A Bridge To Mentorship & Beyond
Summary
As political and social divisions increasingly shape the way we communicate, work, and relate to one another, navigating conflict requires more than simply finding the right argument. It requires curiosity, empathy, active listening, and a willingness to understand perspectives different from our own.
In this episode of Conversations in the Future of Work, Rachel Cossar sits down with Neil McGaraghan, a negotiation and conflict resolution expert and instructor at Harvard Law School.
Drawing on his experience in commercial litigation, alternative dispute resolution, facilitation, and dispute systems design, Neil explores the challenges of polarization, the role of psychological safety in workplace conversations, and why understanding others is often more valuable than trying to persuade them.
Together, they examine how leaders can build stronger relationships across differences, how conflict can become an opportunity for growth, and whether AI can help develop essential communication skills without weakening the human connections those skills are meant to support.
Please share your overview of where discourse lies currently. Are we at our most polarized? Is there recency bias there? What’s your view?
Neil acknowledges that today’s political and social divisions can feel unprecedented, but he cautions against overlooking historical context.
Throughout history, societies have experienced periods of significant political tension, social unrest, and deeply divided public opinion. From the Civil Rights Movement to earlier periods of American history, people have repeatedly faced conflicts that felt overwhelming and difficult to resolve.
Neil suggests that recency bias influences how we experience polarization because current events feel more immediate and personal than historical conflicts we have only read about.
However, he also introduces the concept of affective polarization, where individuals become emotionally attached to political or social identities.
This form of polarization can be particularly challenging because people increasingly identify with groups before forming opinions on individual issues.
Interestingly, Neil explains that research comparing people’s actual views often reveals more common ground than their political identities might suggest.
Social media adds another layer to this challenge. Algorithms and emotionally charged content can reinforce existing beliefs, encourage outrage, and limit exposure to alternative perspectives.
Ultimately, Neil emphasizes that while polarization is a genuine concern, understanding the role of identity, information, and historical perspective can help us approach disagreement with greater curiosity and nuance.
How can leaders move through highly sensitive ideological tension to facilitate constructive, respectful dialogue without sacrificing psychological safety or core organizational values?
For Neil, psychological safety is an essential foundation for navigating difficult workplace conversations.
Employees need to feel comfortable expressing different perspectives without fearing that disagreement will lead to exclusion, punishment, or damaged professional relationships.
Neil recognizes that this is particularly challenging when conversations involve deeply held political, social, or personal values.
Rather than simply discouraging sensitive discussions, he suggests that organizations can benefit from creating environments where employees learn to listen, remain curious, and recognize one another as individuals beyond their opinions.
He shares an example from his team at Harvard Law School, where weekly meetings begin with poetry and a reflection exercise called “Rose and Thorn.”
During these conversations, colleagues share personal successes and challenges, gradually developing a deeper understanding of one another’s experiences, motivations, and values.
Over time, these small moments of connection help build trust and strengthen relationships.
Neil suggests that when people already know and care about one another, disagreements become easier to navigate because they are less likely to reduce someone to a single opinion or identity.
The opportunity for leaders is to build cultures where respect, curiosity, and meaningful human connection are established before difficult conversations arise.
What is the hardest mindset shift professionals need to make when moving from “winning an argument” to “resolving a system”?
Neil identifies one of the most challenging shifts as moving away from the need to persuade others and toward a genuine desire to understand them.
When people enter disagreements focused on winning, they often become more concerned with defending their positions than exploring another person’s perspective.
This becomes especially difficult when identity, personal values, or close relationships are involved.
Neil explains that people can find it particularly challenging to accept differing opinions from family members or individuals with whom they share similar backgrounds and experiences.
The assumption is often that if someone truly understands our reasoning, they should eventually agree with us.
But Neil challenges that expectation.
He emphasizes the distinction between understanding and agreeing, explaining that productive conversations do not always require consensus.
In some cases, we may never fully understand another person’s experiences or perspective, and that does not prevent us from treating them with respect.
Instead of viewing disagreement as a competition, Neil encourages approaching it as an opportunity to learn.
He also reminds listeners that difficult conversations do not need to be resolved in a single interaction.
Sometimes, recognizing that we have become overly focused on persuasion and returning to the conversation with renewed curiosity is an important part of the process.
Ultimately, the goal is not necessarily to change another person’s mind but to create the conditions for meaningful understanding and more constructive relationships.
