Don't Agree to Disagree. Here's What to Do Instead.

Chris 0:00
Why does that sound like a good idea, but really didn't feel very satisfying in the moment?

Patrick 0:04
Right. Yeah, I think that's something that a lot of people can relate to. What was it about it that you found frustrating?

Welcome to the first episode of making yourself clear. I'm Patrick.

Chris 0:20
I'm Chris, and we're going to explore topics we find interesting on the overarching theme of clarity of thought and communication. And one thing came to mind for me recently, which was: I was in an argument with my partner, and we're going back and forth, missing each other. And at some point she got frustrated, and in a genuine, well intentioned effort to de-escalate and move on to something else, she suggested: "Why don't we just, we're just gonna have to agree to disagree", which, on the surface seems like a perfectly reasonable proposition, but I found it deeply unsatisfying, and I just it made me more frustrated at the time. And so I thought we might riff on: What are the dynamics there? And why does that sound like a good idea, but really didn't feel very satisfying in the moment?

Patrick 1:13
Yeah, the old, let's agree to disagree. I think that's something that a lot of people can relate to. A lot of people get that. You know, we hear people say it, maybe we say it sometimes. What was it about it you found frustrating?

Chris 1:23
The frustration in the exchange was that I didn't feel like she understood my position. And so to say, from that place, "let's agree to disagree" is like, well, "you don't, you don't understand me yet." So if I deconstruct, what is it? What does it mean to agree to disagree? And I think it boils down to a few things. One would be, "I agree that my position is x, and I agree that your position is y, and I agree that those are different", right? If I think she's misunderstanding my position, then I'm being asked to agree to what I think is a misinterpretation of my position. So that's not where I'm actually coming from, right? And I couldn't agree to that. I'm like, "No, I don't agree. I don't agree to actually disagree in this manner, because I don't think you understand me yet." Right? And so what I think comes from that, for me is, if you want to agree to disagree, you've got to earn the right to do that by having the other person feel understood first, right?

Patrick 2:17
So you're saying, what would have worked better for you is if the two of you had at least had a conversation around what your positions were, understood them thoroughly and then agreed. Because what happens when you agree to disagree, ultimately is you're saying, I don't think you're right, so I'm not going to agree to your position, but I also don't think I'm wrong, so let's just leave it where it is, and we'll just leave it at the stalemate.

Chris 2:42
Yeah, and there are probably a large number of topics about which reasonable people can disagree. It's I like chocolate. You like vanilla. You know that it's fine, yeah, totally fine. But if I'm accusing you of liking strawberry and your flavor is actually vanilla, right? Well, you don't want to be one of those strawberry people. You don't want to be lumped in with that group identity, yeah, so I should at least acknowledge that what you're advocating for is vanilla first, and then now, now, when I say you like vanilla and I like chocolate, there's a nod, and you're like, yeah, I can agree to disagree about that, right? But, don't lump me in with those strawberry people!

Patrick 3:22
We can all agree that strawberry is not...

Chris 3:25
Waste of a fruit and an ice cream flavor. Terrible. And this maybe goes to a broader point around arguing and disagreements in general, where, I think often, where things escalate is where people are talking past each other, and there's just a misunderstanding and it's critical, I think, to any kind of healthy discourse to try to find what I'd call a shared reality. It doesn't mean you have to agree, but like broader picture, here's your position, here's mine, and if we can get aligned on what that is, because there's something frustrating about not being heard, and that's really largely, all we want is to be understood and heard first, and then to proceed from there.

Patrick 4:05
And I think the agree to disagree, that's where I find it frustrating. I had a disagreement with my partner two, three nights ago, and that was a similar sort of thing. She kept saying to me, "Well, you do this all the time, and you do this all the time", and there was this frustration, or like, Well, no, I don't, like, I have done that in the past, but that's not my entire identity. And so when you're when you're reduced to that, and then it's like, okay, well, I guess we just don't see eye to eye on this. Well, no, it's not that we don't see eye to eye, right, right?

Chris
Yeah, the old you always or you never thing...

Patrick
She always does that.

Chris 4:45
I see what you did there. Yeah, you always, you never... that kind of hyperbole generally doesn't help to de-escalate things. No, it'll take you in the other direction.

