How to disagree better

The key to having productive political disagreements is to make the other person feel heard.

The other day I went to a public workshop called “Skills for disagreeing better”. It was not about how to win arguments. It also wasn’t about avoiding conflict. The point of the workshop was to learn how to have a productive conversation with someone who disagrees with you politically, and come away feeling like you’d actually want to talk to them again.

I think that good communication skills are some of the most important skills you can learn. And, as Steven Covey wrote, the key step to good communication is “Seek first to understand, then to be understood”. If we want to have productive conversations about politics, then we need to make our conversation partners feel heard before we share our own opinions. The workshop formalized it as a four step process called the LAPP technique: listen, acknowledge, pivot, and perspective. Here’s how it can help you disagree better.

Learning to have polite and productive disagreements is one of the most important steps we can take to reduce political polarization. As a visualization for “reducing polarization”, here’s an AI generated image of a meditating polar bear.

Skill 1: Listen

Communication is not about one-way information transfer, it’s about building connection and understanding. And that means listening. Here are some thoughts on how to be better at listening to someone who disagrees with you on politics.

• Turn off your inner debater. You don’t have to agree with what they say, you just have to understand it. If you can identify points where you do agree with the person, that’s a bonus.

• Stay curious. As I’ve said elsewhere, it’s really hard to listen if you think you already know what they’re going to say. So, before going into any conversation, you need to convince yourself that you’re going to learn something new.

• Practice reflective listening. Paraphrase what they say back to them to make sure you understand correctly.

• Try to understand their values and concerns. Different people have different values, and understanding these differences is a key step towards understanding why you disagree with them in the first place.

It can be really hard to listen to someone without telling them why they’re wrong. But it’s a price worth paying if it gets them to open up to you.

Skill 2: Acknowledge

To acknowledge their view is to summarize what they told you (including their feelings and concerns) and repeat it back to them. This lets them know you’re listening, it helps prevent misunderstandings, and it creates the kind of trust that makes real conversation possible. For example, if you’ve just listened to them complain about how the healthcare system is broken, you might say something like “If I understand correctly, you feel like the system is stacked against ordinary people, and you’re frustrated by how hard it is for some families to get the care they need.” You’re not agreeing or disagreeing, you’re simply showing that you’ve heard them.

By acknowledging the other person’s view, you break the conversation pattern that most people are used to. Here’s a quote from the workshop’s participant guide: “Most political discussions go this way: You say up, I say down, you say hot, I say cold, you say my candidate is terrible, and I say yours is worse. The principle behind the acknowledge skill is to connect first before you disagree by making the other person feel heard.” The normal pattern is to exchange blows, trying to convince the other person of your point of view. You need to break that pattern. The people in the workshop had a really hard time understanding this, one woman I talked to thought this step was about asking pointed questions to help the other person see the error of their ways. But if you do that, you’re still stuck in the same pattern of trying to win an argument. If you want to have a productive conversation about politics with someone you disagree with, you need to redefine “winning” to mean making the other person feel heard.

If you accomplish the “listen” and “acknowledge” steps successfully, then you'll see the other person’s shields drop. When the other person feels understood, they’ll be much less defensive and much more open to listening to your perspective.

Skill 3: Pivot

Now it’s time to pivot into sharing your own perspective. But there’s a specific way to do this that makes the other person much more likely to listen. Here’s the secret to a successful pivot: You ask if it’s okay to share your perspective. Ask the person you’re talking to “Can I offer my thoughts on this?” and then wait for them to acknowledge you. If they say no, then you might need to listen longer, or you might need to end the conversation, because their shields are still up and they aren’t going to listen to you no matter what you say. But, if you’ve done a good job as a listener, then they’ll often say yes.

Having someone verbally agree to let you share your perspective is a powerful tool, because it makes them shift from argument mode to listening mode. It actually works to make any type of advice be received better. One of the moderators of my workshop told a story about using the pivot technique to tell her daughter that she was braking too sharply. Teenagers are notorious for rejecting criticism, but by saying “[daughter’s name], can I give you some driving advice?” and then waiting for a confirmation before continuing, her daughter listened and accepted it as constructive advice instead of as criticism.

Skill 4: Perspective

After you’ve pivoted, it’s time to share your perspective. This doesn’t mean telling the other person why they’re wrong, it means giving them an alternate lens they can use to look at the situation. Focus on points where you agree with them, and explain why your personal experiences or viewpoints would lead you to come to different conclusions about the rest of it.

Here are some key points to keep in mind when sharing your perspective:

• Use “I” statements. Say “The way I see it is…” instead of “This is absolutely how it is!”

• Name the source of your views. “I read an article from BBC about…”

• Avoid negative labels like “you people who ignore science!”, and avoid lumping people into groups, like “you Democrats” or “you Republicans”.

• Appeal to values that you both share. Most people care about things like safety, freedom, fairness, and helping others, even if they define those things differently. Appealing to shared values can help you find common ground and really come to understand each other.

Sharing my perspective is often the hardest part for me, because I feel like I only have one chance and I need it to be perfect. If I know beforehand that I’m going into a disagreement with someone, I’ll often write out notes to organize my thoughts. But disagreements are often unplanned, and so it really just takes practice to be good at sharing your perspective.

Conclusion

These four skills are based on techniques used in couples therapy, but they work just as well for political conversations. Each technique is important:

1. Listen to understand, not to argue.

2. Acknowledge what you heard.

3. Pivot by asking them if it’s okay for you to share your views.

4. Offer your perspective in a non-confrontational way, and give them a new lens to see the situation through.

And that’s it! If you can stick to those four steps, then the quality of your political disagreements will go way up. But it can be easy to get distracted. Earlier I mentioned that you should give your sources when sharing your perspective. In the workshop, someone asked (I’m paraphrasing) “What do you do when the person you’re talking to shares their sources, and you think their sources are trash?” The moderator responded that this can be pretty common, but the best thing to do there is to let it slide. For most people, disputing their sources is not going to lead to a productive conversation.

The goal of these conversations isn't to win debates or prove who's right, it's to build understanding. When we approach political disagreements with curiosity rather than aggression, something remarkable happens: people start listening to each other again. These techniques won't convert anyone to your worldview overnight, but they offer something more valuable in our polarized moment in history: a way to engage with people who see the world differently without sacrificing our relationships or our sanity.

Resources:

• The workshop was put on by an organization called Braver Angels, which focuses on reducing political polarization in the United States.

• My favorite book about communication is Crucial Conversations, which teaches skills that are similar to the ones in the workshop.

• I’ve been told that many of these communication skills are also taught in therapy, so here’s an article on how to find a good therapist.