Something You Should Know - What You Didn’t Know About Good Sleep & How to Disagree Productively

Episode Date: February 6, 2020

A lot of us tend to over-apologize. This episode begins with an explanation of why we do it and why we should stop doing it. Then when you do have to apologize, I’ll tell you how. (Source: Harriet Lerner author of the book “Why Won’t You Apologize” (https://amzn.to/37NoYug)) Sleep is important. It’s probably more important than most people realize in terms of health, performance and longevity. Joining me to explain just how important it is and how to make sure you are getting enough sleep is Dr. Jennifer Ashton, chief medical correspondent for ABC-TV and author of the book, The Self-Care Solution (https://amzn.to/2tlwDkw). Wash, condition, rinse. That’s how you wash your hair. But you might want to change up the order. I’ll explain how and the reasons why. http://www.rd.com/health/beauty/condition-before-shampoo/ Arguments and disagreements can be interesting but often not very productive. The reason may be that we are going at it all wrong. Julia Dhar is a partner at Boston Consulting Group and author of the book The Decision Maker’s Playbook (https://amzn.to/36MlZkq). She joins me to discuss some fascinating research on disagreements and she offers some excellent strategies to use when you disagree so that the conversation is actually productive – or at least not destructive.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know was all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu.

She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your sleep. Little bits of light can infiltrate and suppress melatonin, which is the sleep hormone, and interrupt our sleep. So that was the first thing. Your environment should be dark. Also, you shampoo and then condition. But what if you did it the other way around? And how to disagree the right way? And why disagreeing the wrong way is so unproductive.

When we confront people really aggressively with points of view that are oppositional to what they believe really strongly, not only do people not change their minds, it can actually cause them to cling to their existing beliefs even more strongly. All this today on Something You Should Know. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics,

creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts.

Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome. Something You Should Know is on the air, so to speak. Episode 377.

377. And the audience continues to grow like crazy and nothing could be better. I'm going to start today with something that's always interested me, and that is this tendency that people have to over-apologize. Harriet Lerner is a psychologist who's been on this program, and she has studied apologizing for over two decades. She says that women are particularly prone to this, but men do it too. The first way we do it is that we apologize for things that are not our fault.

Sorry for the delay. Sorry for the confusion. Oh, excuse me, you stepped on my foot. Why are you apologizing? Or the other thing people do is they over-apologize for things that are not that big a deal. As Harriet says, if you've forgotten to return your friend's salad bowl, don't apologize over and over again as if you had just killed her cat. Over-apologizing interrupts the flow of the conversation and makes it harder for people to hear you when you really want to apologize for something. A good apology is short, sweet, and doesn't include a big long explanation that could undo the apology. They shouldn't be about you, as in I'm so ashamed or I'm a terrible person, and never add a but or an if after the apology

because it undoes the sincerity. And that is something you should know. Lately, it seems there has been more and more discussion about the importance of getting enough sleep. Still, for many people, sleep is low on the priority list. It is easy for many of us to give up sleep in order to do something else. So what's the price you pay for that? Can't your body just adjust and adapt? Or does a sleep deficit really take a toll? And when you do go to bed, what should your bedroom atmosphere be like to promote a good

quality of sleep? We're going to talk about all of these things with Dr. Jennifer Ashton. She's the chief medical correspondent for ABC television and she is author of the book, The Self-Care Solution. Hey, doctor, welcome. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk to you. So people talk about sleep a lot and say, you know, I can get by on three hours, and oh, I didn't sleep last night. Is sleep really that big a deal? What's the science say? Well, yes, it is that big of a deal. I have said many, many times I put sleep on par with nutrition and fitness in terms of our wellness and in terms of its potential to not only heal, but cause illness and disease if it's not addressed properly. But I think sleep has a PR problem because we tend to look at it like a luxury

and really it's a medical necessity. And it almost seems like a badge of honor that like, oh, I only got four hours sleep last night. Like, well, so what? I wouldn't be so proud of that. I mean, you're absolutely right. People do brag about it if they've only gotten a couple of hours. And we should say there are a few small percentage of people who don't need a lot of sleep. You know, they can function on less than six hours a night.