Patrick 4:57
And so we that's, that's where we land. Was. Like, well, I guess we'll just agree to disagree that, like, I don't feel as though that is who I am. And she's like, well, that's, that's how it is for me. And like, I guess we'll agree to disagree. And that really didn't wash well for me.

Chris 5:12
In that instance, it sounds like you're concluding the conversation, because ultimately, agree to disagree, what it is is a bid to just stop talking It's like, it's just code for "I don't want to talk about this anymore." And there's a satisfying place to end it, or an unsatisfying place to end it, so even if what you're after is this has now gotten uncomfortable and I don't want to talk about it anymore, you could say that rather than asking the other person to commit to, to agree to something. I'm not agreeing to any part of the argument necessarily, but like, I'm willing to pause this and continue it later.

Patrick 5:50
Yeah, so that might be a better stance is like, can we just, can we just park this conversation right now? I need some time to think about it. I'm not saying that we you're wrong. But at this particular moment, there's an impasse for me for whatever reason.

Chris 6:06
Yeah, cuz, I mean, you could, just as you could equally say, "hey, why don't we just agree that I'm right?" And then we'll, and that's another way to end the conversation.

Patrick
Absolutely. And that's kind of how it feels. Like, I guess you're stuck in being... I guess your mind's made up. You're going to be wrong.

Chris
Or even, let's pause this in a way that you don't feel heard. And just, I want you to be okay with that. And this goes two ways, right? So here we both are, and there's something meta where it's easy for us to criticize how our counterpart shows up in any dialog that's not going well, which is less useful than applying the same insights to yourself, which is, where do I do frustrating things in in this conversational game? And where am I either not playing fair or up to something ulterior that I've wrapped in a noble sounding package, right? Like agree to disagree. Take the high road. Is that really the high road, or is that just claiming the high road?

Patrick 7:30
Yeah, exactly. So it's about, at this point, figuring out, what can I do, what else can I bring to the table? I was listening to another podcast the other day, and the guest said "You've got lots of problems. Let's start with you." So what can we do if someone's asking us to agree to disagree? What's a better alternative?

Chris 7:35
Well, that's a good question. By the time you've gotten to that point, like one way or another, "let's agree to disagree" seems to be a move towards the exit for the conversation. So at least one person in the conversation is now no longer enjoying it and wants to stop. So you could counter with "Hey, I'm hearing that this conversation is no longer... the juice isn't worth the squeeze in this conversation for you at the moment, so I'm willing to pause the conversation, but can we resume it later? Okay, I'm not... the "agree to disagree" sounds too final, and I don't... something still feels unresolved here that I'd like to explore, perhaps when we're both...

Patrick 8:18
So that's a strategy for both parties. If you're someone who typically says "let's agree to disagree", or if it springs to mind, then you could instead say something along the lines of "This conversation isn't working for me right now. Can we pause it? I need some time to think, and we can come back to it. I'm not saying it's over. I'm not shutting it down, but I just need, I need some time right now to reflect." And then if you're the party who is being asked to agree to disagree, then you could come at it from a similar sort of standpoint, saying "I'm not willing to agree to disagree, but what I am willing to do is to pause this conversation right now. And then can we come back to it after we've had some time to reflect and formulate some thoughts?" And because maybe what it is is you're talking past one another. I know that happens with my partner and I fairly often. I feel like what I'm saying makes sense, and that it just doesn't land for whatever reason, because of, you know, the we just think differently.

Chris 9:15
What I like about that is it's a way to pause the conversation. You're planting a seed to maybe come back to it later, leaving the door open so that it doesn't have that artificial finality, where it's like... I can agree to stop talking. but if this is an important thing - if it's something trivial, like a sports team or a which TV show is better, it doesn't amount to much - but if it's something that is about the relationship or about some collaboration that you have to continue on and a decision that's important, you can't necessarily just pause it on an unresolved disagreement, so you may have to come back to it. One thing I've found useful sometimes is if in a verbal attempt to work something out, if that starts to go sideways and escalate... pausing, taking a moment, and then writing my thoughts out, and having my counterpart write their thoughts out as well, and then agreeing on a time to exchange thoughts by email and then read what each other has written, process it, and then come together and talk. That has worked well several times for me in the past, for I think, a few reasons. One being writing my thoughts out forces me to really get clear on them and present them in a sequential sort of way.

