Learning to Disagree Well

Recently, I’ve seen a lot of social media posts that follow a similar pattern. They declare that if you, dear reader, don’t agree with me about [insert topical issue here] you should ‘unfriend me now’. I never do of course. Popular topics for these posts range from Israel/Gaza, to the Equality Act judgment, to the success of Reform UK.

When did we begin to expect our online friends, who are often our real life friends, to hold the same opinions as us? My social media circle includes childhood friends, university mates, work colleagues, extended family on four continents, choir members, charity volunteers, local parents, and the adult children of my friends. It seems preposterous to imagine that we all could, would or indeed should share the same opinions on such wide ranging and complex subjects. And yet here we are. 

I’ve always loved living in a country where disagreement is both celebrated and legally protected. My family's heritage encompasses Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland, both places where, within living memory, having the ‘wrong’ opinion could cost you your life. In the UK we have a long history of political discourse, transgressive comedy and, to quote Mrs Merton, ‘heated debate’, but over the last decade something has changed. From Brexit to Covid, we started to see differing opinions not as a natural part of being human but instead as a moral failing. This inevitably led to rifts among family and friends and also to new tensions within the workplace.

Increasingly, when I met up with friends or colleagues, someone would tell a story of office craziness - often simple disagreements or misunderstandings that swiftly escalated into formal procedures, seemingly without anyone stepping in and saying there must be a better way. Historically, workplace disagreements were mostly between workers and management. This appears to have shifted to disputes, complaints and grievances between co-workers.

One person I loved talking this through with was a former BBC colleague, Alex Dalton. Her training involves helping people come up with great ideas and she had started to notice that a fear of speaking up was stifling creativity - vibrant, inspirational difference was disappearing in favour of a nervous and fragile conformity. My own training experience was in supporting education professionals to build rapport with students from different backgrounds and I too had noted a reluctance to acknowledge diversity of thought alongside diversity of background. 

We wanted to work out if we could use our skills and experience from journalism, research and training to support organisations and their staff to disagree well. To dial down the temperature, to really listen to each other, and to work out how to harness difference and disagreement as positive forces for business again. 

We have developed a programme which we’ve tentatively called Curious Not Furious. We’d love to know if you think we’re on the right track.

Photo by David Clode on Unsplash