But the majority of adults need an average of seven to nine hours every single night consistently, and many people are not getting it. And if you don't get it, specifically, what's the risk? But other than being tired the next day, so what? Literally, starting from your head and going down, you know, the risks include poor concentration, risk of early cognitive decline, increased risk of anxiety and depression and other mood disorders. It affects your immune system. We've shown people who work graveyard shifts or night or sleep deprived have increased risks of certain types of cancers, heart disease.

I mean, the list just goes on. Weight management. I mean, literally, there's nothing that you could think of that is not affected by sleep in one way or another. I think there's a perception, a belief that some people have, many people have, that if you don't get enough sleep, if I don't sleep enough tonight, well, I can make it up tomorrow. I can add a few hours on, I can sleep in on the weekends, and it all evens out. Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that.

I think that maybe a generation ago, we thought that, yeah, it was just, you know, you could make up for it on the weekends or you could make up for it, you know, in one lump sum. And we know now that that's just not true. And there's been a lot of really interesting research in the last, I would say in the last couple of years, really about our circadian rhythms. And those are our sleep-wake cycles, our day-night cycles, how we interact with our environment, our surroundings, and the hormonal responses that we have going on inside our bodies that are very sensitive to light cues. And so, you know, if you kind of ignore those and quote-unquote push through, if you will um and just go day after day after day feeling tired

not getting enough sleep being awake when it's dark outside and you should be sleeping um it's just not that easy to all of a sudden on one or two weekend days make up for it and i think that's kind of pardon the pun a real harsh wake-up call for most of us because well that's life i mean since the invention of the electric light bulb people can and do stay up late work all night whatever and and that's just the way it is you know i'll share something personal with you mike on this is that as an ob-gyn you know i I went probably 10 years, both professionally and personally, when I was having my own babies and up all night delivering other people's babies, being really sleep deprived and having a very erratic and chaotic sleep schedule. And it's only now in retrospect that I'm a little older.

I don't deliver babies anymore. So it's not often, thank goodness, that I'm up in the middle of the night or pulling all-nighters. And I feel night and day differently. Again, a pun. I feel much more rested, much healthier, much more energetic. I'm not sick as often. I feel like my mind works more efficiently. And, you know, this is being 10, 15 years older than I was when I was staying up all the night, all the time. So that tells you, you know, Dr. Heal Thyself kind of thing,

how, just how important sleep is and how impactful it can be when you prioritize it, when you start to get enough and just what can happen to you when you don't. Well, but like you during that period, there are many people who that's their life. I mean, it would be great if they could sleep more, but they can't because they've got their own kids and they've got a job. And so what do you say to people that say, well, it'd be great if I could sleep more, but that doesn't work out that way. Here's what I've realized in trying to get this message to so many people. Sleep is really no different than any other behavior that we all know we should be doing probably differently, but just haven't

elevated it on our list, our to-do list or our priorities list. A lot of people, you know, of all kinds and all backgrounds from the executive to the celebrity, to the stay at home person who works at home. I mean, college kids, you name it. A lot of them are very, very put together in most aspects of their life. You know, they'll tell me, well, I exercise almost every day and I eat really well and I don't, you know, smoke cigarettes or take any illicit drugs and I don't drink too much alcohol. And then when I get to sleep, that's where everything falls apart and they go, oh, but I'm too busy. Or, you know, I just can't, you know, I have too much going on. And my answer to them is that if you become absolutely militant about

not compromising your sleep 99% of the time, because that's how important it is for you. You can get enough sleep. It's just that other things have to fall by the wayside. So for example, for me, and it's kind of funny because I work in television, I don't watch TV. So how many people do we both know, you know, that's how we wind down at the end of the day. Like you get home and you do some catch up stuff. You talk to someone who you may or may not live with. And then the TV goes on and you either watch Netflix or you watch something sports or whatever, that is sleep time. That's, that's what it is. It's that TV time is cutting into your sleep time. So the sooner people realize that and say like, okay, you know what? It's more important for me to get one extra hour of sleep than for me to watch that hockey game or that television show, which I can record and watch whenever I want, they can get the appropriate amount of sleep. It's just a matter of making it a priority. And I think for many people, like you said, it is so low on the priority list that if, you know,

if there's time, you know, I'll get to bed when I get to bed rather than, you know, this is my bedtime. I need to stop all this other stuff and go to bed. Exactly. And I'll tell you that for me, and I always laugh as I admit this because I really am, you know, kind of disclosing to everyone, I'll say, you know, I really don't have that much of a social life unless I'm going out with my boyfriend on a weekend because we live in different cities, I will literally turn down invitations that will keep me out too late during the week. I will. Well, that's good. I mean, that's good self-control on your part. Jennifer Ashton is my guest. She's the chief medical correspondent for ABC television, and she's author of the book, The Self-Care Solution. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce.