Patrick
Yeah, absolutely.

Chris
The other is, it gives me a chance to edit out any unnecessary snark, and like, the first pass might be a bit self-righteous or snarky or angry, and I can go back and edit that out and make the same point in a much more respectful, balanced way. And she does the same, in the case of my partner.

Patrick 10:55
I think that's a really good way to do it. I toyed with that as well, where I've asked my partner to write it out. The unnecessary snark thing, that's a good that's a good piece, though, because sometimes you write it out and you don't edit it afterwards, so going back and reflecting on it and really taking some time to just kind of... yeah, that's a really... that's a that's a good point.

Chris 11:19
Of course, it begs the question, is there ever necessary snark?

Patrick
That's a whole other topic...

Chris
That's a whole other topic. Is snark ever necessary? Uh, probably not. But it's fun. It can be fun. Might be useful, depending on the medium. You know, if you're writing an opinion piece or something. Or satire... super useful there.

Patrick 11:43
Yeah, in terms of interpersonal relationships, probably not going to get you what you want, but there's definitely, there's a time and a place.

Chris 11:50
Yeah, for sure. It's one of those things that can feel good for a moment and then ultimately, is probably self-defeating if your if your goal is to actually communicate with someone else.

Patrick
Yeah, absolutely.

Chris
Because it's sort of - this is a whole other topic we could go into - but the tone of voice, the how you say it, not just what you say piece, and why that's so important.

Patrick 12:19
I walk into trouble with how I'm saying things all the time. "Well, you said it like this." "Well, no, you heard it like this."

Chris 12:27
Well, that's another thing, right? Communication is a funny thing. It starts with some idea or concept in one person's mind, and then we need to condense that down into a bunch of mouth noises that we make, which is definitely a form of lossy compression, and then our hope is that when they hear the mouth noises we made, that the mental model that they reconstruct in their mind - which is now like you're unzipping a file, but that's another lossy process. Not just lossy, but it's additive, right? That's also because stuff gets smuggled in with the archive, and then... The words were clear, perhaps, or you could transcribe them and agree on what they were, but the meaning behind them, the meaning you start with, and the meaning that's recreated in the other person's mind can be quite different.

Patrick 13:20
Yeah, I've experienced that. I'm sure that many people can relate to that.

Chris 13:24
There's a quote from, I forget who. I should look it up, but the quote is something like "the biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred."

Patrick
Yeah, that's good. Which is another thing, which is like two people can have an interaction and leave both thinking that there was a meeting in the minds, when, in fact there was not.

Chris 13:45
When in fact there may or may not have been. tricky business.


Patrick 13:37
Yep, absolutely. Yeah. Well, and it comes back to something that I've heard you say, a shared background of obviousness. So having that shared understanding is a big piece of being able to communicate effectively with another person.

Chris 14:03
Yeah, maybe we can unpack that a bit, the idea of this background of obviousness.

Patrick
Yeah, let's do that.

Chris
So this shows up in a professional context a lot, or in any context, really, but if we're collaborating with someone, let's say at work, and you want to share with them everything you think they'll need to know to know, to understand the assignment or the project in order to fulfill on their part of it. And so the stuff that occurs to us to lay out and specify, if we're on our game, we'll do that. We'll give them all the information we think they need, and they'll do the same for us. But then there's stuff that seems so obvious, just like stuff that's so plainly obvious, it might even be... It's not even worth mentioning.

Patrick
Not even worth mentioning.

Chris
THe sky is blue, the grass is green, like these are... you don't start with that. It's so obvious. And if my background of obviousness and yours match sufficiently, if there's enough overlap in the Venn diagram, then we're probably fine. So where you get into trouble is if my background of obvious and yours are vastly different in pertinent ways, then neither one of us would have thought to share those details to search for alignment, because it's just obvious. And then we'll find out down the road that there was a disconnect there, and things can really blow up. And then the question is "well, whose fault is that?" And it's hard to blame it on anyone, because... so the lesson there, I think, is be mindful of the fact that you might have different obvious stuff in the background.

