably it sounds like having self-compassion along the way, because like you just described, it's not going to just feel natural in the beginning. It's a matter of practice over time until it starts to feel more just intuitive to you. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and, you know, and it's harder in, you know, higher stakes conversations, you know, when you're under stress, when you're tired, when you're cranky, when you had a cocktail, you know, when there's people sort of watching you. So, you know, I mean, I fail on a regular basis and then I'm like, oh, huh, okay.

54:38You know, let's try again. And I think that's the other thing is that I think people don't give other people enough credit for, you know, how forgiving folks can be. Right. So you can like just royally screw up a conversation and then say, hey, you know what, that didn't go as well as I hoped. Let's try again. Yeah.

54:59Jonathan Fields: Is there value in your mind of doing your own sort of like private postmortem on a conversation that went badly? Yeah, I think there's a lot of value in it. I think there's even more value in doing it with somebody who, you know, who's a trusted, you know, friend or colleague or family member. And you sort of talk it through and you say, you know, I said this and then he said that and then this felt really weird. And then I didn't know what I should have said, you know, next. So I said something stupid. And like, what do you think I should have said? I think having that extra mind is really, really helpful.

55:34And we do that all the time in sort of informal ways. But if you say, look, I'm trying to work on this particular skill set, right? I'm not trying to figure out how to score a point. I'm trying to figure out how to become more receptive to opposing perspectives. those, if that were my goal, what do you think I should have said? Right? And see what your friend or colleague can come up with.

56:00Jonathan Fields: Yeah. I love that frame instead of like, what should I have said differently so I could have really won? Kind of a completely different ask there. Feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation in this container of Good Life Project. If I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? to have interesting conversations with friends and family. Thank you. Hey, before you go, be sure to tune in next week for our conversation with Dr. Nicola Perra, New York Times bestselling 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.

56:47Jonathan Fields: It's a grounding, hopeful conversation. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss any upcoming episodes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers, Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by Alejandro Ramirez and Troy Young. Chris Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did because you're still here. Do me a personal favor, a seven second favor and share it with just one person.

57:23Jonathan Fields: If you want to share it with more, hey, that's awesome. But just one person, even then invite them to talk with you about what you've both discovered to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter because that's how we all come alive together. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project.

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