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podcasts. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue.

It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker.

Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast, the Jordan Harbinger show on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Jennifer there's sleep and then there's good sleep. So let's talk about what makes good sleep and, and the environment, the bedroom in which you sleep and how to make that more conducive to good quality of sleep. Yes, I'm so glad you asked about that. So I learned this the hard way because for years, I would say over 10 years, my bedroom was the last on my priority list in terms of my home environment. And then it all changed when I went through a two-night sleep study at home with a sleep researcher from the University of Pittsburgh. And the first thing she said when she looked at my—my sleep wasn this is so embarrassing to admit, why don't you have any

drapes on the windows? And I said, because I wake up at five o'clock in the morning every day, what do I need drapes for? I'm always up before the sun. And she said, that's not the point. The point is that when you're sleeping, even a full moon can interfere with your sleep. Little bits of light can infiltrate and it can reach our brain and suppress melatonin, which is the sleep hormone, and interrupt our sleep. And I thought, wow, I would have never thought of that. So that was the first thing thing is your environment should be dark. The second thing is that some studies have shown the ideal sleeping temperature to be between 66 and 68 degrees. I will tell you, I like it like, you know, at 12 months out of the year, I like it to be cold and I like to be under the down comforter, you know, kind of snuggled up there. Uh, so my, my bedroom is always at 66 or 67 degrees, never, ever more than that. Um, or I will wake up. So that's another thing that I'll

suggest to people who say that, you know, they're not getting good quality sleep or they're waking up in the middle of the night. The other thing is it really has to be quiet. If people live in a city or an urban environment where there's a lot of ambient noise outside, a white noise machine or even some kind of earplugs or noise-canceling headphones that you might find comfortable enough to sleep in can really make a huge difference. And I don't have a TV in my bedroom. I think for adults, it should be my medical opinion. My personal opinion is that the bedroom should be for sleep and sex, and that's it. So if you have a TV in there, you're more likely to fall asleep with it on. That's a source of light, you know, and it can stimulate your brain in ways on some level that you may not want for restful sleep. So I try to keep all kind of screen devices really out of the bedroom and minimal use. Makes a lot of sense. And it's fairly common advice, but there is this, like you said in the beginning,

sleep has a PR problem. It really does. It is so last on the list of, you know, I'll get to it if I can. And yet the results are horrible if that's how you live your life. And you know what I tell people all the time is that if you have something bothering you, whether it's you can't lose those five pounds, or you're getting sick all the time, or you have anxiety or depression or, you know, any number of things, first thing you should look at is your sleep. And until that is locked down in terms of good quality and good quantity, I encourage patients not really to spin their wheels looking elsewhere yet until someone comes to me and says, I get eight hours of sleep, you know, Dr. Ashton, every single night, sound, good quality,

no issues. Then I'll look, then I'll start to look elsewhere. But that's how impactful I think sleep can be. And I just don't think people recognize that. I did this experiment for a month where I wanted to see if I felt a difference getting a little more sleep. That was the premise behind all of the monthly health challenges. But sleep, I went into kind of cocky because I thought, oh, come on. I mean, I already get seven hours a night. Seven to nine is what's recommended. And I'm a very goal-oriented type of person. And so I'm meeting the minimum and that's fine. So I'm probably not going to notice a difference if I get seven and a half or eight or eight and a half.

