think about the last time you tried to
have a conversation with someone you
didn’t already agree with maybe it was
about I don’t know
voting in an election increasing the
diversity of your team trash and
recycling whatever it was your blood is
boiling there’s someplace that you want
to go with the other person but you just
can’t seem to get there now we’re all
friends here you know in that moment
what are you thinking and feeling about
the other person that you might not say
aloud my friend Gabriel Grant’s and I
have run workshops with more than 2,000
people and we’ve asked that question
using an anonymous polling technology
and here are some typical responses that
we’ve gotten you don’t care do you I’m
right you’re wrong she can’t see the
evidence he’s an idiot
you’re so closed-minded how could we be
related this sounds familiar
what do we do about those people on the
other side because you know that we have
to it’s it’s a polarized world
everyone’s taking sides everyone’s got
an opinion
it’s climate change or coal jobs build a
wall or open the gates so many of the
big issues we face right now are stuck
in a kind of gridlock and sometimes we
see that gridlock out there on c-span
other times it’s right across the table
how do we bring our conversations back
to life I think that we need a new way
to think about these types of
conversations when things get polarized
we can get zapped and we can experience
this as a kind of dilemma like either I
keep the peace but I stall out on an
issue I care about or I raise my voice
and I put myself and the relationship at
risk what if instead we could see this
polarization
as a kind of energy creative energy
energy for action what if we could make
conversation really come alive think of
a situation where you have someone where
you know the relationship matters to you
you care about their actions their
decisions their opinions their feelings
it could be a colleague a neighbor a
family member a friend and but there’s
some issue where you’ve gotten stuck
what would be possible for you if you
could really make that conversation come
alive what would be possible for them
for us for all of us for our nation
because if you think about it what is a
nation but a tapestry of conversations
now I should say I have stumbled into
this topic you know I I don’t work in
Washington DC bringing politicians
together across the lines I’m not forced
into difficult conversations because of
my identity as a straight this white man
I get to hide from a lot my job is to
educate business leaders at MIT but we
teach them how to use the skills of
business to tackle big social and
environmental problems and it turns out
that the tools you can use to talk to a
skeptical CFO or customer about climate
change might just be the tools that we
need to heal our democracy now let me
take you back for a moment
a 2006 I’m a graduate student and I was
an environmental activist and you know
we were organizing a student group for
sustainability at MIT we wrote letters
we got signatures on a petition one
night we cornered the president of MIT
on our bicycles and we said you should
take sustainability more seriously we
saw ourselves as the righteous ones you
know we were fighting the power of the
MIT administration and those big bad
fossil fuel companies
funding them the trouble was that we
weren’t quite getting where we wanted to
go
we got meetings but no promises for
every push we’d get a push back and we
started to wonder if we needed a new
approach and then I met also Olivetti
she was a grad student we were in a
meeting with some MIT administrators and
like me she was passionate about the
environment but it was clear that she
had the ear of the administrators in a
different way and at one point in the
meeting she said Jason it seems like
your approach here is someone should do
something or we’re here to tell you what
you should do my approach has always
been we’re here to help that gave me
pause I kind of tensed up and I realized
a couple things you know one is I wasn’t
seeing things from their perspective I
was asking them to do all the work when
in fact we all needed each other and I
had to let go of something if we were
gonna move forward I had to let go of
feeling right and righteous and certain
about our agenda of feeling safe among
our allies yelling from the sidelines
these worked for me like a kind of bait
and they kept me stuck and but I was
ready to get unstuck so just for the
moment in that meeting I took a deep
breath and I let it go and I took on
this approach like we’re here to help
and almost immediately the tone of the
conversation shifted we got into action
we focused on what students could do
mapping campus energy use brewing
biodiesel and the administration also
stepped up you know launched a task
force took invested in campus
sustainability because now we were
allies and we unleashed a wave of
creativity and innovation because when
we let go
we get going now this idea of bait you
know other people have looked at this
and they’re Harvard psychologist Robert
Keegan and Lisa Leahy they talk about
this as our hidden competing commitments
so yeah we’re committed to moving
forward on some issue that we care about
but we’re also have these hidden