Patrick 15:37
Yeah, well, I can think of a concrete example. I had a situation at work one day where I was dealing with a number of people. I had 12 or 13 people in a course room, and I had just this issue with technology, so they were all signing in through laptops that the company had purchased, and I had a tech support team that were off site, so everyone's having trouble logging into these laptops and I fire off a message to the tech support team, saying "hey, can you help so and so person? They need some assistance." And tech support are getting back to me and saying "well, can you do XYZ?" Meanwhile, I'm trying to manage 12 upset people who are dealing with laptops that are not working properly. So I just clapped back. I was like "No, I don't have time to do that. I need you to do this." It came across as really snarky and really frustrating. And I was in a frustrated state, but not with the tech support, just with the situation in general, and having to manage the frustration levels of 12 people who were in the room with me.

Chris 16:40
So the tech support person didn't know that you were live or 12 people? So just saying, I don't have time to do this can be read a lot of different ways. It can be read as "I've got 12 angry people in front of me that I need to placate, and therefore I don't have time." Or it can mean "This is beneath me. I'm better than this. You're the lowly tech guy."

Patrick 17:01
So later, someone came to me and said, "hey" - because it was also in a public chat channel, rather than-one-on one. So they said to me, first of all, take it one on one, so that you can have a conversation with the other person. And you know, if there's anything that could be misinterpreted by 14 other people at the company, they don't have an opportunity to do so. Secondly, you should apologize for being kind of snarky with them. And I was like, I get where that's coming from, and I don't mind having that conversation, but there was no snark. It was just I was in a situation that they were unaware of but the way that they took it is the way that they took it, and I don't have...

Chris
And this was through a type...

Patrick
It's all through chat, yeah.

Chris 17:45
So that's the other piece. With a live voice conversation, snark is conveyed through tonality and eye rolls and body language and all these nuances you can pick up on, and...

Patrick 17:57
You miss all of those things when you pull them out and you only have text to go on, exactly.

Chris 18:01
You've only got the text, and then people are left to... people can infer tone of voice based on a string of words. You didn't mean it that way. You literally meant "I'm really busy in this exact moment, I don't have time. Can you please help me?" So the snark was read into it.

Patrick 18:19
It was read into it, yeah, and so I don't have any, I don't have the ability to help someone focus their energy in one way or another when it comes to how they're going to interpret what I've just said. But coming back to shared background of obviousness... That's tech support for me, but it's tech support for everyone else at the company, too. So they're handling, you know, my 12 frustrated people, but they're also taking phone calls from anyone else who's having trouble with the website. And so there's a lot going on.

Chris 18:48
Everybody's got a dozen angry donuts. So then the in terms of a useful takeaway here, if you're in a situation... well, I guess there's two things. One is, text only communication is sort of limited, and you want to be selective about when you use it. Where, if things like body language and tonality and those nuances are important, maybe that's better with a phone call or over Zoom or live. And sometimes you're in a an emergency situation like the one you were in and maybe setting up a whole meeting wasn't... maybe Slack is the right channel for that.

Patrick 19:26
Yeah, I mean, and Slack has it... like in that particular instance, I did wind up calling him. I just said "can you just call me and we can have a conversation about this?" And it worked, and it was fine. But the other issue that showed up was, I've got everyone else at the company reading the conversation that's going back and forth between me and this fella over the, you know... the company watching

Chris
The whole community now left to interpret that exchange however they will.

Patrick
And so everyone interpreted it as I was snarky with this person. And so that was something for me to consider, too. It's like, if I've got an entire company of people saying "hey, there was some passive aggressive stuff in there", I've got to own that. Like, maybe it was... I was frustrated in the moment, so...

Chris 20:08
Well, so there's another point worth making here, which is: we tend to judge ourselves based on our intentions, but other people can't see our intentions. They can only see our output, our actions. And if you want to be effective at communicating, it's not sufficient to have a clear intention and then to put words together to represent it, and if the other person reads something into it that you didn't intend, you then blame them for it. Next level of personal ownership over your effectiveness in communicating - and all effective communicators, I think, have this mindset, which is, they take a high level of ownership over making sure that... the communication is only effective when the message is received close enough to as intended over there. So one thing you can watch for as you're communicating is not just "do these words represent my intentions", but also ask yourself the reverse question, which is "are there obvious ways that this might be misinterpreted?"

