Conflicted Read online

  Relationships were very important to the Beatles. Paul McCartney and John Lennon came from families fractured by bereavement, and neither they, nor Harrison, fitted in at school. All of them were hungry for the camaraderie and sense of belonging that came with being in a band.

  In their early years especially, the Beatles did everything, on stage and off, as a unit. By the time they met Martin, they had spent years in each other’s intimate company, in Liverpool, in Hamburg, in filthy bedsits, tiny dressing rooms and boneshaking vans. As with the Wright brothers, this personal closeness enabled honest professional disagreements. But the Beatles handled conflict in a different way to the Wrights, or the Stones, or R.E.M. There are surprisingly few accounts of them having stand-up rows or fistfights with each other, and as far we know, they generally did not engage in lengthy debating sessions. The Beatles made each other laugh, on stage and off, and they were more likely to rely on humour to see them through difficult issues.

  While Lennon was the de facto leader in their early years, each Beatle had a say in how the group was run, and no major decision got taken without agreement from them all. The central relationship tension within the group was over who would dominate, Lennon or McCartney. While Lennon was the charismatic founder and lead singer, McCartney was the more accomplished musician and, over time, an increasingly confident performer, with more than his fair share of adoring fans at the Cavern. Lennon may have accepted McCartney’s equal status, but he can’t have found it easy all the time, and one way he came to deal with the tension was by teasing his partner.

  We get a glimpse of this dynamic on a rough recording of the band’s performances at the Star Club in Hamburg, during their final pre-fame visit there in 1962. McCartney is taking the lead on ‘Till There Was You’, a sentimental ballad from a musical – the kind of song that made the girls swoon for him. Every time he sings a line, Lennon pitches in, one beat behind, with a galumphing great echo: (‘There were birds’; ‘THERE WERE BIRDS’ . . . ‘No, I never heard them at all’; ‘NO, HE NEVER HEARD THEM’). McCartney carries on regardless, occasionally giggling through a line. He took performing seriously – he wouldn’t have allowed anyone else to do that. But this was Lennon. This was funny.

  Using humour is an important teamwork skill, somewhat overlooked by management theorists. Humour can be an important safety valve for conflict, a way of acknowledging difficult issues in a way that unites the participants through laughter rather than dividing them in bitterness. Lindred Greer, an associate professor at the University of Michigan and an expert in conflict dynamics, told me that when she teaches MBA courses, it’s the former military students who impress her most: ‘One of the many leadership skills they have is that they are able to crack a joke at the right moment. They know how to shift the mood of the group in a good way. I’ve always found that fascinating, and wondered how to quantify it.’

  Teasing can go wrong if it isn’t practised with sensitivity and affection. But done well, it is one of the most valuable forms of conflict management we have. The teaser gets to say things about the other person’s behaviour that if said more bluntly might cause pain or anger, but instead can help them learn something about themselves. Everyone has eccentricities – none of us are ‘normal’ in every aspect of our behaviour. We shouldn’t aspire to be either, but we do benefit from having at least a rough idea of what others consider to be our quirks, good and bad. The teaser lets us know what those are, without insisting that we change them – and they do so while making us laugh.

  Teasing can also be a way of gently testing the robustness of a new relationship. The story of George Martin’s tie has often been told to illustrate the Beatles’ cheekiness, but I think it’s also an example of how they used humour to navigate new social terrain. Even as they were being auditioned, I suspect that they were, consciously or otherwise, auditioning Martin. How would this man, clearly their social superior, react when confronted with the opinions of four young working-class men who did not take well to being told what to do? Harrison’s joke was a probe. It was also a risk: if Martin responded negatively, that might have been the end of their shot at a deal, and quite possibly the end of the Beatles. Luckily for them, and for us, the signal that came back was positive: Martin laughed.

