Monica Guzmán suggests our disagreements may be an engine for insight
Do you keep work conversations to a carefully-honed script? Perhaps there are topics you can talk about and topics that you should never mention. Ever.
Weather is ok. Football, baseball, streaming shows—all ok.
Politics/Right-wing/left-wing craziness: enter at your own risk.
Money, sex, and power: if you dare.
Religion. Mostly no.
If, like me, you tend to avoid conflict and have an unstated goal of feeling ok with everyone well, that puts you at a disadvantage. This people-pleasing tendency veers me around disagreement rather than through. Apart from running away, I routinely redirect conversations away from politics, in particular. I don’t want to risk offending a client with my polarized views (more on “polarize” in a moment). Which is also a way of saying I’m frightened of what they might think. And sometimes, I find myself embarrassed by what I think my conversation partner believes—which might lower my estimation of them.
Is it a mistake to avoid disagreement and potential arguments?
My experience with unexpected moments that go boom suggests that I limit what I can learn by avoiding arguments. “Moments that go boom” are those sudden realizations that there is another way of looking at things. Those moments are usually unexpected and unexpectedly candid. That boom moment might result in expanded understanding, deepened empathy, a new route to producing a product, or some other insight you would not have had on your own. Zoning off topics at work means I may never get to the “boom” moments that come from connecting with others.
In her 2022 book “I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times,” journalist Monica Guzman describes these eye-opening, behavior-altering conversations as “moments that go boom and change everything.” She even developed an acronym for “I never thought of it that way:” INTOIT. (Yes, where is the W? Did INTOITW not pass muster with the focus group? Maybe INTOIT-W?). Guzman’s book is helping me see my own polarization rather than getting stuck on the voting record of my neighbor (Guzman says my neighbor’s vote may make perfect sense in the world she lives in).
Yes: My own polarization.
Polarization here means I am so far to one side—so partisan—that I cannot fathom how those (knuckleheads) on the other side even operate. Guzman’s book is helping me trace how I have landed here: I go with the easy answers and the generalizations my media diet offers, generally not questioning assumptions. It’s way too easy to lump others together and label them without acknowledging the tons of nuance, yards of gray area, and forests of reasons behind people’s choices.
Far too often, I’ve demonized the other side without acknowledging my unexamined process goes against my core value of caring for my neighbor. Guzman nails the human predicament when she says, “People are not puzzles; they are mysteries.” People cannot, do not, and will not fit into an orderly telling with a tidy ending.
Why would this matter at work?
Because there is a growing sense that we need to bring our entire selves to work, just as we bring our whole selves into the other parts of our lives. Our whole selves carry the capacity to have thoroughly productive conversations—the kind that go “boom.” That’s why we must find ways to disagree and still work together. Guzman offers a beautiful set of thought tools that de-escalate those who have been polarized (like me). She also offers tools like “bridging conversations” as a means across the partisan divides I have allowed. She often points toward curiosity as an antidote to polarization.
Conversation is a big part of our work at Livingston Communication, Inc. When we interview subject matter experts, our discussion cranks from common to thrilling when it turns into a conversation (versus a list of questions). That’s because curiosity takes over, and curiosity is a kind of super elixir waiting to be tapped in every human. Curiosity is the superpower behind our conversations, which are engines for innovation, connectivity, and humanness.
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