How to Disagree

IN AN ERA OF POLITICAL POLARIZATION, and in a modern workplace where co-workers have more ways to communicate than ever before, managers might be tempted to forbid workplace discussions of contentious topics.

But quashing debate doesn’t make different viewpoints go away — it only keeps conflicts simmering in the background. And many employees want to talk about complex subjects at work. A 2022 PwC survey of more than 52,000 workers found that 65% of respondents have discussed political or social issues in their workplace, and that the positive impact of those conversations — such as better understanding among colleagues and a more inclusive work environment — outweighed the negative. Moreover, an organizational culture that’s adept at disagreeing productively and incorporating opposing ideas can help reveal novel solutions, even in day-to-day work.

Eli J. Finkel and Nour Kteily, professors of management and organizations at the Kellogg School of Management, study how individuals, groups and societies can engage across difficult divides to reach better outcomes. Kteily uses research methods from social psychology to explore how conflict emerges between groups and how to resolve it. Finkel examines romantic relationships and American politics — two realms where disagreement can make personal connections stronger or tear them apart.

The pair recently launched the Center for Enlightened Disagreement, a new Northwestern center housed at Kellogg. Together, they strive to create research-backed methods of approaching debate that can help managers develop open and effective workplaces where differing points of view enable innovation to flourish. “It’s healthy for groups to disagree,” Kteily says, “but ideally, the disagreement is on the substance.”

Many managers are familiar with “groupthink,” a psychological phenomenon in which team members prioritize group harmony at the expense of considering dissenting viewpoints. Groupthink goes too far in avoiding conflict — and it can be deadly. In politics, the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 is considered a classic example: Advisers in the administration of President John F. Kennedy kept their doubts about the invasion to themselves for fear of upsetting group consensus, leading to poor strategic decisions. The explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986, in which all seven crew members died, happened in part because engineers were discouraged from expressing dissent about the safety of the shuttle’s design. 

The stakes are lower in most instances of groupthink, but stifling debate can also undermine important projects in everyday settings. Picture a team meeting to design a new ad campaign in which the chief marketing officer speaks up right away to advocate for a particular direction. “Suddenly, everyone is afraid to share a different idea,” Kteily says. “It leads to convergent rather than divergent thinking,” which, in turn, leads to less-creative outcomes and missed opportunities. 

Groupthink can apply to moral situations as well — and it can be particularly difficult to recognize in these cases, because personal opinions may be deeply intertwined with identity. “Anybody with knowledge of history and cultural change knows there are a lot of different ways that people define what’s morally righteous, and it’s unlikely that any group has it exactly right,” Finkel says. “We need to have some amount of humility about the nature of truth, including moral truth.” 

Allowing diverse viewpoints to flourish can produce better solutions, just as diversifying one’s investment portfolio tends to produce healthier returns. Kteily explains that a crowd of people with uncorrelated opinions is often more effective at solving a problem than that same group of individuals working on their own. The scientist Francis Galton, for example, found a crowd at a fair to be remarkably accurate at estimating the weight of an ox. Individual guesses varied widely. But when Galton calculated the average of the nearly 800 estimates, the result matched the ox’s actual weight of 1,197 pounds. Similarly, in the workplace, inviting employees with different backgrounds and areas of expertise to brainstorm ideas can lead to more novel and innovative proposals.

Convincing people that disagreement and dialogue can be generally useful isn’t the most significant challenge. Larger problems arise once a specific conflict has arisen. Once we are embroiled in the conflict, the psychological biases that we all harbor can hamper our reasoning, negatively distorting our assessments of a colleague who disagrees. In general, it’s much easier to see these biases in others than in ourselves. 

Consider the phenomenon in which people attribute others’ shortcomings to character flaws but their own failings to particular situations. For example, we might accuse a co-worker of falling short in preparing for an important pitch because they didn’t care enough about their work, while if our own efforts fail, we might blame it on a manager assigning too many competing projects. This pattern, rooted in psychological biases known as the “actorobserver effect” and the “self-serving bias,” can undermine trust and make it more difficult to give other perspectives adequate weight. 

Research points to still other examples of such “motivated reasoning.” For example, we tend to believe that we weigh the evidence soberly in constructing our position, a phenomenon known as “naive realism.” But the truth is that, instead, we often turn the process on its head — forming an opinion based on a personal goal or group identity we already hold and then identifying or interpreting facts selectively to support that opinion. For example, members of different generations working side by side in the same company may interpret the same situation quite differently. 

In a 2021 study, Kteily and several co-authors examined motivated reasoning in five experiments that tested how participants’ ideologies shaped their attention to inequalities in class, race and gender. In one experiment, participants watched a video of a discussion panel consisting of two men and two women. In one edited version of the video, the men spoke longer; in the other, the women spoke longer. Participants were later surprised with a judgment task, in which they were asked to estimate the speaking-time distribution between the men and women on the panel they had seen (participants were financially incentivized to do their best to select the right answer). 

