How To 'Respectfully' Disagree With People

When it comes to politics these days you can be sure there are LOTS of divisive conversations going on.

It’s not expected that we’ll all agree on the important topics, but come on everybody - can’t we at least learn how to respectfully disagree?

Before you argue with, block, curse out or cut off individuals due to their political views, learn how to respectfully disagree and build bridges instead of barriers. We need to challenge our own perspective because we all think that we're right, I guess, until we realize maybe we're not 100%, right.

That’s the message Justin Jones-Fosu is shouting from the rooftops in his upcoming book “I Respectfully Disagree: How to Have Difficult Conversations in a Divided World”. 

Justin is international speaker and the founder of Work. Meaningful. He shares some great advice on how to handle extreme political conversations. We had a much-needed conversation about this topic live on my radio show and Justin pointed out, “It's been bad for a long time, but it's with the rise of media and everybody having a voice and platform that It's gotten really bad. Even in workplaces, three out of four people say that their management can handle, should handle conflict better.”

“But just think about anecdotally, as we see online, as people talk to each other, there's these two things that are happening.”

“One of, we see a respectful disagreement, disrespectful disagreement. But Debbie, there's also an interesting phenomenon we found in our studies, is this other thing called ‘disrespectful agreement’.

“And I see it in a lot of the audiences and corporations I go in, is that people are in front of your face, they're like, oh Debbie, I think that music was amazing. And then behind the scenes, they're talking to the producer, like, why would you even play that?””

“And that's one of the things that's also causing disrespectful discriminates as well, is because people are passively, or what the new generation is calling gaslighting others.”

I couldn’t agree more with Justin that people need to try harder to build bridges to people rather than barriers from them.

He shares some good suggestions about how we all can start to go about doing that better.

 “I think the foundation for us lies in the statement I've been making for about the last decade is that we can vehemently disagree with someone's ideology and yet still passionately pursue their humanity. That's the starting point. Because oftentimes we consistently attach ideology with identity. 

And so I'll start with challenging perspective because I think that speaks to what we do. I mean, it starts before any disagreement happens. It's the posture, the position that we put ourselves in. “

Justin Shared a Practical Example:

“One of the things I started to challenge myself to do is this thing called Circles of Grace, where it's the thing that my mom taught me. My mom took us to events that we didn't know a lot about and that we also disagreed with. And so when you constantly are putting yourself in positions of learning and hearing other people's perspectives, so every six months I go to events, experiences, or I engage with people that I either don't know a lot about or that I disagree with. And that's helped me to consistently challenge my perspective and learn.”

I’m glad I took the time to chat with Justin. Besides being an author Justin Jones- Fosu is also a full-time dad-e, and social entrepreneur. He speaks 50-60 times a year for professionals, corporations, organizations, and associations. His clients include some of the biggest names in The Fortune 500 to the best spelled names in Fourth Grades across the country he says. LOL

I also really like that he’s fun. Like me, he often uses humor to get a serious message across. 

I think it would be meaningful for you to take a few minutes to listen to this podcast of our live conversation from The Debbie Nigro Show. Might save some of your relationships!