25 ways to disagree better from 25 years of writing about conflict resolution

My newsletter, Disagree Better, turns 25 this month. I’m marking the milestone with 25 ways to disagree better from a wide array of thinkers.

Twenty-five years ago this month, I published the first edition of my conflict resolution newsletter, my first writing endeavor outside my original discipline, higher education. Peacing Together, as it was called then, started in print. I moved it to digital format in 2002 and added a podcast edition in 2016. Together, those formats have reached an audience of thousands on six continents.

I’ve had a lot of help along the way from the wisdom of thinkers inside my field and out. I’ve loved some of the gems those thinkers have imparted so much that those gems have become part of my daily language in my mediation and training work. Their words and ideas give us, in the phrasing of my mediator friend Lee Bryan, a hook to hang a picture in our heads.

I’m particularly drawn to insights from outside the conflict resolution field because art and science from beyond my conflict resolution tribe expand my own thinking and creativity. They give me a different angle on the world. To mark the quarter century of what is now Disagree Better, I’d like to share 25 of those with you.

1. Our thoughts and feelings about a conflict can be real but possibly not true. Tibetan Buddhist master Tsoknyi Rinpoche taught me the subtle but important difference between feelings that are real but perhaps not a result of actual conditions at the present moment.
2. Trade shift responses for support responses. Sociologist Charles Derber coined the term “conversational shift” to describe how we inadvertently hijack someone’s experience while trying to help. Shift responses disrupt, while support responses build and sustain connection.
3. We are not the barometers of their experience. Journalist Krista Tippett said, “I can disagree with your opinion, it turns out, but I can’t disagree with your experience. Once I have a sense of your experience, you and I are in relationship, acknowledging the complexity in each other’s position, listening less guardedly.”
4. Do we want an “A,” or do we want something to change? This great question from social activist and consultant Peter Block goes straight to an ego-driven blindspot. Do we want to keep patting ourselves on the back for handling ourselves better than they did, or do we want something to change?
5. Get into their movie. This term, coined by speech/language pathologist Rebecca Shafir, helps us suspend our disbelief and judgment so that we can tap into our curiosity.
6. Behind every criticism is a wish. This phrase from psychotherapist Esther Perel is a great way to remind ourselves that expressing a desire is much more effective than expressing a complaint when we want someone to change.
7. To listen well, listen from their frame of reference. Legendary author and speaker Stephen Covey described the five types of listening and his belief that few of us practice the fifth and most important type, empathic listening.
8. Listening is not waiting to talk. Motivational speaker Scott Ginsberg bluntly and humorously called us out on this bad habit.
9. Look upstream to reduce chronic and acute conflict. Sociologist and disability rights activist Irving Zola’s parable about children floating down a river memorably illuminates the tremendous value of looking beyond a conflict’s acute or chronic conditions.
10. What we see depends on what we look for. The famous basketball/gorilla study by Harvard psychologists entertainingly taught that “inattentional blindness” causes us to miss important and even conspicuous information, such as someone in a gorilla costume walking through the middle of a basketball game.
11. Beware of category errors. We put people, places, things, and ideas into categories. Categories help us navigate the world and it’s natural to categorize. Psychologist and author Ellen Langer’s story about a scavenger hunt is a good reminder that when we put somebody in a category — like “difficult person” — we adopt a certain mindlessness that can escalate conflict.
12. Don’t let conflict become the snake under the rug. I think of systems dynamics maestro Peter Senge’s memorable story about a snake and a rug merchant whenever an organization sidesteps a vital problem or moves the apparent instigator to other departments. Important problems don’t just disappear when we ignore or relocate them.
13. It’s okay to have a conversational sh**ty first draft. Writer Anne Lamott gave us a great phrase to release us from the tyranny of finding or expecting perfect words and perfect tone to get going.
14. Say you were wrong and will make it right. Management professor Roy Lewicki found that the most impactful apologies had several important ingredients. The top two are acknowledgment of responsibility and offer of repair.
15. Forgiveness can be an act of choosing our freedom. As Nelson Mandela walked toward the prison gates to his freedom, he felt anger well up inside. Then he realized, “If I hated them after I got outside that gate, then they would still have me. I wanted to be free, so I let it go.”
16. Empty your teacup. A traditional Zen koan, or story, about a professor visiting a Zen master, beautifully illustrates the way our opinions crowd out room for learning during conflict, just like a teacup with no room for more tea to be added.
17. There are three threads at the heart of every conversation. Oprah Winfrey famously articulated the three threads: Did you hear me? Did you see me? And did what I said mean anything to you?
18. “Holding the space” is a powerful way to help ease suffering. Teacher and social activist Parker Palmer told a beautiful about what it means to be fully present and emotionally available without judgment, without fixing, without looking away.
19. Slow down to go fast. Our problem-solving will be more effective and enduring when we can stop ourselves from hurrying out of the “groan zone,” facilitator Sam Kaner’s perfect phrase for the difficult stage of a conflict conversation.
20. The signal sent isn’t necessarily the signal received. Actor Alan Alda used to conduct a great little demonstration of the over-confidence effect’s impact on our communication. The overconfidence effect is a natural bias toward believing that we’re better at something than we actually are, including communicating clearly.
21. Ask, why am I this angry? Famed Star Trek actor George Takei used this question to turn big anger into curiosity and use it positively.
22. Don’t withdraw from someone with whom you don’t see eye to eye. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai said, “The more experience that they have with you, [the more they] really change their perspective.”
23. Get yourself a Russell. We seek an ally (or 20) when a conflict tests us. We can be better served by seeking out a loving provocateur (Russell) instead.
24. Begin with an idea and allow it to become something else. This idea, attributed to artist Pablo Picasso, challenges us to think of our proposed solution not as the end but as the beginning of something that could be even better.
25. Look into the eyes of the future. American President Jimmy Carter’s story about an exchange with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin during the Camp David Peace Accords poignantly reminds us not to lose sight of what’s most important.

Over to you

• What conflict resolution insights from others have you adopted into how you think and act?
• What thinkers do you turn to in order to push your own thinking and assumptions about the world?
• If you were to create your own list of conflict resolution gems worth sharing (even if you never intend to share that list), what would go on it?