[Applause] when I was in my 20s I worked at a management consulting firm based here in Manhattan and I had a client let's just call her Marisa who I disagreed with all the time I thought she was too slow I thought she was running the project poorly I thought she was involving the wrong people at the wrong time did I tell her any of this instead I had a coping mechanism anytime Marissa emailed me I would forward her email to my work friend and I would say everything I wish I could say to Marisa and
then I would reply to Marisa and just agree with everything she had outlined one time I forwarded an email [Laughter] to my work friend and I wrote in all cats why does she have to be such a pain in the ass as soon as I press send I realized what I had done which you have already realized and I figured well I'm gonna get fired and might as well go tell my boss and fess up I walked over his desk I explained what had happened and he said two words that in my opinion were far
worse than you're fired he said go apologize now to my clients credit when I showed up at her office with a bouquet of flowers that for some misguided reason I thought was going to help the situation she said why didn't you tell me why didn't I tell her I had to think about that one and what I realized is that I didn't want to be mean I didn't want to hurt her feelings I had fallen into a trap that so many of us do that thinking that aren't that disagreement is unkind so I stayed silent
this is what I want to talk to you about today disagreeing why we're often afraid to do it but why we should do it anyway and how we can make disagreement even conflict productive as long as we do it with compassion and kindness now I'm guessing I'm not the only one in this room who is accidentally sent an email to the wrong person and not disagreed with someone when I should have right because disagreement can feel like a threat and our brains unfortunately are not good at figuring out the difference between the stress of not
getting our way on a project plan and the danger of being chased down by a bear so we go into what Dan Goleman calls amygdala hijack where the feeling part of our brain limits access to the prefrontal cortex put simply under stress we do not think clearly because our brain is literally reserving energy to run now there's also a good deal of science that shows that we are hardwired for likability we want people to like us so much that we imitate their behavior when they scratch their heads we scratch ours when they not we not
we want to hear I totally agree we're on the same page it's how we learn and how we build connection now the problem is it seems to have gotten worse I don't know about you but in our device of culture what I've noticed is that we seek out people who see the world the same way and we avoid dissension because it feels uncomfortable it's as if now saying I don't agree is the same as saying you are an idiot all right but if we have any hope of disagreeing of speaking up we need tools to
counter our natural instincts this is what I spent three years of my life doing I read as much research as I could on conflict and disagreement I interviewed experts in management and emotional intelligence in neuroscience and negotiation and I came up with a straightforward practical approach and a set of tools to help people me really get better at navigating conflicts to make things work better now what I learned in this research was that I had been doing it all wrong not only was I afraid to disagree but when I was disagree I was making some
crucial mistakes and in particular these mistakes might sound familiar to you I'm guessing some of you make them as well I was making the situation all about me I wasn't seeing it from the other person's perspective and I was entering most arguments with primary goal of winning I was fixated on whether I admit it or not I'm being right and I was having these conversations in the midst of a MIG d'leh hijack so I wasn't thinking clearly and clearly and I ended up saying things that I didn't feel proud of that I later regretted one
of the most important things I learned is that you have to thoughtfully prepare for difficult conversations like every single one and now let's be clear though it's not as if I meant sitting in the middle of a meeting and someone drops a snarky comment about my project and I say could you please hold I'm gonna go back to my desk analyze this conversation I'll come back in a response would like you two to three hours that's good right no these are things I do quickly in my head usually in just 30 seconds the first thing
I now try to do is I try to see the situation from the other person's perspective this is the last thing I want to do because I am focused entirely on myself but I forced myself to get curious why are they behaving the way they are what's motivating them in the situation and of course my brain immediately goes to well Amara is being passive-aggressive because she always husband I let that SOB go and then I asked myself what's the most generous interpretation here maybe Amara is under pressure from her boss maybe she didn't get any
sleep last night because her kid is sick my daughter taught me this lesson when she was 8 years old we were driving on the highway and these motorcyclists went whizzing by us at like a hundred miles an hour and I just laid into them can you believe they don't have helmets on look at them I can't believe they don't have helmets on that's so unsafe they could get seriously hurt they could even die and then she got in for shoes in the back seat she got into it and she was like mommy one of them
