How to Respectfully Disagree in a Constructive Way

one of the questions I keep getting from a lot of people is…

how do you agreeably disagree with people?

Or, how do you tell someone that you disagree with them without hurting their feelings, or without making it feel like a personal attack, or without shutting them down?

You want to keep the dialogue open and continue talking about this thing or problem solving. So anyway, where I'm going with this is people wanted some tools to do this and I have a great simple tool that you can use on anyone. All it does is just requires taking a few things you're already saying in these situations and just tweaking the wording. Because in most times, if not all times, how you say it is way more important than what you're actually saying. So I'm going to give you a simple tool.

I'm going to give you some examples throughout this episode. For the debate type topics, I'm going to just use the Pepsi challenge as my example. So, we'll say someone likes Coca Cola that's arguing with me and I like Pepsi Cola. So I'm going to use that as the example just to kind of keep this simple, clean, straightforward, and easy to understand.

To show you how this works, this tool, I'm actually going to do it the wrong way first. So remember I'm the person that likes Pepsi in this example. Now don't quote me any of these facts about Pepsi or Coke. I'm just making these statistics up as I go, but you get the idea.

Let's just say I said something like this, someone's going on and on about Coca Cola and how great it is and I came back at him by saying, yeah, you know, I know that you think Coca Cola tastes the best, but in my opinion, Pepsi tastes way better.

Here's what's wrong with that. Now I'm implying that we both can't be right. By saying the word, but, it's implying that it's either or. It's one or the other. It's not both of us. Now I'm basically drawing a line in the sand and saying, my opinion's better than yours and I'm calling attention to the fact that my opinion is different than theirs. All because I just said that one simple word, but. But is a dividing word. It's a divisive word. It means that these two things aren't together. It's a word that counteracts the previous statement. No offense, but you look really ugly in that shirt, right? That but doesn't really do anything.

Where I'm going with this is, you want to replace the word but with the word and. So now just hear how different that same statement sounds when I use the different word in the middle.

No, I hear what you're saying loud and clear. Coca Cola has a very unique flavor, and no other soda in the world tastes like it. And, I also think Pepsi is great too, because Pepsi's branding looks really great, and I love the color blue.

Again, I said these were dumb reasons, and obviously Coca Cola's branding is better than Pepsi. What I'm really trying to do is point out here how that message sounds so much different. So just to compare and contrast, Oh, yeah, I hear what you're saying about Coca Cola, but Pepsi's better. Or, hey, no, I hear all these things you're saying about Coca Cola, and I also think Pepsi is good, too, because of this, this, and this.

What that does there is it keeps the conversation open, and it keeps them open to listening to what you're going to say. Now, to be very specific, what you want to do here is you want to listen closely, all the reasons that they're saying why Coca Cola is so great and if they don't give you reasons, ask them, Hey, why do you think Coca Cola is so great? When they're giving you those reasons, you want to make sure to state these reasons back to them. When you're giving their example, you want to say, I hear what you're saying loud and clear. Coca Cola is great at this, and this, and this, and X, Y, and Z. And Pepsi is also great at this, and this, and this, right? So just that simple tweaking of the words, removing the word but and using the word and, it keeps the conversation open.

Ideally what you want to do is point out things that you agree on as well. But all we're talking about here is just this simple technique with word shifting.

I want to show you another simple technique you can do with word shifting too. So, this time you're actually going to use the word but, but in a good way. A productive way. So what you could do is start out by pointing out something that maybe you guys don't see eye to eye on. But then use the but to cancel that out and point out the thing that you do agree on.

So for example, you could start off by saying no, I understand your point. You feel that Coke's flavor is unmatched, but I do 100 percent agree with you that Coca Cola does have the best branding and it's unmatched.

You can use that as a point, as a way to find common ground. You're basically canceling out that thing you disagree on by doing it this way.

If you're watching this, what I want you to do is just try out that simple technique. Just to quickly recap it. You want to recite their examples back to them, then say the word and, and then recite your examples of how you disagree. That's a way to keep the dialogue open.

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