And for that month, I meticulously tracked the amount of sleep. And there were many, many days because my goal was to try to get a little more that I was eight or more hours a night. And I want to tell you something, I felt a difference. And that to me was one of the most jaw dropping experiments that I did that year because it showed me as a doctor, as a nutritionist, as someone who deals with people who are sleep deprived all the time, that you can be getting the minimum or let's say even eight hours and having some positive effect by getting more. And that tells you something, right? What does the research say about napping

and using napping as a way to perhaps catch up? Naps have not been studied enough, in my opinion, but there have been some interesting studies in the last year or two, one of them showing that amongst cultures with the greatest longevity, most of them include the ritual or habit of daily nap for anywhere from 20 minutes to 60 minutes. So that's interesting. Of course, we need to remember that's a study showing association, not causation. So not cause and effect. There are other studies that correlate total hours or minutes of sleep over a 24 hour period.

So that would suggest that naps do contribute to the amount of sleep that someone gets in a 24-hour period. But the bulk of studies showing health outcomes've read suggests that 20 to 30 minutes should really be the sweet spot for a nap. You know, when it gets longer than that, you get into different stages of sleep that might actually leave you more groggy instead of more invigorated. So I think it needs a lot more research. I think the concept and the practice of napping is really, really interesting and just hasn't gotten enough study yet. I know I've had the experience, and I know many people have, of, you know, sleeping, thinking like you slept pretty well and you wake up, but you're tired. And you think, well, wait, I just slept. Why am I tired? Well, why am I tired? So I'll tell you an interesting

experiment in self that relates to sleep quality and sleep disruptors. Alcohol and caffeine are huge sleep disruptors, and people oftentimes are unaware for them what role those ingredients or chemicals are playing. For me, when I've done dry months, which I usually do once a year, I have been astounded at the impact of just avoiding social alcohol consumption, which for me, I am by no means a big drinker. It's usually only on the weekends and it's never more than two drinks on a Saturday or Sunday. So we're not talking about a lot. But in the months that I have done dry month challenges, I literally sleep like I'm under anesthesia. I am not waking up when I turn over. I'm not waking up in the middle of the night. I'm not waking up when I hear my kids texting me. I am sleeping like I'm sedated.

And again, that's an interesting consequence of these potential sleep disruptors that don't even have to be present in your life in massive amounts, but they can still play a role. Talk about insomnia, because I think everyone has nights where they toss and turn and can't sleep. And even with the best of intentions, if you can't fall asleep, going to bed doesn't do you any good. their lives. For me, it's when I'm emotionally stressed or upset about something that definitely disrupts my sleep. But the first thing that I generally say to people who have, you know, night after night insomnia of various kinds, and by the way, all insomnia is not the same. People who have what's called terminal insomnia who wake up, you know, towards the end of the night, it's different than people who can't fall asleep, insomnia, who wake up towards the end of the night. It's different than people who can't fall asleep, different than people who wake up in the middle of the night and then fall back to sleep. But what I usually start by saying is if this is

something that comes out of the blue, look at the rest of what you're doing during the day, your exercise habits, what you're drinking, what you're eating, look at your emotional and psychosocial situation. How stressed are you? Is there something else going on in your life that is kind of coming out to disrupt your sleep? And, you know, if you get the right amount of sleep, seven to nine hours, and you are energetic, which you will be during the day, by the end of the day, you're going to be tired. You know, you will be. So I think that it's not a linear relationship. It's really a circuitous or confrential one where everything is connected to everything else. So people, it's not as simple as looking at point A to point B to point C. It

really is kind of 360 degree situation. Well, that's some really good advice that people can arm themselves with. And I think you've made your case pretty well that sleep is important and probably a lot more important than many people think. Dr. Jennifer Ashton has been my guest. She's the chief medical correspondent for ABC television, and her book is called The Self-Care Solution. You'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thank you, doctor. Thanks so much for having me. Hey, everyone. Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong?

Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our Lister poll results from But Am I Wrong. And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover.

We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. How do you have a discussion with someone when you disagree, when you're on opposite sides? And what I mean by that is, what's the strategy? What's the goal when you're in that position?

In my experience, and probably yours too, seldom, if ever, do you argue with someone and at the end they go, oh, yeah, you're right, I'm wrong, what was I thinking? So that should probably not be the goal going in. So what is the goal? And how do you construct a method to have a disagreement so that something good comes at the end of the discussion.