competing commitments to preserving a
sense of ourselves as right and
righteous to maintaining that feeling of
certainty and safety and so we stay
stuck we all stay stuck think about how
much benefit we get from polarization
think of all the great comments you get
on your Facebook feeds or your Twitter
stream when you you know from people on
your side when you get in a good jab
against the other side right politicians
love to fire up their base but so do we
the challenge is that you know signaling
our allegiance to our side it doesn’t
solve problems it doesn’t generate new
ideas it doesn’t design and test policy
to do that we have to let go of the bait
and start listening to other people’s
perspectives and when we do that we can
start to find out what they are holding
on to and hear another concept becomes
really useful this time from behavioral
economics it’s called loss aversion
scores of experiments have shown that we
focus on what we have to lose we’d
rather give we’d rather miss out on $100
payoff then give up the $50 we already
have in our pocket the reason you might
resist my environmental agenda isn’t
because you don’t care about your
children or about the polar bears more
about the polar bears children it’s that
my environmental tax might cost you
hard-earned money my regulation might
cost your flexibility your freedom my
green cleaning product might
leave mildew on your shower tile and so
if I’m asking you to give up on
something that you value that you care
about for what I’m offering then there’s
no deal no matter how self-righteous and
and noisy I can get but if instead we
listen for what other people value and
we take it seriously we can generate new
ideas that neither of us could have
thought of alone so let me let me let me
offer a metaphor think about buying a
car five years ago if I said to you I’ve
got this great car to sell you it’s
energy-efficient you’ll save money on
gas you’ll reduce your carbon footprint
you might have pushed back and said yeah
but it’s not going to be a little slow
off the starting block you know I got
places to go I can’t be late and if you
bought that SUV or that sports car I
would judge you mercilessly from the
comfort of my holy Toyota Prius but now
think about the next generation electric
car companies Tesla BMW Chevy what
they’re saying is well we’re actually
going to take both of these concerns
seriously power and environment and you
might think you have to make that
trade-off but actually here’s a car that
has the power and acceleration of a
luxury sports sedan and the footprint of
that Prius they’re not asking us to let
go of our desire for a nice powerful car
they’re asking us to let go of our fear
of the trade-off and it turns out that
there is a tool that you can use to take
conversations in that kind of a
direction we call it transformative
contrasting sometimes when conversations
get really polarized you have to draw a
contrast between what they expect of you
and what you’re there to do between the
trade-off they fear that they’ll have to
make and the new possibilities that
you’re there to open think about the
National Organization on disability that
od they are known for creating the
American Disabilities
act and they would run into so many
businesses who would say oh she’s the a
da it cost me so much money to build
those wheelchair ramps so much red tape
the businesses were focused on what they
had to lose so the noge started creating
a different kind of conversation they
said with two businesses they said look
given your past experience you might
expect us to get stuck with being
righteous and certain about our agenda
and you might think that I’m going to
pursue solutions that force us into a
trade-off increase your costs increase
the hassle of building or maintaining
your facility but that’s not what we’re
here to do what we want to do is we want
to help you increase the value of your
business by attracting talent that you
couldn’t have attracted before among
populations that wouldn’t been able to
work where you in your facility and and
in the process we want to try to
strengthen your business so let’s work
together to break those real or
perceived trade-offs and this approach
has worked that the entity has now
worked with companies like Lowe’s and
Starbucks to increase access to talent
by creating accessible workplaces and
increase employee engagement across the
board and community goodwill
strengthening the businesses in ways
they hadn’t anticipated and so now you
could imagine there’s some businesses
that weren’t on board with the more
activist agenda now suddenly have the
most to gain from working with the nodd
so we’ve brought this this
transformative contrasting approach to
friends and industry so let’s say that
I’ve got a mutual fund of socially and
environmentally responsible companies
it’ll be great you can feel good about
your investments and then you’ll say
whoa whoa whoa whoa it’s not gonna slow
the growth of my retirement fund our
friends Sean and Rob worked for a big
investment management firm called MF s
and they were running into exactly this
challenge investors were saying yeah
sorry we can’t do that socially
responsible stuff we have a duty to
maximize our return
the door was closed and so they did some
