A Smarter Way to Disagree

Every day, in every organization around the globe, people disagree about everything from pricing strategies to hiring decisions to major acquisitions. And disagree they should. Research across every social science shows that disagreement offers important benefits: Divergent perspectives spark creativity, prevent costly errors, and drive better decisions. But, of course, there is also risk: Disagreement handled poorly can have massive interpersonal and financial costs.

Over the decades there has been a plethora of recommendations from academics and consultants on how people can disagree constructively. Some instruct people to think and feel in certain ways toward their counterparts: “Put yourself in their shoes.” “Have compassion and empathy.” “Try to understand them rather than judging them.” Others tell them what to do and say: “Ask clarifying questions.” “Make ‘I,’ not ‘you,’ statements.” “Use open body language to signal receptiveness, friendliness, and a willingness to engage.” Nevertheless, despite this wealth of advice, conflict persists.

Over the past 10 years we have conducted dozens of experiments on how people in a variety of settings can disagree more constructively. Our key finding: People’s internal mental processes (the think and feel techniques) have a limited impact on outcomes for a simple reason—we can’t read other people’s minds. This means that for others to notice, appreciate, and react to our conflict-management attempts, our thoughts and feelings must be reflected in the things we do and say. Mental states must be translated into observable behaviors.

We tested this idea in a recent study involving 1,113 Americans drawn from online platforms that people join to earn money by participating in research. Three groups wrote messages to somebody who strongly disagreed with them about a hiring policy. One group got no specific guidance. Another received the classic guidance about considering the other side’s perspective and being empathetic to people with different viewpoints. The final group received instructions about the specific words and phrases they should use to express their receptiveness to opposing viewpoints. People on the opposing side of the argument who read the messages from the third group—in which writers were instructed on the specific language to use—viewed them as the most objective, intelligent, and trustworthy of the three groups, and the ones they were the most willing to work with in the future.

The implication: Organizations should train people to modify their behavior during disagreements in the most concrete ways possible. More specifically, they should get people to be more attentive to their linguistic behavior—to carefully choose the words they use—because, as we explain below, unlike a person’s thoughts and feelings, language is observable by counterparts, trainers, mentors, or anyone else interested in improving communication during disagreements. We can also directly measure language with technology and effectively train people to improve how they speak to others during challenging conversations.

How One Mind Affects Another

Let’s consider a disagreement between Sarah and Lisa, two fictional people who are debating their approach to an upcoming work task. Sarah wants to be respectful, curious, and considerate of Lisa’s perspective. This is her intended mental state—the way she wants to think and feel during the conversation. Yet, the reason Sarah is trying to embrace this mental state is the hope that Lisa will perceive her to be thoughtful, trustworthy, and insightful.

During any interaction, however, Lisa can only observe Sarah’s behaviors—primarily the words, phrases, and sentences she speaks. Sarah’s behaviors help Lisa learn about what is happening in Sarah’s mind. Changing verbal behavior is the most effective way to overcome two key problems that often cause disagreements to spiral into conflicts.

The intention-behavior gap. If you have ever made a New Year’s resolution, you may be familiar with the intention-behavior gap—the idea that people often fail to follow through on their best-laid plans. Our intentions to spend less, exercise more, eat healthier, and learn another language often collapse under the pressures of real life.

This kind of failure is common in interpersonal conflict too. Staying calm and communicating constructively requires effort and is hard to do while struggling to understand your counterparts and feeling angry at their seeming failure to understand you. It is challenging to effectively respond with respect and curiosity when someone is directly contradicting some of your most deeply held beliefs and values, even if you are doing your best to maintain an open mind. In other words, even if Sarah intends to be respectful and curious, that doesn’t mean she will be able to keep herself from interrupting Lisa or responding critically.

In a series of studies that we conducted over the past few years, hundreds of participants overwhelmingly agreed that expressing curiosity toward people who disagree with them was a good idea. However, when we asked them to express their desire to learn about other people’s opposing perspectives, they often failed; they got caught up in making their own argument. For example, many participants thought that simply couching an argument in the form of a question such as “How can you believe that?” or “Can you honestly say you think that is a good idea?” would do the trick. Although a disagreement with a stranger in a research study is much less emotionally fraught than most disagreements in real life, people still couldn’t bring themselves to enact what they knew to be the right strategy.

The behavior-perception gap. Even when we manage to perform the behaviors we intend, there is no guarantee that they will be perceived as we hope. This is the behavior-perception gap. The things we do and say with the intention of communicating a certain mental state are not always perceived that way by others. At the end of the day our conversation partners get to determine how we came across. And unfortunately our behavior often affects others in unexpected ways. In our example, Sarah might believe that the question “Why would you think that?” will show that she is curious and wants to understand Lisa’s perspective. However, Lisa might interpret it as a sarcastic taunt.