Patrick
Yeah, absolutely.

Chris
...and then get out ahead of those. Either change the wording to something less ambiguous, or even address the concerns up front. "Hey, not trying to be snarky here at all. I've got 12 people in front of me. Can you please handle this for me? I'd really appreciate it."

Patrick
That would have been a better way to do that.

Chris
Yeah, and then you're addressing the concern, like "this isn't snark, I really am too busy" and also giving them some of that context, like "I'm live in front of room of people and need a fix right away." But that's something we often overlook, because all this stuff is obvious to you.

Patrick 21:39
And that was very much the situation that I was in, too, where I was like, well, these people know that I've got 12 live people in a course room with me. So when I'm sending them a message, I'm sending them a very short message, and it can be read as curt. So right now they're getting three or four word answers instead of complete sentences and paragraphs, because I don't feel like I have time to do that given the setting that I'm in. And as a result, they're like "Man, this guy's kind of a jerk."

Chris 22:06
Whereas, if they had taken the time to think it through, "oh, he's probably teaching a course and has a classroom full of people right now" and then they could infer that context. But that's asking someone else to do a lot of cognitive lifting.
It's asking for a high degree of empathy. Because how often do you think about what that guy has going on in his day as you're messaging him?

Patrick
Yeah. And I can understand from their perspective, too. They're probably looking at it through the lens of "okay, well, if he's writing me right now, he must be taking a break or in another room or..." So there's the understanding that that's just how I communicate with them.

Chris 22:44
And so there's lots of little tricks and tips you can adopt for things like this. One of them is, just keep in mind where the recipient of your communication is, in terms of what's in their mental space, what's going on in their world, and what additional information might they need in order to interpret what I'm saying more in the spirit in which it's intended?

Patrick 23:05
Yeah, absolutely. So that was a big takeaway for me, was just, how am I communicating with these people? Because, in the moment, for me, one of the ways that I would get overwhelmed is like, I don't have time to write these messages. I don't have time to write full sentences. You know, one word answers are quicker, so that I can deal with the frustrated person who's directly in front of me, when in reality, they're not getting any less frustrated whether it's 30 seconds or a minute and a half. So I've adopted the mindset of, I can write a full sentence. I can put in a smiley face emoji. I can do something to just communicate that we're on the same page, we're on the same team, and I appreciate what they're doing. And that goes a long way too, just putting in little words like that, like "Hey, I appreciate everything you've done. Good morning. Could you please?", that sort of thing.

Chris 23:54
Absolutely. Yeah, the little pleasantries... Emojis are actually quite useful.

Patrick
Very much so.

Chris
So reintroducing some of that nuance into text only conversations, like a smiley face as opposed to an angry face or whatever. You can also do little things to manage expectations, like if you've got someone who's frustrated in front of you, you can say "hey, I want to help you. I'm working on that with tech support right now, so I need like, 10 minutes" or whatever it is, and then say "for the next few minutes, I'm not going to be very responsive, because I'm trying to solve the problem." And then same with the tech support person: "Hey, I'm also trying to manage a room full of frustrated people here, so my next several messages might be one word answers, and that's not me being Curt. That's me juggling a lot of different balls in the air."

Patrick 24:41
And then that comes back to just creating that shared background of obviousness.

Chris 24:46
Yeah, and really thinking about it from the other person's perspective. And this doesn't have to be a long, meditative process. It can be just take a split second and think about making sure the message lands. And being aware of, and trying to mitigate all the ways it might go sideways. It's kind of... Have a risk mitigation mindset, because any endeavor has different failure modes. And be aware of what some of them might be, and try to try to minimize the unforced errors. Great conversation!

Patrick 25:17
Yeah, a lot of avenues to go down. So if there's something that you heard specifically that you want us to explore, please feel free to leave us a comment.

Chris 25:23
Yeah, leave a note in the comments and... happy to do a deeper dive on some of it. We probably will circle back and unpack some of those things in further detail. Hope this was useful. Thanks for tuning in!