  * * *

  In Cambridge in 1951, Francis Crick and James Watson were working on a joint mission to discover the structure of DNA. They knew time was short. A second pair of eminent scientists was working on the same problem, in London. Watson had just attended a conference at which one of their rivals, Maurice Wilkins, presented the first clear images of DNA.

  Wilkins was at King’s College, the other main centre of DNA research in Britain, after Cambridge. In the X-ray lab there, he met a young researcher called Rosalind Franklin. On their first meeting, he managed to annoy Franklin by assuming she was one of his assistants, rather than a researcher in her own right (she had already made the crucial discovery that there are two forms of DNA). From then on, though a formidable team, Wilkins and Franklin maintained polite but distant relations.

  Watson and Crick had a secret weapon, however: rudeness. Crick later recalled that if there was a flaw in his theories, ‘Watson would tell me in no uncertain terms this was nonsense, and vice versa. If he would have some idea I didn’t like, and I would say so, this would shake his thinking.’ Crick believed it was important to be ‘perfectly candid, one might almost say rude, to the person you’re working with’. The enemy of true collaboration, he said, is ‘politeness’.

  In 1953, Crick and Watson jointly published their Nobel Prizewinning paper proposing a double-helix structure of DNA, a discovery now regarded as one of the greatest of the twentieth century. ‘We had evolved unstated but fruitful methods of collaboration,’ wrote Crick later, ‘something quite missing in the London group. If either of us suggested a new idea, the other, while taking it seriously, would attempt to demolish it in a candid but non-hostile manner. This turned out to be quite crucial.’

  At work, there is often a tendency to deny the role that conflict plays in creative thinking. Hence the much-repeated mantra that, in a brainstorm, ‘there are no bad ideas’. Berkeley psychologist Charlan Nemeth (one of the authors of the devil’s advocate studies) wanted to see if it was true that barring criticism made groups more creative. She organised ninety-one five-person groups, in America and France, and asked them to come up with ideas to solve a local traffic-congestion problem. Some groups were instructed to brainstorm in the conventional manner, without criticising each other’s contributions. Others were told to engage in debate and criticism. Nemeth found that the debaters generated more ideas than the brainstormers. One reason for this, she speculates, is that instituting a norm of open criticism may actually lower people’s anxiety about being judged. When criticism is framed as a way for the group to reach better answers, people take it less personally.

  The sentiment of ‘no bad ideas’ is well intentioned. If people feel nervous about their ideas being judged or challenged, it is undoubtedly true that they will be less likely to speak up, leaving the conversation less fertile than it should be. But, to me, Nemeth’s research suggests that the best way to address this problem is not to try and abolish disagreement, it’s to get people feeling more confident about it – and the only way to do that is for the organisation’s leaders to model and encourage a culture in which it’s OK to be wrong, it’s OK to show vulnerability, and everyone recognises that open disagreement is a source of creative thinking. We need the bad ideas to get to the good ones.

  * * *

  Open, passionate disagreement blows away the cobwebs that gather over even the most enduring relationships. Disagreement throws open windows and pulls up carpets, dragging whatever we’ve chosen to hide under there into the light. It flushes out crucial information and insights that will otherwise lie inaccessible or dormant inside our brains. It fulfils the creative potential of diversity.

  As we’ve seen, though, it can only do all this under
certain conditions. There must be mutual trust and some sense of a shared project or common goal. The trust need not be deep; healthy disagreement does not require intimacy. In its minimal form, it means, ‘I trust that you are interested in something more from this conversation than “winning” or getting your way.’ The shared project could be as shallow as a mutual desire to get through a brief interaction on social media having learnt something from each other. But the stronger the trust and the more important the project to its participants, the more energetic and edifying the disagreement can be. In short, stronger relationships make for higher quality disagreements.