In our research we saw this pattern emerge when we asked participants to read messages expressing a perspective they disagreed with and rate the extent to which the writer expressed curiosity or receptiveness toward the opposing view. We often saw a disconnect between how curious and receptive the writers rated themselves and how curious and receptive the readers rated them. Often, when working hard to express curiosity and receptiveness, people relied on the wrong signals.

To disagree constructively, organizations need to think of how to close both the intention-behavior gap and the behavior-perception gap. That entails helping employees (1) learn behaviors that will be interpreted as intended; and (2) successfully execute those behaviors.

The Case for Focusing on Behavior

A conflict-management approach focused on behavior has several advantages for organizations. Most of us are quite poor at objectively making sense of what is happening in our minds. Our self-assessments of what we are thinking and feeling are often muddled by cognitive biases, self-serving motives, and powerful emotions. By contrast, behavior is observable and thus measurable. When individuals exhibit behaviors, those around them—the people with whom they are disagreeing as well as observers such as mentors and coaches—can judge whether they did the “right” thing and provide feedback. Did they express curiosity about the other person’s viewpoint or simply restate their own point? Did they acknowledge their counterpart’s perspective or bulldoze over it?

In addition, concrete behaviors can be tested through systematic research to determine whether they are the correct ones for the job. Following research guidance can then allow us to overcome the behavior-perception gap. For example, in our research we found that conflict outcomes improve quite dramatically when people express their willingness to learn about their counterpart’s opposing perspective. However, students in our courses (undergraduates and executives alike) often think that they already know how to demonstrate such a desire. Yet, without specific guidance, they often ask snarky or rhetorical questions that send a very different message than the one they intended. Rigorous research can uncover such disconnects between intentions and perceptions and identify concrete behavioral approaches that do have the intended effects.

Why focus on language instead of eye contact, posture, or myriad other nonverbal behaviors? First, much of today’s professional communication takes place in writing via email, text, Slack, and other similar platforms. Second, language is simpler to control than nonverbal expressions and less likely to be misunderstood. While nonverbal expressions can sometimes inflect the meaning of language, the words themselves still convey the most information. And although others can misinterpret our words, nonverbal signals are even more prone to being misconstrued.

That said, it can still be helpful to encourage or coach people to have an open or empathetic mindset. Any organizational intervention to change how people engage with one another must start with their buy-in. If individuals have a negative attitude toward their counterparts and simply don’t want to show them empathy or curiosity, they are likely to resist any effort to get them to change their behavior. However, any advice on how people should think and feel should be paired with advice on how they should express those thoughts and feelings.

Below we offer specific advice for both individuals and organizations to improve the language used in disagreement.

Advice for Individuals

The suggestions below come from years of our own and others’ research on the effect of different linguistic techniques on conflict outcomes. A common theme that runs through these techniques is that they all use language to escape the competitive spiral that often characterizes disagreements and require the speaker to communicate a bit of vulnerability. Expressing vulnerability in disagreement is not fun; people usually go into disagreements ready to do battle, and the last thing they want to do is allow their counterpart to assume a psychologically dominant position in the exchange. But this is yet another reason why relying on language is important: Only by hearing yourself say the right words can you be sure that you really acted on your positive intentions and didn’t simply dodge the challenging moment.

Signal a desire to learn. In one study after another we have documented that people in disagreement assume that their counterparts don’t want to learn about their perspective or understand their views. Yet, when people receive communications that clearly and explicitly spell out their counterparts’ interest in understanding, they evaluate those people more positively and find their arguments more compelling and more reasonable.

The simplest way to signal curiosity is just to say you are curious. For example, as soon as you recognize that your counterpart disagrees with you, you could say: “Hey, it seems we are seeing this differently. I am curious how you think about XYZ.” Showing an interest in learning does not require you to abandon your own argument. For example, you could say: “I think there are different ways of thinking about this. I believe XYZ, but I’d love to better understand where you are coming from.”

Acknowledge the other side. By definition, anyone speaking wants to be understood. And in conflict people often worry that what they say doesn’t even register. Acknowledgment is an easy (but underrated) gift you can give to others—even if you don’t agree, you can show others that you have received their message. The best kind of acknowledgment restates the core of your partner’s statement; it proves you were really listening: “I hear you—the team has been working really long hours, and this is a superdemanding client. But here’s why we can’t afford more staff on this project…” Even if your position is unmoved, at least now your counterpart knows that you received the message. Crucially, if you don’t understand your partner’s perspective, don’t fake it! Ask for genuine clarification.