As emerging technologies like AI change how decisions, disputes, and institutional policies are made, what core ethical frameworks must leaders maintain to ensure technology doesn’t strip away human agency and due process?
While the conversation does not explore a specific legal or institutional framework for AI governance, Neil and Rachel raise important questions about how technology may influence human judgment, communication, and decision-making.
Their discussion focuses particularly on whether AI should support the development of human capabilities or become a substitute for the interpersonal work those capabilities require.
Rachel explains how Virtual Sapiens approaches AI as a practice tool, allowing individuals to rehearse challenging conversations in a supportive environment before engaging with real people.
This distinction is important because technology can create opportunities for experimentation and skill development without necessarily replacing human interaction.
Neil also raises concerns about AI systems that are designed to be consistently friendly, agreeable, and accommodating.
When individuals primarily interact with systems that reinforce their perspectives or avoid disagreement, they may become less practiced at navigating the discomfort and uncertainty of real human conversations.
The broader consideration is how organizations can adopt AI while preserving opportunities for independent judgment, curiosity, and meaningful human engagement.
Rather than treating technology as a replacement for human understanding, the conversation points toward using it intentionally to strengthen the skills people need to make decisions, manage differences, and interact responsibly with others.
From your perspective in learning and clinical practice, where can technology genuinely assist in conflict management—and what essential human skills, like empathy, active listening, and nuance, risk being lost if we over-automate mediation?
Neil sees potential in technology that helps individuals practice and develop communication skills, particularly when it creates opportunities that may be difficult to replicate consistently with other people.
Rachel describes how Virtual Sapiens uses short AI-powered practice conversations to help users experiment with different approaches to challenging interactions.
These experiences allow individuals to build confidence, reflect on their communication styles, and prepare for real-world conversations.
However, Neil also recognizes the potential risks of relying too heavily on AI for interpersonal engagement.
He notes that many AI interactions are designed to be agreeable and supportive, which may reduce opportunities to practice navigating disagreement, uncertainty, and emotional discomfort.
Real human conversations involve unpredictable reactions, different perspectives, emotional complexity, and the need to interpret subtle interpersonal signals.
These experiences help develop empathy, active listening, curiosity, and the ability to respond thoughtfully when someone sees the world differently.
Neil also considers whether more sophisticated AI interactions could eventually help individuals strengthen empathy and curiosity, although he remains cautious about making definitive predictions.
The central question is whether technology encourages people to become better communicators or simply makes communication easier by removing the challenges that help those skills develop.
Ultimately, Neil and Rachel highlight the importance of maintaining genuine human interaction while exploring how AI can provide meaningful opportunities for practice, reflection, and personal growth.
The future of conflict management may not depend on choosing between technology and human connection, but on designing tools that strengthen our ability to listen, understand, and engage constructively with one another.
Transcript
Rachel Cossar:
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Conversations in the Future of Work. I am your host, Rachel Cossar, and I am delighted to be joined by Neil McGarrigan, who is going to introduce himself shortly, and we are going to get into some very interesting, very relevant concepts around conversation, difficult conversations, negotiation, and ultimately trying to find common ground. So Neil, welcome to the show.
Neil McGaraghan:
Thanks very much for having me, Rachel. A pleasure to be here and I think my first task is to say a little bit about where I am from and how I got to where I’m sitting today. I started my career as a as a lawyer and still practice some even to this day, but for 17-ish years I was a commercial litigator and then for the past 10 years I have been I’ve transitioned quite a bit away from the litigation space into the alternative dispute resolution space and negotiation and and conflict engagement and conflict management, and I now teach.
At Harvard Law School, I teach negotiation, I teach sometimes a course on facilitation, and I work with students doing dispute systems design work, which means helping in some cases workplaces, but in other cases communities and courts think about the way they use systems to more effectively and with better outcomes and sort of more just outcomes resolve and engage conflict. So that’s the work that I get to do now. A lot of it is workplace related and a lot of this difficult conversations related and using some whole range of skills and tools to be able to help people better think about using conflict as a source of value and using opportunities that present are presented by conflict to to really to make things better for everyone. So that’s what I get to do now. I teach and practice in that space.
Rachel Cossar:
Wonderful. I’m honestly fascinated by this area. one of the first questions I have is I I feel like particularly in the media or or even just listening to to people in your surroundings or environment, you know, there’s a lot of the you know, this is the most divided we’ve ever been as a country or whatever. There’s a lot of these narratives that are being thrown around and I guess I’m curious
From your perspective, zooming out.
