How to Speak to People You Disagree With

Most of us find it hard to speak up at work and it gets even more challenging when we aren’t just sharing an idea, but refuting someone else’s viewpoint. Becoming too eager to tell others they’re wrong can invite pushback and make others dismiss or disregard your thinking. Attacking their intelligence or motives, acting mean or belittling them in any way can put them on the defensive and kill any chance you had to find a better solution. When others feel judged, misunderstood or unsupported, they feel unsafe which makes them more cautious, watchful and guarded. Instead of handling the disagreement with openness and curiosity, they try to protect themselves by retaliating, arguing or becoming disengaged. 

Keeping quiet and not speaking up is also not an option because holding your thoughts and not sharing them can lead to bad choices and poor decisions. It can result in missed opportunities, mediocre solutions and terrible mistakes. Not contributing to the discussion with the fear of how it will be perceived or worrying about damaging the relationship keeps you safe, but it also prevents you from embracing discomfort, which is necessary for growth.  

Disagreeing with others in a way that does not increase tension, make the other person feel attacked, criticized or lead to defensive and argumentative behavior requires kind clarity—being direct and honest while maintaining empathy and compassion. It requires delivering honest opinions without sugar-coating, while ensuring they feel respected and valued. It requires challenging them while continuing to be supportive. 

People often silence themselves, or “agree to disagree” without fully exploring the actual nature of the disagreement, for the sake of protecting a relationship and maintaining connection. But when we avoid certain conversations, and never fully learn how the other person feels about all of the issues, we sometimes end up making assumptions that not only perpetuate but deepen misunderstandings, and that can generate resentment.
― Brené Brown, Braving the Wilderness

Follow these practices to show maturity by disagreeing with others without being disrespectful.

Listen before you speak, show you value their opinion

When you find a flaw in someone’s argument, notice their mistake or have better suggestions on how something must be done, you may be tempted to interrupt and insert your opinion. But speaking up and disagreeing before giving an opportunity to another person to complete their thoughts or making them feel heard and understood leaves them feeling frustrated, doubted and attacked. Their instant reaction is to oppose, resist and fight back without evaluating your idea or suggestion. 

Listening on the other hand, without expressing your disapproval in either words or body language, makes others feel trusted and respected. It creates an environment of psychological safety, clarifies your intent and sets the tone of the conversation that you’re not there to judge, impose or make them feel inferior. 

To listen effectively, stop showing an eagerness to disagree:

1. Pay attention to the non-verbal communication—tone of voice, hand gestures and body language. Your words convey your message, but your body language conveys feelings and emotions behind it. Nodding to show you’re listening to them while expressing disapproval in body language can turn others off. 
2. Acknowledge their feelings and point of view. Acknowledging does not mean that you agree with them. It simply means that you understand how they feel. For example you can say: “From what you’ve told me, I understand that you’re more inclined towards option A because…” “I see you are getting really stressed about…” “If I’m understanding you correctly, you are mad right now for ….”
3. Don’t interrupt or appear impatient to get your message across. Stay calm and neutral. 

Genuine listening means suspending memory, desire, and judgement and, for a few moments at least, existing for the other person.
― Michael P. Nichols, The Lost Art of Listening

When you speak to someone you disagree with, recognize their ideas and feelings first—show that what they have to say matters. 

Don’t use emotive language or loaded words

Words used to convey disagreement plays a crucial role in how your message is perceived—whether others are receptive to your viewpoint or they outrightly reject it. Using words that come across as  judgmental or too opinionated or using language that’s disrespectful or sarcastic makes disagreement less about finding the best path forward and more about ego—protecting one’s self-respect and self-esteem. Offending others by passing personal remarks or trying to prove they’re wrong activates their amygdala, which triggers fight-flight-freeze response, turning an already difficult situation into an impossible one.   

Avoiding words that have the potential to be misinterpreted, stating your views without making it personal or coming across too strong and expressing your concerns in a non-judgmental neutral tone can invite others to take your opinion seriously. They may engage with you to better understand your perspective, show curiosity to dig deeper and think more clearly, leading to a highly constructive discussion.  

When sharing your disagreement, using certain words is a big no-no. They trigger intense negative feelings which puts others on the defensive:

1. Generalizing words like “always” and “never.”
2. Enforcing words like can’t, shouldn’t, must, have to.
3. Words that challenge their character like bad, useless, worthless, inferior. 
4. Passing judgment with words like mistake, failure, unacceptable. 

