How to disagree productively and find common ground

Some days, it feels like the only thing we can agree on is that we can't agree -- on anything. Drawing on her background as a world debate champion, Julia Dhar offers three techniques to reshape the way we talk to each other so we can start disagreeing productively and finding common ground -- over family dinners, during work meetings and in our national conversations.

Some days, it feels like
the only thing we can agree on

is that we can't agree on anything.

Public discourse is broken.

And we feel that everywhere --

panelists on TV
are screaming at each other,

we go online to find
community and connection,

and we end up leaving
feeling angry and alienated.

In everyday life, probably
because everyone else is yelling,

we are so scared to get into an argument

that we're willing not to engage at all.

Contempt has replaced conversation.

My mission in life is to help us
disagree productively.

To find ways to bring truth to light,
to bring new ideas to life.

I think -- I hope --

that there is a model
for structured disagreement

that's kind of mutually respectful

and assumes a genuine desire
to persuade and be persuaded.

And to uncover it,
let me take you back a little bit.

So, when I was 10 years old,
I loved arguing.

This, like, tantalizing possibility

that you could convince someone
of your point of view,

just with the power of your words.

And perhaps unsurprisingly,

my parents and teachers
loved this somewhat less.

(Laughter)

And in much the same way as they decided

that four-year-old Julia might benefit
from gymnastics to burn off some energy,

they decided that I might benefit
from joining a debate team.

That is, kind of, go somewhere
to argue where they were not.

(Laughter)

For the uninitiated,

the premises of formal debate
are really straightforward:

there's a big idea on the table --

that we support civil disobedience,
that we favor free trade --

and one group of people
who speaks in favor of that idea,

and one against.

My first debate

in the cavernous auditorium
of Canberra Girls Grammar School

was kind of a bundle
of all of the worst mistakes

that you see on cable news.

It felt easier to me to attack
the person making the argument

rather than the substance
of the ideas themselves.

When that same person challenged my ideas,

it felt terrible, I felt
humiliated and ashamed.

And it felt to me like
the sophisticated response to that

was to be as extreme as possible.

And despite this very shaky entry
into the world of debate, I loved it.

I saw the possibility, and over many years
worked really hard at it,

became really skilled
at the technical craft of debate.

I went on to win the World Schools
Debating Championships three times.

I know, you're just finding out
that this is a thing.

(Laughter)

But it wasn't until
I started coaching debaters,

persuaders who are really
at the top of their game,

that I actually got it.

The way that you reach people
is by finding common ground.

It's by separating ideas from identity

and being genuinely open to persuasion.

Debate is a way to organize conversations
about how the world is, could, should be.

Or to put it another way,

I would love to offer you
my experience-backed,

evidence-tested guide
to talking to your cousin about politics

at your next family dinner;

reorganizing the way in which your team
debates new proposals;

thinking about how we change
our public conversation.

And so, as an entry point into that:

debate requires that we engage
with the conflicting idea,

directly, respectfully, face to face.

The foundation of debate is rebuttal.

The idea that you make a claim
and I provide a response,

and you respond to my response.

Without rebuttal, it's not debate,
it's just pontificating.

And I had originally imagined
that the most successful debaters,

really excellent persuaders,

must be great at going to extremes.

They must have some magical ability
to make the polarizing palatable.

And it took me a really
long time to figure out

that the opposite is actually true.

People who disagree the most productively
start by finding common ground,

no matter how narrow it is.

They identify the thing
that we can all agree on

and go from there:

the right to an education,
equality between all people,

the importance of safer communities.

What they're doing is inviting us

into what psychologists
call shared reality.

And shared reality
is the antidote to alternative facts.

The conflict, of course, is still there.

That's why it's a debate.

Shared reality just gives us
a platform to start to talk about it.

But the trick of debate
is that you end up doing it directly,

face to face, across the table.

And research backs up
that that really matters.

Professor Juliana Schroeder
at UC Berkeley and her colleagues

have research that suggests
that listening to someone's voice

as they make a controversial argument

is literally humanizing.

It makes it easier to engage
with what that person has to say.

So, step away from the keyboards,
start conversing.

And if we are to expand
that notion a little bit,

nothing is stopping us from pressing pause
on a parade of keynote speeches,

the sequence of very polite
panel discussions,

and replacing some of that
with a structured debate.

All of our conferences could have,
at their centerpiece,

a debate over the biggest,
most controversial ideas in the field.

Each of our weekly team meetings
could devote 10 minutes

to a debate about a proposal to change
the way in which that team works.

And as innovative ideas go,
this one is both easy and free.

You could start tomorrow.

(Laughter)

And once we're inside this shared reality,

debate also requires
that we separate ideas

from the identity
of the person discussing them.

So in formal debate, nothing is a topic
unless it is controversial:

that we should raise
the voting age, outlaw gambling.

But the debaters don't choose their sides.

So that's why it makes no sense
to do what 10-year-old Julia did.

Attacking the identity of the person
making the argument is irrelevant,

because they didn't choose it.

Your only winning strategy

is to engage with the best, clearest,
least personal version of the idea.