Are we a a l a little too like focused on everything that’s happening now and we kind of forget the broader context of like maybe times where there there was even more conflict, like which I feel like is is the answer, but you know, I and I’m not sure if I’m articulating this pro properly, but sometimes in people’s how people’s attention and perspective is shaped, there’s a lot of recency bias. And I I guess I’m just curious your thoughts on like the evolution of conflict, whether it’s sociopolitical or just, you know
Neil McGaraghan:
Yeah.
Rachel Cossar:
the way the way we’re exposed to news at such a larger scale these days. Like what are your our thoughts on like where we are today and the state of conflict and, you know, polarization in particular?
Neil McGaraghan:
Yeah, well one thing I didn’t mention about what I get to teach at Harvard Law School is a reading group on polarization in and political dialogue. So this is on topic for things that I get to talk to students about and work with colleagues about
Rachel Cossar:
Nice.
Neil McGaraghan:
and think about and read about some. I think you’re probably right that there is a lot of truth to the sort of the recency bias or a lot of legitimacy to that l recency bias notion that we feel like this is as bad as it’s ever been because we feel it. I mean that’s the key word there, I guess. It’s something that we can put ourselves into the middle of and notice how it affects us. And so it feels certainly more real than anything that we you know haven’t experienced. I’m not old enough to have remember to be able to remember what things were like in the civil rights era. I guess I was born just sort of in the in the middle of it, but I don’t recall it. having read about what
Rachel Cossar:
Yeah.
Neil McGaraghan:
the environment was like and some of the challenges that
the nation faced at the time were pr it was dramatic and there was a lot political violence, there was a lot of tension and a lot of I I’m sure at what at the time felt very, very real polarization and like things that we’re never gonna get over, right? And I bet at the time they felt like that was the worst things had ever been. And I’m not I wouldn’t doubt that if you were to backtrack a couple of decades you could find another time where things felt pretty dire. And you can of course go back and find the civil war and the post-war era and you go back even further to the founding and you can find a a lot of to read about how polarized and polarizing politics were throughout history. So I guess this is a long way of saying it feels awful now and I also think probably we share that with a lot of eras where it felt awful and the worst that it’s ever been.
I do think that there is I know that there is some research that shows we are more polarized in some ways than we have been at other times in our history. And there’s this idea of affective polarization, which means we have been sorted into groups and tribes. And the importance of our tribe today f is incredibly meaningful to us and drives a lot of our feelings about polarization and drives where people live and where they go to school and who they’re gonna vote for, of course, and what they think about issues to some degree.
But the actual political polarization is not as dire as the affective polarization. And so when you conduct surveys of people and ask them their views on issues, you find a lot more overlap between people who identify as right or left than you might imagine considering how polarized we are from a tribe tribal perspective. I don’t know. I I want to make sure I stay kind of on your question. So let me let me put a little pin there maybe and see where you’d wanna to go next or what maybe I haven’t addressed.
Rachel Cossar:
Well, so it’s interesting because there are a couple of things that you said that I I think are particularly interesting. One of them is this like this act affective kind of felt sense of polarization or or and like identity, right? ‘Cause I think
Neil McGaraghan:
Yes.
Rachel Cossar:
the way we identify with what’s going on is part of what, you know, I I I have I feel like I notice a lot of extremes.
Of like it’s like all or nothing over here, or it’s all or nothing over here, and it’s a little challenging to find that nuanced or even have a nuanced conversation where parts of each side can be right at the same time or wrong at the same time, right? do you feel that that plays into a lot of your work? This notion of you know, my thoughts and my opinions equal my identity, and therefore it becomes a lot harder to have
conversations or to to reach common ground ’cause it feels like you’re having to give up so much more.
Neil McGaraghan:
Why yes, though I I I think it might be flipped that my identity translates to my ideas and my opinions.
Rachel Cossar:
Uh-huh.
Neil McGaraghan:
and it’s a funny thing about affective polarization, but a lot of the way we feel about issues is driven by our identity rather than vice versa. And that’s one thing about political polarization that used to be more true. Our ideas and our beliefs and our views and our values could be identified with a particular political identity. and it was much more well defined. And if you were voting for a
Republican, you had some sense of what the person stands for and what the platform was. If you were voting for a Democrat, same thing. And you could it made it easier for people to cast votes based on what they thought their political vote was going to get them. Today it’s a little bit reverse. We identify first with party, and then that helps us sort into how we feel about issues and beliefs. But yes, those two things become very intertwined, regardless of whether it’s the chicken or the egg. But yes, our identity is
Stake in a lot of the conversations that we have on difficult topics. even when, as you say, there are there’s probably a lot of ground that we could tread together that where we disagree with someone, but we could find a lot that we are more willing and able to agree on. It’s just hard when our identity is at stake and feels threatened and feels challenged. For sure, that’s at stake. That’s what’s happening in in some part, anyway.