was a woman do you think she has Kent how dangerous and then we were both quiet for a moment and she said mommy maybe they're on their way to buy helmets [Laughter] this is the most generous possible interpretation of that situation my daughter has always been quite insightful about emotions in fact she's made me believe that we are all born emotionally intelligent beings and we spend our lives being drained of that knowledge so that one day we go into a bookstore in our 30s and 40s go Oh talk about emotional intelligence I should read this
right but it's already there inside us now the second thing I tried to do is to figure out what I want from the conversation before I have it now I'll admit that for most of my adult life my primary goal in most conversations was to prove that I was right and to prove that the other person was wrong there's a terrible goal right now what I try to do is think what do I need from this conversation do I need to just get this project done on time or under budget do I need to preserve
my relationship with that person or do I need to end this conversation and just move on with my life if I know what my goal is I can handle the conversation and I approach it with purpose now the third thing that I try to do is to think about what are we actually disagreeing about in most work context we assume when we have a disagreement that it's personal but what we know from the research about conflict and negotiation is that we more commonly disagree about tasks what's called tasks the goal of the conversation the what
we also disagree about process the how and of course there are status conflicts disagreements over the power or authority who has to make a decision but if I can figure out what exactly we're disagreeing about I can D personalize the conversation which gets me out of that amygdala hijack now when I do these three things the conversation goes much better and I've moved from avoiding conflict to approaching them with calm and confidence my husband likes to say I got into this field because I wanted to win all of our arguments which is not entirely untrue
but there's another reason I started researching and studying conflict and disagreement around the time my daughter turned 10 which is the same age I was when a family friend molested me it was a terrible thing to happen to a young girl on the cusp of becoming a woman but what was worse in many ways was that I never told anyone for years in the end that was the trauma feeling like I couldn't speak up feeling boys las' not getting help and as a mother I became terribly anxious that my 10 year old daughter would be
put in the same situation I thought about it all the time I worried for her and I worried for me and I took that fear and I channeled it into something productive in obsession with the question of how can we disagree without hurting each other's feelings because when I look back on my life the most painful moments are the times or I didn't speak up because I was afraid of being impolite or hurting someone's feelings are overstepping boundaries and so I stayed quiet but what I want for my daughter and what I want for my
ten-year-old self - is the power to disagree the belief that saying no or even I just don't see it that way doesn't have to be angry rude that conflict doesn't have to mean war or hate or pain that it's part of love it's what we do well we care about another person we fight and as long as we do it with compassion and kindness it can be a good thing disagreeing calmly and competently navigating conflicts is not just a work skill it is a life skill now I do feel I need to warn you it
doesn't always go well and as much as you try to disagree confidently and calmly and with kindness and empathy the other person may just not be happy about it and you may assume they are on their way to buy a helmet and they may just soon you're an angry jerk who is out to get them when this happens to me and it does I have a mantra and here's where it came from there was someone who was an important part of my life many years ago and we had lost touch he showed up again at
a party that I was throwing several summers ago now I knew he had been through a lot but he did something quite awkward at this party he sat down at a drum kit there had been a band and he started to play this beat and as we all watched him he started to say the single line over and over and he was saying the words to himself really but they were a gift a gift that I was particularly happy to receive in that moment because I had been stressed about that silly party what anyone show
up with the food be ready on time was I'm going to be upset that says I was invited but his words freed me from that worry and he must have said them fifty maybe a hundred times until they were etched into my brain sometimes people are going to be mad at you and that's okay sometimes people are going to be mad at you and with that sometimes people are going to be mad at you and these are words I tell myself pretty much every day there are days I want to whisper them into my daughter's
ear over and over like a drumbeat but I don't she's almost 13 and that would elicit some serious eye rolling but I do say them out loud occasionally because that is the point of a mantra even when we know something deeply we could all use a little reminder thank you [Applause] [Music]