contrasting they said I got it you’re
you’re worried about that trade-off and
you should be because some past funds
have made those trade-offs but that’s
not what we’re here to do what we want
to do is manage the risks of social and
environmental disruption harness the
benefits of environmental technology
increase return while investing
responsibly and that approach opened the
doors both inside the organization and
with their clients now again these
examples are with inside organizations
or with customers will this could this
really move our nation forward and I
think it can because a lot of the big
social environmental economic issues we
face they show up in mundane everyday
ways with the people closest to us and
that means that the power is in your
hands it’s in all of our hands so think
of a conversation where you have gotten
stuck with you know a person where the
relationship matters to you and the
issue matters to you and notice that in
that context there’s something that
you’re standing for there’s something
that you want to have happen but you
might also be holding on to that bait of
being right righteous certain safe take
a deep breath and locate the bait and
let it go and then acknowledge what the
other side values acknowledge the things
they’re worried about losing or giving
up acknowledge the trade-offs they might
fear and draw the contrast let them know
that you’re not there to trade-off their
values for yours help them let go of
that concern and then what becomes
possible is that you can start inventing
together you can generate new ideas that
neither of you could have thought of
alone I know this approach works my
co-author and I have seen dozens of
people break through gridlock in their
immediate relationships and then build
the confidence
to step onto a wider stage because you
know if you can talk to your boss or
your neighbor or your uncle you can talk
to your city councilmen or your
congressperson
in fact I believe that if we can get
good at this we can get our politicians
and our business leaders to join our
conversations we don’t have to wait
around for the next speech or tweet we
can figure out how to create living wage
health care for all and a thriving
economy we can protect the climate and
create good jobs we have to look around
it’s up to us to create a new tapestry
of conversations one where we don’t have
to change each other’s minds we don’t
have to agree but we do have to really
engage with each other and if we can do
that we can go from being stuck to being
unstoppable and it just starts with a
conversation so let’s get going
[Applause] [Music]
have a conversation with someone you
didn’t already agree with maybe it was
about I don’t know
voting in an election increasing the
diversity of your team trash and
recycling whatever it was your blood is
boiling there’s someplace that you want
to go with the other person but you just
can’t seem to get there now we’re all
friends here you know in that moment
what are you thinking and feeling about
the other person that you might not say
aloud my friend Gabriel Grant’s and I
have run workshops with more than 2,000
people and we’ve asked that question
using an anonymous polling technology
and here are some typical responses that
we’ve gotten you don’t care do you I’m
right you’re wrong she can’t see the
evidence he’s an idiot
you’re so closed-minded how could we be
related this sounds familiar
what do we do about those people on the
other side because you know that we have
to it’s it’s a polarized world
everyone’s taking sides everyone’s got
an opinion
it’s climate change or coal jobs build a
wall or open the gates so many of the
big issues we face right now are stuck
in a kind of gridlock and sometimes we
see that gridlock out there on c-span
other times it’s right across the table
how do we bring our conversations back
to life I think that we need a new way
to think about these types of
conversations when things get polarized
we can get zapped and we can experience
this as a kind of dilemma like either I
keep the peace but I stall out on an
issue I care about or I raise my voice
and I put myself and the relationship at
risk what if instead we could see this
polarization
as a kind of energy creative energy
energy for action what if we could make
conversation really come alive think of
a situation where you have someone where
you know the relationship matters to you
you care about their actions their
decisions their opinions their feelings
it could be a colleague a neighbor a
family member a friend and but there’s
some issue where you’ve gotten stuck
what would be possible for you if you
could really make that conversation come
alive what would be possible for them
for us for all of us for our nation
because if you think about it what is a
nation but a tapestry of conversations
now I should say I have stumbled into
this topic you know I I don’t work in
Washington DC bringing politicians
together across the lines I’m not forced
into difficult conversations because of
my identity as a straight this white man
I get to hide from a lot my job is to
educate business leaders at MIT but we
teach them how to use the skills of
business to tackle big social and
environmental problems and it turns out