Participants’ accuracy varied as a function of their egalitarian motives: when participants had watched a video in which men spoke longer than women, individuals more strongly committed to bringing about equality among all groups in society were more accurate than those less committed to group equality. But when the women had spoken longer than the men — a pattern inconsistent with the broader notion that women are socially disadvantaged and need support to achieve equality — social egalitarians were no more accurate than participants less committed to group equality. In other words, participants’ beliefs shaped their perception of objective circumstances in ways that aligned with their worldviews. 

Motivated reasoning is an obvious barrier to co-workers coming together across differences. In our ad campaign example, an account executive could be weighing how the creative direction will affect long-standing relationships with key partners, while an analytics lead may be focused on key performance metrics. Each cares deeply about the work and is faced with the same situation, but they may interpret things differently, depending on each individual’s unique perspective.

To further complicate the discussion, naive realism can lead us to have a sense of moral righteousness around our own interpretations, and can cause discussions of complex issues to become emotionally fraught. Someone who holds an opposing view is judged not only as someone who has a bad opinion but as a bad person. 

Recognizing these common errors and how they can affect a team’s ability to work together is just a starting point — it’s also important to take action. “There’s a lot of education you can do about the biases that lead us astray, but awareness is not a silver bullet,” Kteily says. “One also needs infrastructure and contingency plans.”

Establish boundaries early. The best time to create conditions for productive disagreement is before emotions run high, Finkel and Kteily say. Consider adding guidelines for discussing hot-button issues to the employee onboarding process. Employees may be more open to reflecting on their own biases when they’re not in the midst of an argument. 

To discourage groupthink, explain upfront that your organization welcomes difference, including differences of opinion. At the same time, set guardrails limiting hate speech and discrimination, and explain the consequences for behavior that is out of bounds. 

When sensitive topics arise, remind employees of the guidelines and principles established in these early conversations. Colleagues who recognize that they may be in the grip of naive realism or motivated reasoning may be able to approach a heated conversation with a more generous and open-minded spirit. 

“We can say that we — as an organization, as a matter of principle — are going to handle discussions of moral issues in a more welcoming way,” Finkel says. “This is not to say that all moral viewpoints are equally justified, but we’re going to have general rules of engagement.” 

Think like an outsider. Deliberately adopting a different viewpoint can help people recognize their own biases and become more accommodating of other perspectives. Encourage employees to practice “self-distancing” by adopting the persona of a neutral third party who can empathize with everyone’s interests. 

In a 2013 study, Finkel and several co-authors created an experimental intervention that asked couples to employ self-distancing when recalling marital conflicts. Happiness in marriage tends to decline over time, but study participants who were randomly assigned to use self-distancing to look at their conflicts experienced greater satisfaction in their marriages. 

Agree on common metrics. In any effort involving multiple contributors — who may all see the situation and overall purpose slightly differently — there will be many ways to quantify progress. Deciding as a team how to measure progress toward the goal can help improve data collection and reduce conflict. 

Identify core interests. Finkel and Kteily both teach courses in negotiation. Observing student role-playing exercises, they see how often opposing parties leave unrealized value on the table because they fail to understand each other’s interests. Successful negotiation “requires that people work together across difference to see if trade-offs can be made,” Kteily says. The best negotiations, he adds, start with exploring what each side hopes to achieve and lead to both sides collaborating to overcome obstacles. “It’s an enlightened form of disagreement that translates into creativity,” he explains. 

Accept that disagreement is a normal — and healthy — part of work and life. “You don’t want the organizational equivalent of a one-party state,” Finkel says. “There is no assumption that one party, one person, is going to have some headlock on the truth. Fierce and tenacious debate is essential. Equally important are the ability to communicate effectively, an accurate understanding of what the other side wants and room to make concessions.”

Finkel and Kteily have often collaborated on projects that promote healthy debate. In February, Northwestern and Kellogg announced that the two professors will co-direct a new initiative: the Center for Enlightened Disagreement, housed at Kellogg, which will bring together academics, thought leaders and policymakers to research, identify best practices, and train students and faculty in engaging others across diverse perspectives. 

The center will be organized around research, outreach, curriculum and discussion. Kellogg faculty plan to partner with companies and organizations to test strategies intended to foster constructive dialogue in business, politics, higher education and other fields. Insights from the center will enhance Northwestern’s undergraduate and graduate business curricula, helping students create more inclusive workplaces, navigate conflict and encourage creative problem-solving. 

“The bedrock of the center is the science, but the other components are also essential,” Finkel says. “All of them are oriented toward helping people stand up for the things they believe in while continuing to function effectively as part of a diverse collective, rather than either glossing over important conflicts or advocating in ways that push toward rupture.” 

One aim of the center, Kteily adds, is to promote difficult conversations that lead to positive change. “When people come together to talk across difference, a lot of times the emphasis is simply on how warm each side feels towards the other,” he says. But research shows that feeling better about the other side after a conversation isn’t sufficient. It can actually lead to a backlash if one side had expected certain changes to happen as a result of the conversation but the other side persists with the status quo. “The goal is not simply to make people less impassioned and more acquiescent. We want to bring a more psychologically informed, research-informed approach to help people push more productively and effectively for the things they think are important.”