Disagreement for Smarter Decisions

Power of Disagreement for Smarter Decisions
by Michael Toebe

“Find the most believable people possible who disagree with you and try to understand their reasoning.”

Ray Dalio
Co-chief investment officer
Bridgewater Associates

It isn’t common to seek out others to disagree with us. Who wants more emotional stress in their professional and personal lives? That’s just not natural. Yet, what if by pursuing someone respected to objectively and subjectively stress test our thinking and judgment, we end up benefiting in multiple ways?

This is quite different from engaging with disagreeable people. They, we understandably (intelligently maybe) prefer to avoid. People who are trustworthy and likable however can be more palatable to our ego in disagreement and help us see what we might not recognize and be considering.

This requires being secure in ourselves, humble, poised and mature enough to put our thinking in front of others to be dissected by intelligent people who are confident in expressing perspectives from their view.

This can be a vulnerable position to willingly place ourselves in, yet less so when we manage our fear and ego and learn that we can benefit from the process of interacting with other smart, humble, intellectually honest and insightful professionals. That can become another comfort zone for us.

A common challenge and inhibitor of seeking out someone to disagree with our thinking or conclusions and consider their reasoning is that taking Dalio’s “most believable people” recommendation and interpreting it as those individuals that we most feel a connection to and who won’t make us ever feel uncomfortable.

Problematic then can be that we have a blind spot in preferring the safety of an echo chamber. That’s attractive for psychological safety and ego yet is also limiting because there we don’t have to stretch our thinking. So this decision, conscious or subconscious, comes with risk to which we’re not aware.

Overcoming this can prove difficult.

A critical step in learning to make this Dalio practice tolerable and desirable emotionally and thus a process that gets adopted, implemented and committed to is looking at what can be gained and what consequences can be reduced or avoided.

Dalio has written the wise way to “make great decisions is to know how to triangulate with other, more knowledgeable people.”

Wisdom is gained through engagement, listening, being open to learning and considering points from a different set of eyes, ears and mind.

“The beginning of thought is in disagreement — not only with others but also with ourselves.”

Eric Hoffer, moral and social philosopher
(1898–1963)

Accomplishing important or critical insights can be best accomplished with the dedication to pursue it, patience, attentiveness and confirmation.

Dalio writes that it is important to stress test theories and to “keep in mind that you are playing probabilities. Don’t pay as much attention to people’s conclusions as to the reasoning that led them to their conclusions.”

This exercise can stimulate thought and could provide illumination that is presently missing.

Something that is often not front of mind for leaders is that valuable knowledge can come from unlikely sources, meaning that it often gets missed or forfeited for a lack of awareness and commitment to seeking it out.

“Inexperienced people can have great ideas too, sometimes far better ones than more experienced people,” Dalio writes. “That’s because experienced thinkers can get stuck in their old ways. If you’ve got a good ear, you will be able to tell when an inexperienced person is reasoning well. Like knowing whether someone can sing, it doesn’t take a lot of time. Sometimes a person only has to sing a few bars for you to hear how well they can sing. Reasoning is the same — it often doesn’t take a lot of time to figure out if someone can do it.”

Where there is respect, trust, expertise and different perspectives, the likelihood increases that necessary communication is happening and the best information is being exchanged, improving judgment and decision-making quality.

Michael Toebe is a specialist for reputation, professional relationships communication and wiser crisis management. He writes Red Diamonds Essays, the Red Diamonds Newsletter and Red Diamonds Features, all on Medium.