that the tools you can use to talk to a
skeptical CFO or customer about climate
change might just be the tools that we
need to heal our democracy now let me
take you back for a moment
a 2006 I’m a graduate student and I was
an environmental activist and you know
we were organizing a student group for
sustainability at MIT we wrote letters
we got signatures on a petition one
night we cornered the president of MIT
on our bicycles and we said you should
take sustainability more seriously we
saw ourselves as the righteous ones you
know we were fighting the power of the
MIT administration and those big bad
fossil fuel companies
funding them the trouble was that we
weren’t quite getting where we wanted to
go
we got meetings but no promises for
every push we’d get a push back and we
started to wonder if we needed a new
approach and then I met also Olivetti
she was a grad student we were in a
meeting with some MIT administrators and
like me she was passionate about the
environment but it was clear that she
had the ear of the administrators in a
different way and at one point in the
meeting she said Jason it seems like
your approach here is someone should do
something or we’re here to tell you what
you should do my approach has always
been we’re here to help that gave me
pause I kind of tensed up and I realized
a couple things you know one is I wasn’t
seeing things from their perspective I
was asking them to do all the work when
in fact we all needed each other and I
had to let go of something if we were
gonna move forward I had to let go of
feeling right and righteous and certain
about our agenda of feeling safe among
our allies yelling from the sidelines
these worked for me like a kind of bait
and they kept me stuck and but I was
ready to get unstuck so just for the
moment in that meeting I took a deep
breath and I let it go and I took on
this approach like we’re here to help
and almost immediately the tone of the
conversation shifted we got into action
we focused on what students could do
mapping campus energy use brewing
biodiesel and the administration also
stepped up you know launched a task
force took invested in campus
sustainability because now we were
allies and we unleashed a wave of
creativity and innovation because when
we let go
we get going now this idea of bait you
know other people have looked at this
and they’re Harvard psychologist Robert
Keegan and Lisa Leahy they talk about
this as our hidden competing commitments
so yeah we’re committed to moving
forward on some issue that we care about
but we’re also have these hidden
competing commitments to preserving a
sense of ourselves as right and
righteous to maintaining that feeling of
certainty and safety and so we stay
stuck we all stay stuck think about how
much benefit we get from polarization
think of all the great comments you get
on your Facebook feeds or your Twitter
stream when you you know from people on
your side when you get in a good jab
against the other side right politicians
love to fire up their base but so do we
the challenge is that you know signaling
our allegiance to our side it doesn’t
solve problems it doesn’t generate new
ideas it doesn’t design and test policy
to do that we have to let go of the bait
and start listening to other people’s
perspectives and when we do that we can
start to find out what they are holding
on to and hear another concept becomes
really useful this time from behavioral
economics it’s called loss aversion
scores of experiments have shown that we
focus on what we have to lose we’d
rather give we’d rather miss out on $100
payoff then give up the $50 we already
have in our pocket the reason you might
resist my environmental agenda isn’t
because you don’t care about your
children or about the polar bears more
about the polar bears children it’s that
my environmental tax might cost you
hard-earned money my regulation might
cost your flexibility your freedom my
green cleaning product might
leave mildew on your shower tile and so
if I’m asking you to give up on
something that you value that you care
about for what I’m offering then there’s
no deal no matter how self-righteous and
and noisy I can get but if instead we
listen for what other people value and
we take it seriously we can generate new
ideas that neither of us could have
thought of alone so let me let me let me
offer a metaphor think about buying a
car five years ago if I said to you I’ve
got this great car to sell you it’s
energy-efficient you’ll save money on
gas you’ll reduce your carbon footprint
you might have pushed back and said yeah
but it’s not going to be a little slow
off the starting block you know I got
places to go I can’t be late and if you
bought that SUV or that sports car I
would judge you mercilessly from the
comfort of my holy Toyota Prius but now
think about the next generation electric
car companies Tesla BMW Chevy what
they’re saying is well we’re actually
going to take both of these concerns
seriously power and environment and you
might think you have to make that
trade-off but actually here’s a car that
has the power and acceleration of a
luxury sports sedan and the footprint of
that Prius they’re not asking us to let
go of our desire for a nice powerful car
they’re asking us to let go of our fear