  There is no guaranteed route to a good disagreement, because no one person has that in their power. But most of us, most of the time, can do something to make it go better. That’s what the next section of this book is about. I’m not going to tell you how to win arguments, because aiming to win an argument isn’t very ambitious. Win or lose, it’s more important that something new is created between you – insight, learning, ideas. Neither am I going to offer a code of civility (for more on why not, see the last section). What I am going to do is identify the primary conditions for better, more creative arguments.

  What follows are nine rules of productive disagreement plus one golden rule on which all the others stand or fall. Since human interactions are infinitely variable, you should treat these rules (except perhaps the meta-rule) as provisional, but I believe they are sturdy guides to better disagreement, whether that be at home or at work or in public life (or on social media, which counts as all three). These rules are born from the practical wisdom of people who manage high-pressure, knotty, often heated disagreements for a living – interrogators, hostage negotiators, cops, mediators and therapists – and from the scientific research into tough conversations. I believe they constitute something close to a universal grammar of good disagreement. They are not intended as techniques or tactics, so much as underlying principles. Having said that, there is obviously a wealth of highly practical tips to be gleaned from our experts, and at the end of the book I’ve put together a ‘toolbox’ of techniques available to you when you next embark on a difficult conversation.

  Part Two

  Rules of Productive Argument

  5. First, Connect

  Before getting to the content of the disagreement, establish a relationship of trust.

  Over the course of two hot days in August 2017, hundreds of self-proclaimed white supremacists marched through the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia. The marchers, a motley collection of neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members, were there to ‘Unite the Right’ – to proclaim the unity of the white nationalist cause. They chanted racist slogans and waved Nazi flags. Some carried semiautomatic rifles, others wielded clubs. Despite their attempts to intimidate, they did not go unchallenged: groups of anti-fascists staged counter-protests. They included political activists carrying placards, local clergy in ceremonial robes, and many ordinary residents of Charlottesville, black and white, who turned up to show their disdain for white supremacy.

  On 12 August, after a day and a half of tense and sometimes violent confrontations, police finally shut down the rally after Virginia’s governor declared a state of emergency. As the crowds dispersed, some of the counter-protestors filed down a narrow street. That was when a young neo-Nazi at the wheel of a Dodge Challenger spotted a murderous opportunity. He drove his car at speed down the street, scattering bodies, killing one of the counter-protesters: a 32-year-old white woman named Heather Heyer.

  Heather worked as a paralegal in a Charlottesville law office. Alfred Wilson, her boss, and a friend, vividly remembers the day she died. Alfred, who is African American, had wanted to join the counter-protest, but in the end he and his wife decided against it due to the difficulty of keeping track of their three children in the crowds. They were watching the rally at home on TV when his phone rang. It was Marissa, a co-worker and friend of Heather’s, yelling frantically that something had happened, and she couldn’t find Heather. Alfred said he’d see what he could do. Less than a minute later, his phone rang again. This time it was Heather’s mother, Susan Bro. Susan was calling from the local hospital. ‘Heather’s gone,’ she said, and told him how she had been killed. Alfred got in his car and drove to the hospital.

  Over the next few weeks, a storm of grief, anger and controversy raged across the country, with Charlottesville at its epicentre. Heather’s death became a flashpoint for national politics, aggravating the racial faultline that runs through America’s history. Susan planned and orchestrated Heather’s funeral, disposed of Heather’s possessions, while dealing with the press from all over the world and taking calls from politicians and celebrities. Meanwhile, at Susan’s request, Alfred helped to set up a charitable foundation in Heather’s name, so that the funds that were being donated from well-wishers around the world could be put to good use. Nine days after Heather’s death, it was registered and accepting donations.

  About six weeks after the fatal day there was a benefit concert in Charlottesville for those affected by the violence. It was organised by the Dave Matthews Band; the line-up included Ariana Grande and Justin Timberlake. Alfred’s eldest daughter, then in her first year at university, drove home from her college to attend, along with three roommates. When the concert was over, Alfred hugged his daughter goodbye and the four girls set off back to college. About forty minutes later, he got a call from his daughter. Their car had broken down. Alfred drove out to see them. Unable to fix the problem himself, he called a tow-truck.

