Leslie How to Disagree

Lessons on Productive Conflict at Work and Home
Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-37467-0
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 320 Seiten

FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF JOHN & PAUL A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR Ian Leslie's acclaimed new book reveals the secrets of how to disagree without fighting, and shows how mastering the techniques of productive disagreement can transform every aspect of our lives. 'One of my favourite writers . . . Beautifully argued, desperately needed.' MALCOLM GLADWELL 'Invaluable. The world will be a better place if everyone reads this book.' PHILIPPA PERRY 'A cool bath of sanity in a world of frenzied hot takes.' HELEN LEWIS 'Perspective-shifting in important ways.' OLIVER BURKEMAN What is the secret of happy relationships? How do companies build collaborative cultures? What lies behind some of the greatest scientific and creative breakthroughs? The surprising answer is: conflict. Whether it's at work, at home or in public, confronting our differences is the only way to make the most out of them. How to Disagree is about how to do that successfully. Drawing on essential lessons from world-class experts on how to disagree well and combining them with inspiring stories of productive disagreements from science, technology and the arts, Ian Leslie reveals how we can reap the benefits of diverse viewpoints in an era that feels more divided than ever. 'I nodded and underlined my way through the book's nearly 300 pages of eloquent, thoughtful advice . . . If you want to argue better, Leslie's manual will be invaluable.' THE TIMES 'Leslie has a way of bringing fresh perspectives and telling anecdotes to obdurate subjects. Here he talks to everyone from hostage negotiators to divorce lawyers to show how conflict has driven successful companies and technological advances, and to offer ways to harness it in daily life.' NEW STATESMAN *** How to Disagree was previously published in 2021 under the title Conflicted.

Ian Leslie is the author of acclaimed books on human psychology and behaviour, translated into over a dozen languages. Malcolm Gladwell describes him as 'one of my favourite writers'. Previous books include Curious, about the desire to learn, and How To Disagree, on the art and science of productive disagreement. Ian has written for the New Statesman, the Financial Times, the Economist and the New York Times on culture, technology and psychology and he is the author of a popular Substack newsletter, The Ruffian. Ian is a fellow of the Royal Society For Arts. He lives in London with his wife and two children. He has been a Beatles fan since he was seven.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Leslie, Ian

Leseproben

1. Beyond Fight or Flight

We live in a society more prone to disagreement than ever before, and we’re not remotely prepared for it.

In 2010, Time magazine described Facebook’s mission as being to ‘tame the howling mob and turn the lonely, anti-social world of random chance into a friendly world’. During the first decade of mass internet use, this was a popular theory: the more that people are able to communicate with others, the more friendly and understanding they will become, and the healthier our public discourse will be. As we enter the third decade of this century, that vision seems painfully naive. Howling mobs clash day and night. The internet is connecting people, but it doesn’t always create fellow-feeling. At its worst, it can resemble a machine for the production of discord and division.

Silicon Valley entrepreneur Paul Graham has observed that the internet is a medium that engenders disagreement by design. Digital media platforms are inherently interactive and, well, people are disputatious. As Graham puts it, ‘Agreeing tends to motivate people less than disagreeing.’ Readers are more likely to comment on an article or post when they disagree with it, and in disagreement they have more to say (there are only so many ways you can say, ‘I agree’). They also tend to get more animated when they disagree, which usually means getting angry.

A team of data scientists in 2010 studied user activity on BBC discussion forums, measuring the emotional sentiment of nearly 2.5 million posts from 18,000 users. They found that longer discussion threads were sustained by negative comments, and that the most active users overall were more likely to express negative emotions.

We live in a world in which toxic disagreement is ubiquitous, in which people are more frequently offensive and offended, in which we do ever more talking and ever less listening. The technologies we use to communicate with each other have clearly played a part in making us this way but, tempting as it is to blame Facebook and Twitter for our ills, that would be to miss the significance of a wider and more profound shift in human behaviour that has been decades, even centuries, in the making. Socially, as well as electronically, there are fewer one-way channels. Everyone is starting to talk back to everyone else. If we are becoming more disagreeable, it’s because modern life demands we speak our mind.