Rachel Cossar:
Tot totally, yeah. And the other thing I think that I’ve noticed in the past,
Know if I would say like I feel like it was I feel like it predated COVID, but I think in as with many things, you know, COVID really like it just what is the word like fortified a lot of this stuff and and accelerated or increased you know some of the friction. But we also from a news perspective are exposed to so much more.
information, a lot of which in many ways doesn’t relate to us. and I I guess I’m curious, do you ever look at like the difference between like local politics and then like global international like affairs and how different people either show up within conversations when maybe from like a cooperative perspective or even from like a
a thoughts and opinions perspective. But like if I observe people in local politics, you know, those are decisions that like really actually im influence and touch your daily life versus some of these more not hypothetical because they’re happening, but they’re not happening directly to you, subjects where where people take on these very you know, ardent opinions. I think there’s a there’s a term for it where it’s like the farther away from something, the more passionately you argue.
About it do you know what I’m talking about?
Neil McGaraghan:
So I don’t know that I don’t know the term, but I think the concept is one that you could probably find a lot of good examples on.
Rachel Cossar:
Yeah.
Neil McGaraghan:
and I wonder if some of that does have to do with identifying with your tribe and realizing that even if it is not something that affects you day to day, it you know it affects your tribe and it affects your tribe, then it affects your identity. And because of those things you tend to have this much stronger view of it even though it’s not nearby. And I I mean one of I don’t know how I I don’t but by this mean to give up any of my own personal politics, but one of the things that I know is a curious aspect about the way we think about immigration is that a lot of the argument happens at places that are not near borders.
Rachel Cossar:
Yeah.
Neil McGaraghan:
and that doesn’t mean that you know immigration doesn’t have doesn’t affect communities all over the country but a lot of the debate and the vote
Aspects of debate happen in places that you would imagine don’t have quite the same exposure to a much higher incidence of immigration at around it at and around the borders. And so what your comment about things that happen so far away can sometimes be with the areas where we like form
Rachel Cossar:
Yes.
Neil McGaraghan:
really strong opinions. That is an example that came to mind. I don’t know if that’s what you were thinking of. Yeah, yeah.
Rachel Cossar:
Yeah. A no a hundred percent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or you’ll see it sometimes
in I think it’s been used. I’ll have to I’ll I’ll I’ll take a look later and I’ll send you the there’s it’s like a principle or something. but you see it like a lot in academia with with academics who who spend their lives like studying theory, right? Versus like the application of the theory and then sometimes it’s I think it’s been used to describe if there is like a certain academic who’s like a little bit detached from how theory turns into reality and practice, right? Which of course you see all the time and we’ve seen across history with any of these like political ideologies, right? Like on paper some of them sound great and then lo and behold you attach like real human behavior to it and it doesn’t turn out in the same way, right?
Neil McGaraghan:
Right. yeah, and you know, another thing that you mentioned, I I think anyway, I heard you say something about the way in which our access to information or our exposure to information has such a huge impact on us and
That also is tr true and not to pin this on the the prevalence of social media, but certainly it has had at least one effect of it has been to allow people to hear information that already kind of resonates with their point of view and excludes other points of view and gets them to lean further and further in. And one of the devices I think that has become quite effective on social media is to use language that is really polar.
polarized and polarizing and leans into you know
moral outrage and anger and hatred and those kinds of things that get people’s they get more clicks and they get more attention and they get people really fired up in ways that they might not if they were it not well not on social media in the first place. but one study I just recently came across they took people’s I think it I don’t know if they did this when Twitter was still Twitter or they were using X, but anyway they were able to
why use an AI based
Bought to organize people’s the threads, the comments in their in their Twitter feed or their X feed. And they were able to sort it so that they took the least polarizing language and put it at the very bottom, and they put posts that were less polarizing at the very top. And or they did it in the reverse order for some of the people in the study. And invariably the people whose feeds led with more charged, more polarized, more emotionally sort of engaged language.
up being having holding much more more extreme ideas than did the people whose feed was led with less polarized language. And so that effect
Rachel Cossar:
Yeah.