of the trade-off and it turns out that
there is a tool that you can use to take
conversations in that kind of a
direction we call it transformative
contrasting sometimes when conversations
get really polarized you have to draw a
contrast between what they expect of you
and what you’re there to do between the
trade-off they fear that they’ll have to
make and the new possibilities that
you’re there to open think about the
National Organization on disability that
od they are known for creating the
American Disabilities
act and they would run into so many
businesses who would say oh she’s the a
da it cost me so much money to build
those wheelchair ramps so much red tape
the businesses were focused on what they
had to lose so the noge started creating
a different kind of conversation they
said with two businesses they said look
given your past experience you might
expect us to get stuck with being
righteous and certain about our agenda
and you might think that I’m going to
pursue solutions that force us into a
trade-off increase your costs increase
the hassle of building or maintaining
your facility but that’s not what we’re
here to do what we want to do is we want
to help you increase the value of your
business by attracting talent that you
couldn’t have attracted before among
populations that wouldn’t been able to
work where you in your facility and and
in the process we want to try to
strengthen your business so let’s work
together to break those real or
perceived trade-offs and this approach
has worked that the entity has now
worked with companies like Lowe’s and
Starbucks to increase access to talent
by creating accessible workplaces and
increase employee engagement across the
board and community goodwill
strengthening the businesses in ways
they hadn’t anticipated and so now you
could imagine there’s some businesses
that weren’t on board with the more
activist agenda now suddenly have the
most to gain from working with the nodd
so we’ve brought this this
transformative contrasting approach to
friends and industry so let’s say that
I’ve got a mutual fund of socially and
environmentally responsible companies
it’ll be great you can feel good about
your investments and then you’ll say
whoa whoa whoa whoa it’s not gonna slow
the growth of my retirement fund our
friends Sean and Rob worked for a big
investment management firm called MF s
and they were running into exactly this
challenge investors were saying yeah
sorry we can’t do that socially
responsible stuff we have a duty to
maximize our return
the door was closed and so they did some
contrasting they said I got it you’re
you’re worried about that trade-off and
you should be because some past funds
have made those trade-offs but that’s
not what we’re here to do what we want
to do is manage the risks of social and
environmental disruption harness the
benefits of environmental technology
increase return while investing
responsibly and that approach opened the
doors both inside the organization and
with their clients now again these
examples are with inside organizations
or with customers will this could this
really move our nation forward and I
think it can because a lot of the big
social environmental economic issues we
face they show up in mundane everyday
ways with the people closest to us and
that means that the power is in your
hands it’s in all of our hands so think
of a conversation where you have gotten
stuck with you know a person where the
relationship matters to you and the
issue matters to you and notice that in
that context there’s something that
you’re standing for there’s something
that you want to have happen but you
might also be holding on to that bait of
being right righteous certain safe take
a deep breath and locate the bait and
let it go and then acknowledge what the
other side values acknowledge the things
they’re worried about losing or giving
up acknowledge the trade-offs they might
fear and draw the contrast let them know
that you’re not there to trade-off their
values for yours help them let go of
that concern and then what becomes
possible is that you can start inventing
together you can generate new ideas that
neither of you could have thought of
alone I know this approach works my
co-author and I have seen dozens of
people break through gridlock in their
immediate relationships and then build
the confidence
to step onto a wider stage because you
know if you can talk to your boss or
your neighbor or your uncle you can talk
to your city councilmen or your
congressperson
in fact I believe that if we can get
good at this we can get our politicians
and our business leaders to join our
conversations we don’t have to wait
around for the next speech or tweet we
can figure out how to create living wage
health care for all and a thriving
economy we can protect the climate and
create good jobs we have to look around
it’s up to us to create a new tapestry
of conversations one where we don’t have
to change each other’s minds we don’t
have to agree but we do have to really
engage with each other and if we can do
that we can go from being stuck to being
unstoppable and it just starts with a
conversation so let’s get going
[Applause] [Music]
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