*

The American anthropologist Edward T. Hall introduced a distinction between two types of communication culture: high-context and low-context. Like all good theories, it simplifies reality to illuminating effect. In a low-context culture, communication is explicit and direct. What people say is taken to be an expression of their thoughts and feelings. You don’t need to understand the context – who is speaking, in what situation – to understand the message. A high-context culture is one in which little is said explicitly, and most of the message is implied. The meaning of each message resides not so much in the words themselves, as in the context. Communication is oblique, subtle, ambiguous.

Broadly speaking, countries in Europe and North America are low-context cultures, while Asian countries are high-context. To give an example, bubuzuke is a simple Japanese dish, popular in Kyoto, made by pouring green tea or broth over rice. If you’re at the home of a Kyoto native and they offer you bubuzuke, you might decide to answer yes or no, depending on whether you feel hungry. But in Kyoto, offering bubuzuke is the traditional way to signal that it’s time for a guest to leave. You would need to know the context to get the message.

High-context societies such as Japan’s tend to be more traditional and more formal. Good communication means having a deep understanding of shared symbols and unspoken rules of civility, such as deference to seniority of age and rank. The primary purpose of communication is to maintain good relationships, rather than to exchange information or get something off your chest. An emphasis is put on listening, since the listener in a high-context exchange must read between the lines in order to understand what is being said. Speakers in high-context cultures tend to be economical with words, comfortable with pauses, and happy to wait their turn to speak.

Low-context societies, like the USA’s, are less traditional and more diverse. They involve more short-term relationships, more flux and less deference. When it comes to speaking or listening, knowledge of tradition, protocol and rank doesn’t help quite so much; everybody speaks for themselves. Since you can’t trust the context, people rely on language itself. Low-context communication is characterised by what one scholar calls ‘the constant and sometimes never-ending use of words’. Intentions are articulated, desires expressed, explanations given. People use first names and engage in small talk. There is more interruption and cross-talking – and more arguing.

This brings us to the most important difference between high-context and low-context cultures: the degree of conflict each generates. In Asian cultures, expressing your opinion directly and forcefully is unusual. It can be interpreted as callow or even offensive. Westerners are more willing to ‘speak their mind’ and risk confrontation. Differing opinions are expected, even when they generate friction. The difference is relative: even in the West, we have developed cultural strategies to avoid too much argument, like the custom of not discussing politics or religion over dinner. But as such traditions fade, so does their dampening effect on conflict.

HIGH context	LOW context

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Implicit

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Explicit

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Indirect, subtle

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Direct, confrontational

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Emotional

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Transactional

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Stronger relationships

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Shallower relationships

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Higher trust

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Lower trust

I’m making broad-brush comparisons between countries by way of illustration, but Hall’s high- and low-context culture model is applicable at any scale. People who live in villages where everyone knows each other engage in more high-context communication – nods and winks – than people who live in big cities, who are used to encountering strangers from different backgrounds. In long-established organisations, staff may be able to make their intentions known to each other in a way that leaves newcomers mystified, whereas in a start-up, anything that isn’t explicitly articulated will not be heard. Individuals shift between high- and low-context modes: with family or friends, you probably do a lot of high-context communication, but when talking to someone in a call centre, you go low-context. Low-context cultures are better suited to societies undergoing change, with high levels of diversity and innovation. But they can also feel impersonal, brittle and unpredictable, and contain greater potential for strife.

Most of us, wherever we are in the world, are living increasingly low-context lives, as more and more of us flock to cities, do business with strangers and converse over smartphones. Different countries still have different communication cultures, but nearly all of them are subject to the same global vectors of commerce, urbanisation and technology – forces that dissolve tradition, flatten hierarchy and increase the scope for arguments. It’s not at all clear that we are prepared for this.

For most of our existence as a species, humans have operated in high-context mode. Our ancestors lived in settlements and tribes with shared traditions and settled chains of command. Now, we frequently encounter others with values and customs different to...