  When the truck driver arrived and met the girls, Alfred was in his car, making a phone call. The truck driver, a white man, was slightly taken aback when Alfred emerged and joined the group. Alfred’s daughter has the light brown complexion of his Palestinian wife, and her three friends were white. ‘Who are these to you?’ the truck driver asked. Alfred told him, before explaining his plan. His daughter and her friends would take his car. He needed the truck to take the broken-down car to a tyre-replacement shop, not far from Alfred’s home, about an hour away. Alfred would ride with the truck driver.

  Alfred and the driver got into the truck and began the drive down Interstate 64. ‘It was quiet,’ Alfred recalled. The two men sat in silence for a long time. When Alfred happened to look in the back of the truck, he noticed something: in the window hung a Confederate flag. To some, the flag is associated with pride in the South’s cultural heritage. To Alfred and others, it is a symbol of hatred and oppression.

  Alfred chose not to say anything. After all, the cab of a truck is a small place. ‘I thought, OK, this is going to be a long, awkward hour.’

  * * *

  We have all been in situations in which there is something difficult we want to say to someone – something we know they will not agree with, at least not at first. The prospect of saying it, and the anger and vituperation that might follow, stops our tongue. I want to tell you not to worry. I want to tell you to put your fears aside and just leap right into the disagreement. But I can’t. Beginnings matter.

  Scholars from different fields have repeatedly found that subtle differences in how a conversation starts have a disproportionate impact on what follows. Researchers at the Intractable Conflicts Lab at Columbia University discovered that how the participants feel during the first three minutes of a conversation about moral conflict sets the tone for the rest of the discussions. Conversation analysts, who study real-life conversations in minute detail, have established that a pause of as little as 0.7 seconds before someone responds to the initial ‘hello’ in a phone call is a good predictor that the subsequent conversation will not go well. John Gottman, a relationship scientist, found that the opening exchanges in a married couple’s conversations determine how the rest of the encounter will unfold. The same couple can have a productive conversation about something one day and then find themselves stuck in an argument about it the next day, the only difference being how the conversation began.

  The reason for this is tha
t humans have a deep-rooted tendency to respond to each other in kind. Without even realising it, we take our cues from the person or people we’re talking with, in what we say and how we behave. If someone indicates that they like us, we want to show we like them. If someone discloses to us something they know or feel, we get the urge to do the same for them. And if someone is hostile to us, we have a powerful urge to be hostile to them. This mirroring of behaviour and emotional tenor is not inevitable, but it happens more often than not. Alan Sillars calls it ‘the norm of reciprocity’.

  Once a feedback loop of positivity or negativity has begun, it’s hard to escape. A tense encounter can turn into a raging battle, without either participant willing it. In Gottman’s lab, only 4 per cent of couples who began an interaction negatively were able to turn it around in a positive direction. Entering a conversation with noble intentions counts for little. In most marital arguments, says Alan Sillars, both participants want to be seen as playing fair – as trying to achieve their goals without offending the other person. But as the tensions grow, ‘people begin to behave more mindlessly and less strategically’. They drop the niceties and make wounding personal comments. They drag in completely unrelated issues in order to get one over on the other. The conflict escalates.

  Beginnings matter. So how do you begin?

  * * *

  In 1943, Major Sherwood Moran, of the US Marines, distributed a memo on the interrogation of enemy prisoners of war to troops throughout the Pacific theatre. Moran was a former missionary who had raised a family in Tokyo before the war. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, he was fifty-six, and living in Boston. Realising his fluency in Japanese language and culture might be helpful to the war effort, he enlisted. Moran soon became known as an unusually effective interrogator of Japanese soldiers, who were famously resistant interviewees. And, like Islamist terrorists today, many were fanatically, suicidally committed to their cause, and deeply hostile to Americans.