Literature in Review
by Richard Barbieri, Ph.D.
Disagreement
Various Texts
N
othing is more disagreeable than disagreement, both in itself and for its consequences:
stress, conflict, damaged relationships, retribution, even emotional or physical violence.
After many decades of teaching, administration, and more recently mediation and fa-
cilitation, I can recall the occasions of unresolved conflict more vividly than the successes. My
shelves, therefore, hold numerous read and re-read works on managing disagreement. Choosing
one for review seemed a challenge for me, and a disservice to our readers, so this is a brief com-
pendium of some key ideas from several sources. Though coming from different perspectives,
all the writers offer some version of the words attributed to St. Francis of Assisi: “Grant that I may
seek not so much to be understood as to understand.” Focus on the other party, get behind the
positions to the concerns that lie beneath. (By the way, though several books are mentioned
here, none are over 240 pages, and often with an appendix outlining the approach succinctly.)
The understand/be understood dichotomy implies two other divisions: listening rather than
speaking, and asking rather than telling. Peter Drucker’s Managing the Nonprofit Organization
puts it bluntly: “As the first basic competence I would put willingness, ability, and self-disci-
pline to listen. Anybody can do it. All you have to do is keep your mouth shut.” Any number
of writers have made this point, and many have issued specific advice on the art of question-
ing. Robert K. Greenleaf’s Servant Leadership advises “The best test is to ask ourselves first:
are we really listening? Are we listening to the one with whom we want to communicate?”
To listen we must ask, and not all of us are expert questioners, perhaps having seen too
many examples, live and dramatized, of interrogation masked as asking. Edgar Schein, now
91 years old and the founder of organizational culture theory, turned in his 80s entirely to
this issue, in two brief books: Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help, and Humble Inquiry:
The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling. Humble inquiry, he explains, “maximizes my inter-
est and curiosity in the other person and minimizes bias and preconceptions,” and should
Page 20 Summer 2020
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