How has the last week been for you? If you have felt unsettled by a changing political landscape here in the US (let alone earthquakes, or wildfires, or snow in places that rarely see any), you’re not the only one. And while people can reasonably disagree on a great many topics, it’s likely that if you read Building Bridges Leadership posts, you’re someone who believes in the value of other people’s lived experiences, and of unique diversity and diverse unity. So the sweeping changes on a federal level – mirrored by many major corporations – to eliminate resources devoted to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, is worrying, to say the least. Great strides have been made over the last decade in particular to uncover blind spots, challenge biases, and seek understanding of perspectives other than our own, and much of that comes from those in leadership roles being willing and able to provide resources and space for this work to take place.
Wherever you sit on the political spectrum, and whatever your views on DEI or any other policies that have undergone sweeping changes with a new administration, it can be helpful to think of politics as a pendulum. And while we often think of policies as swinging back and forth dramatically from administration to administration, something that gets lost in the analogy is that, when left swinging, a pendulum’s swings become smaller and less dramatic over time, and eventually will settle with gravity. But that takes time – in the political realm, it could take decades, or even lifetimes – and, of course, during that timeframe millions of lives can be impacted. And fighting the policy changes that marginalize people on a systemic daily basis is the natural step for many of us to take. But we often do that with so much force that it keeps the pendulum swinging stronger, and results in a bigger swing the other way at some future point in time. There is, however, one trick that can help lessen the half-life of the pendulum swings, on a national and even on a local level: listening for agreement.
American political scientist Robert Putnam (author of Bowling Alone, and subject of the documentary Join or Die) tells a story of sitting in a room with a political leader (to avoid reader bias one way or another, I’m leaving that leader’s name out), and representatives of two groups of opposing ideological views on a topic. They had come together to find a path forward. Putnam says that the leader listened a lot more than they spoke, asking only a couple of open-ended questions, clarifying understanding where necessary, and as the discussion progressed, the representatives became more entrenched in their views, raising their voices, saying how the other group was wrong, and so on. It seemed like the two sides could never work together. But what the leader did next was remarkable: they summarized all the points of agreement between the two sides, both using words they representatives had said themselves, as well as the underlying desires and visions of each group. They effectively built a bridge of agreement, which was much larger than the areas of disagreement. By meeting on that bridge, they could then look out together at the areas they disagreed on, and make movement together. (This also reminds me of a section of Rumi’s poem A Great Wagon, which is often translated as, “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.“)
When entrenched in your own views and ideologies, it is often hard to listen for the places where we agree with ‘the other side.’ But in our workplaces – and in all other areas of our life – we all have plenty of opportunities to practice listening to two people, or two groups, who disagree with each other, and listen for the underlying agreement. Perhaps by doing so, we might be able to train ourselves to do the same when we are one of the ‘sides’.
This Week’s Tip:
- Practice listening for agreement between two people – or two groups – who, on the surface, disagree with each other in ways that seem insurmountable. What underlines their views, their ideologies, their beliefs? What do both sides care about? What do they both value? How would re-presencing those places of agreement help them to stand side-by-side in addressing their areas of disagreement? If you’re a manager, you may have opportunities to try this out with your team, but you might also practice it when hearing about disagreements between people or groups elsewhere in your work place. This doesn’t mean you have to get involved – this practice can be entirely in your head, for you.
- Ask someone else to do the same for you when you’re feeling caught in disagreement. Even if you’re not able to set up a meeting with the other ‘side’ or aren’t ready for that, having someone you trust to help you find the underlying agreement you have with the other party can help train your brain to look for that agreement yourself.
Try these out this week, and let us know how it goes. We’d love to hear from you!
You can subscribe to our feed here, or sign up for our weekly newsletter to get these articles directly in your inbox.
Building Bridges Leadership 