We cannot control the way people interpret our ideas or thoughts, but we can control the words and tones we choose to convey them. Peace is built on understanding, and wars are built on misunderstandings. Never underestimate the power of a single word, and never recklessly throw around words.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun

When you speak to someone you disagree with, think carefully about the effect of what you say and avoid emotionally charged words which makes the conversation ineffective.   

Use questions to guide the conversation instead of jumping to conclusions 

When you don’t agree with someone or have a different point of view, you may rush with an opinion, jump to conclusions or become impatient to get yourself heard. Being too direct can make you come across as pushy, rude, inconsiderate, insensitive and controlling. Directly stating your opinion without taking the time to understand their thinking—what are their beliefs, what matters to them, how did they reach this decision—can make you try very hard to get yourself heard, but your voice will never reach or get across to them. 

Questioning, on the other hand, not only gets you closer to their perspective, it makes others feel valued and respected. When you show curiosity to understand others, they reciprocate in kind—your inputs don’t invite pushback, but are treated as an opportunity to explore, test and learn. Questions unlock thinking, gets you closer to differences of opinion and challenges you to reconsider your own point of view without considering it as the only option worthy of time and attention. 

Seek clarity and invite others to talk by asking open ended questions:

1. Tell me more…
2. Help me understand …
3. Describe it to me …
4. What do you think about …
5. I would like to understand where you are coming from …
6. Can you share a little more about how you see things …?

Questioning helps people gain perspective and understand the perspectives of others. As they see issues and problems from different points of view, they gain an appreciation for their complexity—and also expand the range of possible solutions.
― Michael J. Marquardt, Leading with Questions

When you speak to someone you disagree with, use questions to find common ground, uncover patterns and help others see the gaps in their thinking instead of stating it explicitly. 

Try to influence their decision, not to change their mind

When you don’t agree with someone, you may feel compelled to change their mind by imposing your thoughts and trying to micromanage the outcome. You may attack their thoughts and beliefs, present strong evidence to prove they’re wrong and push aggressively to make them see the issue differently. Trying to change someone’s mind is a cognitive shift—years of ingrained beliefs and attitudes are hard to change because they’re tied to identity, ego and biases, making others “dig in” rather than change. When people feel their beliefs are being attacked, the conversation shifts from problem-solving to winning. The more you push, the more fixed those beliefs can become. Trying to change someone’s mind can also come across as corrective—they may feel you don’t respect their thinking, trust their judgment or that your perspective matters more than their point of view. 

Trying to influence others on the other hand, is a behavioral shift—it involves discussing actions, priorities, risks, incentives or trade-offs to help others make a better decision in the moment regardless of their original belief. Influence is achieved through framing—What are the trade-offs? What are the second-order effects? What happens if we do nothing? The idea is to guide their thinking, not impose yours. 

To influence someone you disagree with:

1. Slow down and reflect: What matters to them in this decision? What outcome are they trying to protect? What would make this feel safe for them? What are they optimizing for? What risk are they trying to avoid? What constraints are they managing? What identity or reputation is at stake?
2. Align interests by connecting your opinion to their priorities.
3. Frame your suggestions as choices, not conclusions.
4. Suggest incremental movements like running a small pilot, phased approach or some experiments instead of a full reversal of their method.

The key word in our definition of a disagreement (an unacceptable difference between two perspectives), isn’t “difference.” It’s “unacceptable.” Once the clash between perspectives becomes unacceptable, our motivation shifts from understanding minds to changing them, and from that shift springs a world of trouble.
― Buster Benson, Why Are We Yelling?

When you speak to someone you disagree with, focusing on changing their mind can make you less influential as they feel managed and intellectually overpowered. Rather, explore together, invite reflection and try to expand their perspective instead of changing their belief.  

Keep the conversation on track by reiterating over the end goal

Disagreements often turn unproductive and spiral out of control when conversations go off-track and lose focus. Finger-pointing, blame games and other irrelevant points of discussion divert attention away from the main goal. Giving in and contributing to these emotional outbursts by sharing your own frustrations, disappointment or other concerns can waste everyone’s time and energy while not taking you any closer to your goals. Participating in unrelated topics or disconnected arguments derails you from discussing the main idea and making progress on reaching a mutual conclusion.