Well, that's something Julia Darr has thought a lot about and has a lot of experience with. Julia is a partner at Boston Consulting Group. She's an expert in behavioral economics, and she's the author of a book called The Decision Maker's Playbook. Hi, Julia. Thank you for having me. So it's interesting to me that it seems today people can't disagree on a topic and agree to disagree on that topic. Today,

it seems when you disagree, you have to get mad at each other for some reason. I think that's right. I think that's an assumption that a lot of people operate from. And maybe that's an assumption that holds a lot of us back. But I think that's kind of a schoolyard attitude towards it. And Ray Dalio, among the world's most successful investors, certainly the world's most successful hedge fund manager, talks about this a lot when he says, actually, disagreement with a purpose, really open, robust debate with an sides of an argument to light, is one of the most powerful ways in which we can upgrade our own intellectual capabilities and also upgrade the capabilities of people around us

and get really comfortable with the idea that all of these different sides deserve a hearing. Everyone's had those conversations, though, where you know going in that this is going to be tense, that we're not, not only are we not agreeing, but we kind of think the other person is being unreasonable, or there's just that adversarial tension there. So one of the very first things you can do in any interaction that you know will be tense is to identify and articulate what social psychologists talk about as shared reality. And shared reality is this idea that there is always some slice of common ground, no matter how narrow it is. So, you know, in civil society, that might be that we believe that everyone has the right to an education. In an organization, it might be, look, we think it is really important that this company is able to continue to grow and thrive. You and I might have radically different views on how that is to be accomplished. But as

soon as we're able to describe that shared reality, instead of you and I sitting on opposite sides of the table staring each other down, we're suddenly on the same side of the table examining the problem in front of us. So that's step number one. What's the shared reality that you're able to inhabit? What if there is no shared reality? I think it is very rare for there to be situations in which there is truly no shared reality. And lots of your listeners now are probably thinking about situations in which they've found themselves that are really tense, that don't seem to have a shared reality.

Maybe you're thinking about a relationship that you have with someone, maybe a cousin that you fight with about politics every Thanksgiving, and you think, with this person, there is absolutely no common ground. Respectfully, I think in most cases, that's a bit of a failure of imagination, sometimes a bit of a failure of imagination, sometimes a bit of a failure of empathy. It is nearly always the case that there is some kind of common ground that we can identify and start from. And so, like other people listening to this, I can think of a couple of examples where there is seemingly no common ground. If you're going to have a discussion with someone and you're on opposite sides of, say, the abortion issue,

it doesn't seem like there's a lot of common ground there. People talk about the president, President Trump, and there are people who are on one side and people who are on the other side. Some people love him, some people hate him. So where's this common ground you want to find? Yeah, two really good questions. So we say, look, in these really heated political situations, and those are perfect examples, where we say, look, this is a litmus test for the kind of

person that you are, not the kind of thinker that you might be, but the kind of person that you are. Not the kind of thinker that you might be, but the kind of person that you are. And you're either here on my side with the good guys or you're somewhere else. And in both cases, both of those two situations that we're describing, we end up making a judgment without really excavating the understandings on either side. So without saying, well, what's the end goal there?

Like, what are we trying to accomplish through this conversation? What's the productive part of that disagreement? And when we focus on the productive part of productive disagreement, that's only then can we make some progress. I'm not saying that it's not, for some people, enjoyable or entertaining or helps them clarify their worldview to have these very rigorous debates about what people think about particular political issues, what people even think about particular politicians. But without saying, well, what's the endgame here? What are we actually trying to accomplish through this conversation? You won't make a lot of progress.

That's a disagreement to be sure, but not necessarily a productive one. So if there isn't something we can agree on in terms of what the purpose of this disagreement is, maybe we shouldn't be having it. Because if I'm trying to convince you that abortion is a good idea and you're trying to convince me it's not, well, what's the point of that? Because we're never going to, there is no agreement on what we're trying to do here. We're just hammering at each other. And, you know, I think you've hit on exactly, exactly the heart of it right there. If we go into the conversation or any type of negotiation with the mindset of my attitude must be, the goal here is for me to convince you how right I am

and how wrong you are. And through this conversation, of course, you will have a revelation about how wrong you are and how right I am. Firstly, that is in general, that is not realistic. And there's very good evidence from behavioral science that says when we confront people really aggressively with points of view that are oppositional to what they believe really strongly, even when backed by really solid evidence, you get what behavioral economists talk about as a backlash effect. Not