Neil McGaraghan:
is very real. And I think it’s the way that those platforms are in many ways designed to get to get engagement and to get more views and more clicks and more shares and more likes and that kind of thing.
Rachel Cossar:
Hundred percent.
And I think the impact is really yeah, quite far reaching. it’s interesting because my Instagram is like very liberal progressive and my Twitter is very conservative. Just I don’t know why. I think it’s just what people share with me where, because I’m not all that active on them, but it is crazy to see the same event reported on.
In two completely different ways from two completely different perspectives. And both actually, the way they’re framed, the way that the story is, you know, crafted are very convincing, right? And so then to your point of like existing in an echo chamber and having certain views just reinforced it in complete isolation of any exposure to the other side, right?
Is I think a big part of also maybe what contributes to that like vicious cycle of you know identity and opinion and and all that, right?
Neil McGaraghan:
Yeah.
Rachel Cossar:
Because of course all those stories, like humans, we’re so moved by story and narrative, it’s always going to speak to like our core values, who we are as a person, how we identify, right?
Neil McGaraghan:
Yeah.
Rachel Cossar:
which makes that like conversation really difficult to then have with someone who identifies with the
like diametrically opposed perspective.
Neil McGaraghan:
Yeah. Yeah.
And so one I think one what that ends up meaning is that one really, really challenging thing for people to do in conversation with others is to imagine that their version of the facts is you know well, first of all, may not be entirely accurate, but even if it if it is accurate, is is one version. and there are there’s another version that somebody else holds that is i really hard for people to get curious about. I already know what
happened, I already know what the facts are. I know the situation. Why should I explore your view, Rachel, that is so different and does not sync with the way I see it. And the challenge I I think for people who are working on getting people to cross f through and and work through divides is well multifold, but for sure getting curious about the way that somebody else sees something differently than you and why. And being open to the possibility that that’s worth hearing.
Okay.
Rachel Cossar:
Totally.
I love that. The cure I think curiosity is such a powerful I don’t know, you would call it a value or even like a skill. It’s certainly something that can be developed, you know, once you’re aware of it. But I do think that it’s like being non reactive and curious and trying to be trying to withhold judgment. But all those things are such muscles, you know, they take so much time to like develop and yeah.
Neil McGaraghan:
Yeah, and they c it can be scary too, because when I am curious about your views, it exposes me p yeah at least what I what I what I what I’m thinking when I do that is that I this exposes me to potentially having to say, I was wrong, or having somebody else think that
Rachel Cossar:
Totally.
Neil McGaraghan:
I might agree with them if I’m just asking questions about their viewpoint. And I don’t want you to think that I agree with you, right? I wouldn’t hate that. I would hate to have that be the message. I j but so that makes it really hard for people to get curious because we fear that’s what’s gonna happen.
Rachel Cossar:
Yeah. Right.
Neil McGaraghan:
That’s right.
Rachel Cossar:
Absolutely.
and still especially like if that if you’re not able to detach that line of questioning or reasoning or consideration from like who you view yourself as a person and your like values and all that. It’s like very it’s very threatening, right? Yeah, so okay. So then the other thing that you you that came up for me
In your earlier response is something that I also feel like became accentuated during the pandemic, but it it’s like a lot of these polit or whatever, sociopolitical opinions, taking sides, whatever, values coming into the workplace, right? And a pressure on the leaders to be to take a side also.
within their organization? and I guess like, what are your thoughts on how leaders can move through like h highly sensitive ideological tension, whether it’s social, whether it’s political, whether it’s something happening internally with the company, whether it’s something that’s happening internationally that d doesn’t feel like it has all that much impact. but how can they facilitate constructive and respectful dialogue without sacrificing psychological safety or or core organizational values and maybe even having boundaries.
Neil McGaraghan:
you’re asking a question there’s probably people who are much more qualified to answer than I am, but before you said the word psychological safety, it was the first thought coming to mind. And of course, Amy Edmondson’s work on on psychological safety is really fascinating and important for leaders at all levels. And the I guess the idea that was coming to mind is including within that I don’t know the way you think about psychological safety, the ability to not be penalized for sharing a point of view and to model that having different opinions is helpful and good and constructive and worthwhile rather than something that subjects a person to d discipline or being shunned or being you know pushed out. And that’s really hard because some of the ways in which we interact today definitely carry the risk of people being shunned or othered or sidelined. you know.