And it might sound impossible
or naive to imagine

that you could ever take that notion
outside the high school auditorium.

We spend so much time dismissing ideas
as democrat or republican.

Rejecting proposals
because they came from headquarters,

or from a region
that we think is not like ours.

But it is possible.

When I work with teams,
trying to come up with the next big idea,

or solve a really complex problem,

I start by asking them, all of them,
to submit ideas anonymously.

So by way of illustration, two years ago,

I was working with multiple
government agencies

to generate new solutions
to reduce long-term unemployment.

Which is one of those really wicked,

sticky, well-studied
public policy problems.

So exactly as I described,
right at the beginning,

potential solutions were captured
from everywhere.

We aggregated them,

each of them was produced
on an identical template.

At this point, they all look the same,
they have no separate identity.

And then, of course,
they are discussed, picked over,

refined, finalized.

And at the end of that process,
more than 20 of those new ideas

are presented to the cabinet ministers
responsible for consideration.

But more than half of those,
the originator of those ideas

was someone who might have a hard time
getting the ear of a policy advisor.

Or who, because of their identity,

might not be taken
entirely seriously if they did.

Folks who answer the phones,
assistants who manage calendars,

representatives from agencies
who weren't always trusted.

Imagine if our news media
did the same thing.

You can kind of see it now --
a weekly cable news segment

with a big policy proposal on the table

that doesn't call it
liberal or conservative.

Or a series of op-eds
for and against a big idea

that don't tell you
where the writers worked.

Our public conversations,
even our private disagreements,

can be transformed by debating ideas,
rather than discussing identity.

And then, the thing that debate
allows us to do as human beings

is open ourselves,
really open ourselves up

to the possibility that we might be wrong.

The humility of uncertainty.

One of the reasons it is so hard
to disagree productively

is because we become
attached to our ideas.

We start to believe that we own them
and that by extension, they own us.

But eventually, if you debate long enough,

you will switch sides,

you'll argue for and against
the expansion of the welfare state.

For and against compulsory voting.

And that exercise
flips a kind of cognitive switch.

The suspicions that you hold

about people who espouse beliefs
that you don't have, starts to evaporate.

Because you can imagine yourself
stepping into those shoes.

And as you're stepping into those,

you're embracing
the humility of uncertainty.

The possibility of being wrong.

And it's that exact humility
that makes us better decision-makers.

Neuroscientist and psychologist Mark Leary
at Duke University and his colleagues

have found that people
who are able to practice --

and it is a skill --

what those researchers call
intellectual humility

are more capable of evaluating
a broad range of evidence,

are more objective when they do so,

and become less defensive
when confronted with conflicting evidence.

All attributes that we want in our bosses,

colleagues, discussion partners,
decision-makers,

all virtues that we would like
to claim for ourselves.

And so, as we're embracing
that humility of uncertainty,

we should be asking each other,
all of us, a question.

Our debate moderators, our news anchors
should be asking it

of our elective representatives
and candidates for office, too.

"What is it that you have changed
your mind about and why?"

"What uncertainty are you humble about?"

And this by the way, isn't some fantasy

about how public life
and public conversations could work.

It has precedent.

So, in 1969,

beloved American children's
television presenter Mister Rogers

sits impaneled

before the United States congressional
subcommittee on communications,

chaired by the seemingly very
curmudgeonly John Pastore.

And Mister Rogers is there
to make a kind of classic debate case,

a really bold proposal:

an increase in federal funding
for public broadcasting.

And at the outset,

committee disciplinarian
Senator Pastore is not having it.

This is about to end
really poorly for Mister Rogers.

But patiently, very reasonably,
Mister Rogers makes the case

why good quality children's broadcasting,

the kinds of television programs
that talk about the drama that arises

in the most ordinary of families,

matters to all of us.

Even while it costs us.

He invites us into a shared reality.

And on the other side of that table,

Senator Pastore listens,
engages and opens his mind.

Out loud, in public, on the record.

And Senator Pastore
says to Mister Rogers,

"You know, I'm supposed to be
a pretty tough guy,

and this is the first time
I've had goosebumps in two days."

And then, later, "It looks like you
just earned the 20 million dollars."

We need many more Mister Rogers.

People with the technical skills
of debate and persuasion.

But on the other side of that table,

we need many, many,
many more Senator Pastores.

And the magic of debate
is that it lets you, it empowers you

to be both Mister Rogers
and Senator Pastore simultaneously.

When I work with those same teams
that we talked about before,

I ask them at the outset to pre-commit
to the possibility of being wrong.

To explain to me and to each other
what it would take to change their minds.

And that's all about the attitude,
not the exercise.

Once you start thinking about
what it would take to change your mind,

you start to wonder why
you were quite so sure in the first place.

There is so much
that the practice of debate

has to offer us
for how to disagree productively.

And we should bring it to our workplaces,

our conferences,
our city council meetings.

And the principles of debate can transform
the way that we talk to one another,

to empower us to stop talking
and to start listening.

To stop dismissing
and to start persuading.

To stop shutting down
and to start opening our minds.

Thank you so much.

(Applause)