only do people not change their minds in the way that you want them to, it can actually cause them to cling to their existing beliefs even more strongly. So going in with that mindset and that attitude doesn't help you. It's in fact counterproductive to your goals. But that's also not a useful goal in and of itself to have conversations structured around convincing the other person that they're wrong. A conversation that says, I'm actually here to not necessarily change my own mind, but at least understand why there might be points of view that are not the same as mine. It doesn't mean that I will necessarily ever change my conclusion or that I expect the person across the other side of the table to change theirs, but I would like to come to a richer understanding of what it might be like

to have a different point of view than mine, what people might have experienced in their lives, what frame of reference they might be using, what hopes and fears, what sources of evidence they might be using that cause them to reach a different conclusion from mine. Okay, so you said first we're going to find this sliver of commonality, and what's step two? That's number one. Have you figured out a shared reality that the two of you can inhabit? Even if that shared reality is simply a willingness to listen, you might be, as you alluded to earlier, really on opposite sides of a very polarizing issue. But if the shared reality is that you're prepared to hear the other side out with the goal of seeking to understand, that's a decent starting point.

The second thing to do is to find a way to separate the ideas themselves that you want to talk about, the intellectual content from the identity of the person who talks about them. And so one of the challenges that we have when we try to disagree productively is that we are too quick to label ideas and then dismiss them because of the label that we attach to them. Think about the way in which we immediately call things liberal or conservative, or we call them left and right. If you work in an organization, you might have had the experience of having a new idea imposed on your team and being unwilling to adopt it because you say, you know what, this comes from a region that we think is not like ours or has

been pushed on us by headquarters. And that's the kind of identity fallacy of saying, before I even examine this idea, let me first figure out what I think about the person who is espousing it. What if we started from the opposite direction? We cleared away some of the clutter of identity and focused first on the idea itself. So that's step number two. Step number three is tougher because it involves not just that intellectual exercise, but some pretty deep emotional introspective work as well, which is you have to really open yourself up, genuinely pretty humbly, to the idea that in any of these interactions, you might actually be wrong.

You have to be really open to changing your mind. Yeah, that doesn't sound easy. No, it's great when other people change their minds. Isn't it? Yeah. It's a little bit tougher when it's our own mind. Well, if you do a good job convincing them, then they should just roll over and say, yeah, you're right.

But how often does that ever happen? Right. But you know what? If you've set up that conversation in a really open and respectful way, what I think you'll find much more often than not is not necessarily that people switch sides or that people are immediately converted to your point of view. But you might say that both of you have one of those moments where you think to yourself, huh, I never thought of it that way before. Or someone might say to you,

you know what, I see where you are coming from on this. I understand that you actually start from a different place when you examine this issue. And so while I might not necessarily agree, I have come to a wider understanding of the issue because of the conversation that we have had. That, for me, is what productive disagreement looks like. Of course, even better if you can begin then to work together towards some common outcome,

if there is some consensus that might be possible through that. It's naive to think that that's always possible, but it is very frequently possible, and much more frequently than most of us practice so it's one thing for you to approach a disagreement using those three steps and that all sounds good but if the other side doesn't play along if instead they start calling you names

and tell you what a jerk you are seems like your three steps are going to be difficult to apply. Yeah, that's right. It's not these three steps, shared reality, ideas, not identity, being open, having your own humility, your own uncertainty about how right you might be. These are all things that you can do. They're all things that you're in control of.