Remaining present and calm during the emotional moments, reminding everyone of the end goal and tactfully bringing the conversation back to the agenda can unlock clearer thinking, more rational arguments and a better aligned decision. It can pave the path to disagree and commit—disagree and commit divulges the importance of commitment despite our differences. At its core, it supports unity, maturity to disconnect our identity from our ideas and support others even when we do not agree with their point of view. It doesn’t hide the fact that we disagree nor dismiss the value of our opinion, it simply guides us to know when it’s time to get past our convictions and work with others instead of working against them. Reiterating the end goal recenters the discussion on shared purpose instead of competing opinions.  

To keep the discussion on track:

1. Call out the shared outcome explicitly. Shift from my view vs your view to a common objective.
2. Clarify you agree on the destination, even if you disagree on the path to get there.
3. Evaluate options by asking which path best serves the agreed outcome.  
4. If emotions arise, anchor back to purpose rather than pushing harder on your argument.

Respect for the problem places all that we’re struggling with into the landscape of the conversation itself. It lets us step back and take a satellite view of the way our tough conversation is playing out. The conversation is no longer a battlefield, but a course of obstacles through which we move.
― Holly Weeks, Failure to Communicate

When you speak to someone you disagree with, discuss what’s relevant to the current conversation. Stay on track. Avoid going off-topic.

Walk away if it isn’t worth it 

Some disagreements may never get resolved, not because you’re doing something wrong or you’re being unreasonable. However, despite your best efforts you may not be able to influence others or reach a conclusion. In some cases, disagreeing with someone superior to you or those in positions of power can even backfire—they may hold it against you which can impact your career and growth. People who display extreme insecurity, stubbornness, egotism or narcissism are often hard to disagree with because they do not want a productive conversation—they want to feel superior, in control and right. They will portray you as a difficult person to discredit your viewpoint. They enjoy arguing for the sake of winning and always take the opposite side regardless of what you say. They consider themselves as the smartest person in the room and belittle you to assert their superiority. 

When disagreement feels like a battle or starts to impact your mental health and personal well-being, it’s wise to emotionally detach yourself and walk away from it. Nothing in this world is worth your sanity. It’s important to voice your opinion and share your thoughts, but when the conversation crosses the safe boundary and enters into an unhealthy zone, staying in it or letting yourself be bothered about it is a foolish thing to do. Ruminating about it or spending more time and energy into fixing the situation may only make it harder to let it go. 

To identify if you should walk away from a disagreement:

1. If the decision doesn’t meaningfully impact you, it may not be worth your energy.
2. If disagreeing further could damage your position without influencing the outcome, it’s wise to stay away.
3. If the emotions are escalating and the discussion is becoming more reactive with each exchange, continuing the conversation might do more damage than good.
4. If the other person isn’t interested in solving the problem, only in proving themselves right, it’s not worth continuing. 
5. If they interrupt you constantly, dismiss your thoughts without even considering or attack your character, respectfully disengage.  

Reason tells us that we should always be able to work things out with words. But the absurdly profound truth is that in many crucial moments of conflict, when sanity and safety hang in the balance, choosing not to engage verbally can be by far the most powerful form of speech.
― Sol Luckman, Get Out of Here Alive

Not all disagreements need to be resolved and not all of them are worthy. Knowing the difference is crucial to be effective without losing your mind. 

Summary

1. When you don’t pay attention to others and show eagerness to disagree, you invite pushback, resistance and defensiveness. Adopting an attitude of listening encourages others to consider your viewpoint as they feel heard and understood. 
2. How you convey your thoughts matter more than your opinion. Using emotionally charged words, passing personal remarks or using a judgmental tone can trigger intense negative feelings in others. Be calm and respectful. Use words that are less likely to be misinterpreted or evoke strong reactions. 
3. Your viewpoint comes across as imposing when it’s stated as a conclusion instead of an idea that might be worthy of consideration. By asking questions, you can help others see the flaw in their thinking and guide them towards an alternate perspective without coming across as pushy, insensitive or controlling.
4. Trying to fix people’s mind is futile—years of ingrained beliefs can’t be changed in a day. A more effective strategy is to influence their thinking by discussing actions, risks and priorities that are important to make an effective decision in the moment, regardless of what they believe.  
5. Conversations, especially the ones that involve differences of opinion, often derail from the original goal and lose focus by wasting time on inconsequential topics. By reminding people of the original objective and bringing the main agenda into focus, you can keep the discussion productive.
6. You don’t need to resolve all disagreements, especially the ones that don’t directly impact you or the ones that compromise your sanity and peace of mind. Let them go, don’t bother yourself with the end outcome.

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