Find common ground. No matter how much you might disagree with someone on a specific point, if you zoom out a bit, you can always find things you have in common: beliefs, values, goals. After all, there is a reason you and this person are working together. Although the specific disagreement might capture all your attention, try making the common ground explicit by using phrases such as “I agree with some of what you are saying…” or “We both want…” or “When I went to that meeting, I also noticed…”

Hedge your claims. In a disagreement about a matter of fact (for example, the cost of a project or the cause of a technical glitch), the average person is wrong at least 50% of the time. With that in mind, rather than asserting confidence that you are sure you are right, try showing some humility by hedging your claims and leaving open the possibility that you could be wrong. A series of studies by Leslie John and her colleagues have demonstrated that a person who recognizes that a complex issue has multiple sides is more likely to be seen as thoughtful and knowledgeable than a person who makes dogmatic statements that then turn out to be false. You can do that by preceding your claim with something like “From my view…” or “Sometimes it is the case…” You can also go further by both hedging and employing the strategies we discussed above. For instance, Lisa could say: “I understand that you are very concerned about staffing, and I agree that, on one hand, this client is key to our new strategy. On the other hand, it might be important that we don’t overcommit our resources. What do you think?”

Share your story. Our strongest beliefs (and the emotional force behind them) usually come from something that happened to us in the past rather than data or slide decks. According to research conducted by one of us (Julia) as well as several other research teams, sharing stories and the feelings they bring up is often a more effective way of building trust than trying to impress our counterparts with command of facts and data. For example, in one study, conducted by Julia and her colleagues, participants asked teams to entrust them with divvying up a shared bonus after expressing their view on a contentious topic. Those who shared a story of a vulnerable experience that shaped their beliefs were more trusted than those who relied on research results to support their view. Even when the topic of disagreement seems to hinge on cold, hard facts, it is usually the case that your convictions are based on a specific set of events. Sharing these revelations can increase trust and foster collaboration, breaking the cycle of battling facts with more facts.

What Organizations Can Do

Organizations have a tremendous amount to gain from creating environments where divergent ideas flow freely. Here are actions they can take to create such an environment:

Give people the verbal skills. When training people how to handle disagreement, consider how an instruction to get a person to think or feel a certain way (more empathetic, more humble, more vulnerable) can be translated into clear verbal signals. Thus, instead of simply telling people to be curious, we should teach them to express curiosity verbally. Instead of only telling them to be open-minded, train them in conversational receptiveness. Instead of merely telling them to be respectful of one another’s diverse lived experiences, teach them effective storytelling skills.

Model the right behaviors. Leaders can make it a goal to include these skills in regular organizational processes. For example, in weekly team meetings, managers can demonstrate the concrete behaviors they wish to see employees perform. Similarly, one-on-one check-ins, performance evaluations, and town hall meetings are all settings that often feature divergent views, thus allowing people to both hone their own skills and model effective execution to observers. Disagreement skills can become a consistent feature of the organizational culture, reinforced regularly across multiple settings. Our research suggests that conversational receptiveness is contagious, as people who are treated with respect during disagreement usually respond in kind.

Use technology to reinforce change. Importantly, many of today’s conversations are conducted digitally—through Zoom, Slack, email, and so on. This allows organizations to monitor conflict-management skills in real time and at scale. For example, many organizations already use natural-language-processing algorithms to measure toxicity in language and identify where intervention is necessary. But good conflict management is about encouraging the right behaviors long before a discussion becomes toxic, such as using messaging apps that include preconversation reminders of useful words and phrases. Organizations can also build dashboards that give employees direct feedback on their conversational behavior immediately after an interaction. People can be encouraged to have a conversation via voice or video, where research conducted by one of us (Michael) has shown that they are more likely to use receptive language than via text.

Customized chatbots that employ generative AI can be designed to give users both practice and specific feedback regarding their ability to use language to disagree effectively. With the costs of this technology dropping, this approach to training can allow organizations to quickly upskill large numbers of employees. Using AI for practice in disagreement has one additional advantage: Employees are usually more willing to disagree with AI than with their teammates and leaders because such disagreement does not carry the same potential for damaging relationships.

Hire and promote employees who disagree constructively. Our final recommendation is to consider constructive disagreement skills in hiring and promotion decisions in the same manner employers consider other soft skills like teamwork or leadership ability. Harvard University, as well as several other top universities, has recently taken this approach by adding a required essay to admissions applications that asks applicants to describe a strong disagreement they engaged in and how they handled the situation. In hiring and evaluation decisions, discussing a candidate’s approach to handling disagreements can complement the “case interview,” where candidates are presented with a real-world business problem and asked to analyze it, develop potential solutions, and present their recommendations. Technical solutions like the kinds we described above can also be used to evaluate candidates’ conflict-management skills.

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Although disagreement is inevitable, the escalation of disagreement into conflict is often avoidable. Training people to employ observable behaviors—especially to choose the right words—when interacting with others with different points of view can be highly effective in turning disagreements into better ideas and decisions.

Copyright 2025 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate.

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