They're a choice you can make every single day and every single conversation. Will you be fortunate enough in your life that every single person you interact with will also make these choices all of the time? I sincerely hope so, but I'm not optimistic that that will be the case. So what happens if you find yourself in that situation? Look, it's not on you to always generate a productive disagreement with everyone you run into. It won't always be possible. And where it's not, where you find yourself in a situation where someone's much more about the identity than the ideas,

where someone's much more abusive than productive, exit is always an option. You don't have to stay in a conversation that isn't going anywhere. Yeah, I think you're right. I think exit is probably a good strategy a lot of the time. The problem is that once you're invested in a conversation, once your lines are drawn in the sand, it's hard to walk away. It's that fight or flight response. I mean, yeah, you could take off and just leave,

but there's something in you that wants to stay and fight. That's exactly right. Number one, ask yourself, is this productive? Am I moving the conversation forward? Am I moving my own way of thinking about this issue forward, either for myself or for this other person? Is the time that we are spending doing this productive for either of us, or is it just disagreement, or in some cases has it just degenerated into abuse and name-calling, in which case now is the time to be the bigger person, to pull up and to pull back

from that conversation. It is difficult, very difficult, to be able to do that in the moment, but one of the ways you can do it is by focusing on the outcome. So very often, we get stuck in a trap of the emotions that we're feeling, the need for people to know that we are right, to know how strongly that we feel about something. Or we get stuck in tactics. Can we win this point? Can we convince them that they are a little bit wrong about this particular issue? Or will they concede that our evidence on this particular point might be slightly stronger than theirs? And look, I've been a high school and college debater for years of my life. I know very well the temptation of the tactics and the emotions.

But if we can step back from that for a second and say, but hey, what's the outcome here? Is there any positive outcome here for anyone? If the answer for that is no, you have to walk away. Have you ever come up with or witnessed a strategy that when the other person starts getting, you know, starts the name calling and gets really worked up, that there's something you can say to like calm them down, to like get them to rethink what they're doing? Yeah, and one that I use in my work all the time. So here at the Boston Consulting Group, I'm always thinking about how do we help leaders not only be their best selves, but generate an organization in which people are able to be the very best version of themselves that they would be on their very best day.

That's the kind of family we want to be in. That's the kind of workplace in which we want to operate. What's the technique for doing that in a really heated moment? It's actually appealing to a person's identity. So it's the opposite of what I said before. We talked first about ideas, not identity. But when it gets really heated, sometimes you want to pull back to those core identity that people have. How do you do that? Well, for example, like if you and I were having a really heated argument, I might say, you know what, Mike, this is getting heated, but I know that you are a

person who really values respectful disagreement and open and honest engagement. And that has to be authentic. It has to be something I authentically appreciate about you that will help the conversation move forward. It might be, I can say, I really appreciate that you are so passionate about this issue, that you're passionate enough about it to be willing to give your time to talk to me about it. I'm grateful for that. That actually gives that person a chance to remember not who they are right in this moment where it might be heated, voices might be raised, but the kind of person that they actually really want to be deep down. And we all want to be the very best version of ourselves, someone who is

respectful of others, who thinks about issues thoughtfully, who holds beliefs passionately and defends them articulately. So if you can take a second and say, look, what is it that I appreciate about this person? What's really core to their identity that I could recognize here for them? And that moves you out of the heat of the exchange itself into saying, look, ultimately, this is a person-to-person conversation. So in a workplace, that might be, you know what, I know you and I both care so much about the mission of this organization. We care enough to be deeply invested in trying to resolve how we move forward. We think differently about how to do that, but the thing that I appreciate about you is that you care as much as I do about how we make progress here. It might be exactly the same

in a family, right? I love how much you care about these issues. I love how much you love everyone else in this family and want them to care about things as much as you care about them or in the same way as you care about them. Once you've done that, once you've said, I recognize this common humanity that we have, that actually makes it much easier to then reset the conversation to go back to some of those principles that we talked about earlier. Because your shared reality is that you are two human beings talking to one another. And even if you can't immediately find agreement, that's an avenue to find mutual respect. And that, yeah, that's a worthy and achievable goal when you disagree. I like that. Julia Darr has been my guest. She's a partner at Boston Consulting Group, and she's author of the

book, The Decision Maker's Playbook, and you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for being here, Julia. My great pleasure. Thanks for talking to me. The standard shower routine is to wash your hair with shampoo, then condition, then rinse. But some stylists and hair care brands are suggesting you switch up the order. First condition, then shampoo. The shampoo works to whisk away any excess conditioner that can cause your hair to look greasy or flat. Switching your hair cleaning routine is especially helpful for people with fine, damaged, knotty, thin, greasy, or highlighted hair. Tresemme is among the first companies to promote conditioning before you shampoo, but you don't need any type of fancy product. Just use

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