So there’s a fear around I think taking seriously the idea that, hey, we can all share our opinions here. and
Rachel Cossar:
Yeah.
Neil McGaraghan:
I don’t know that the answer is okay, then just don’t share any opinions at work because that’s very unsatisfying to a lot of people. Some people would say that. Look, I’m just gonna go to work, I’ll do my job, and
Rachel Cossar:
Right. Yeah.
Neil McGaraghan:
I’ll go home. I don’t want to be bothered with anything political or challenging or difficult or or yeah, hot hot button.
I mean I don’t know, I’m I’m s I’ I’m thinking a little bit about the Ed Sheeran and McLemore stuff that’s happening in Ed Sharon’s view that hey I shouldn’t have to I c I’m just here to I’m just here to make music.
And the reaction to that has been, maybe, and you’re a big you are a public figure. and maybe it’s not okay to just pretend like there aren’t big issues t to to deal with. and I don’t know the right answer to that question. I honestly don’t. I wanna respect people’s decisions to to stay a remain apolitical in their public life, or in their leadership life at a you know, in the workplace.
My own personal view is that making space for people to share their ideas even when they’re different actually makes them better, stronger, more sort of trusting of each other, more capable of solving problems together, more open to learning from each other. so even though it’s hard, and
Rachel Cossar:
Yeah.
Neil McGaraghan:
I don’t s suppose that people have a lot of time in the busy, you know, day and and among the the things that the the business has to get done to stop and say, hey, let’s have some, you know, facilities.
Facilitated dialogue around really hot and difficult topics.
Rachel Cossar:
Mm-hmm.
Neil McGaraghan:
But making space for it seems to me like one of those things where it’s an opportunity for people to grow and learn from each other rather than to stifle it and you know have people wondering about what their neighbor thinks, or not their neighbor, the person who sits in the office next to them, or making assumptions about what their beliefs are and then judging them rather than sitting down saying, hey, let’s why don’t we make some space to talk about this? But I don’t have great solutions for how you make that happen in the busy work-a-day life.
Rachel Cossar:
Yeah. I think it is a very challenging and what feels to me to be a newer
scenario or or series of scenarios that leaders have to deal with because I do think historically it’s been very like your your work is your work and your life is your personal life and you clock in and in many ways people would show up completely differently than they would at home with their families, right? And and the issues with that ca can appear to be, at least now I think that we’re on the other side, pretty obvious, right? Like you want people to show up to work with their whole selves and to feel like they can be authentic and la la la and all that.
But that that does introduce like a ton of tension, particularly given where we are with some of that polarization. and then it and then the question is like, okay, so if we are going to welcome a lot more of everyone into the workplace, which can be a very powerful thing to your point, like there has to then be mechanisms for making space facilitating conversations, right? Develop and then developing skills to support those versus
Neil McGaraghan:
Yeah.
Rachel Cossar:
kind of just thinking it’s all gonna like maybe naturally figure itself out, which like I just kinda don’t think that’s realistic. I think it’s very, very hard. I think it’s a lot of attention.
Neil McGaraghan:
Yeah, it is.
Yeah. Well here’s an idea though. I I’m curious to know your thoughts on this too. The so just as by way of example, the the clinic that I am part of at at at Harvard, with there are six of us, but we’ve ranged anywhere from six to eight, but anyway we meet once a week for a staff meeting, right? And
Every staff meeting starts with somebody new each week opening with a poem of their choice. And that is followed by 10 or 15 minutes or so of what we call rose and thorn, and people share what’s going on for them. Something that’s either really like a success and a victory and a and a rosy thing, or something that is feeling thorny. And over the years that I have been here, I have learned a lot about my colleagues and what motivates them, what they care about, what is important to them, some of their family situations.
And you know, it takes time to build the comfort to be able to share that kind of thing. And the value is I know my colleagues as three-dimensional human beings rather than the paper version that shows up and does this thing and goes home. And in fairness, I think we are all pretty politically aligned anyway. And if somebody had a view that is sort of very different from mine, it would be so much easier for me to.
To want to understand them based on how well I know them as a human being. And so we have spent a lot of time curating this space where it’s okay to say something personal about yourself and share who you are as a human rather than who you are as a political beast. And I just wonder if that was the sort of the baseline that people used. You don’t necessarily have to sit around looking for opportunities to hold politically, you know, politically charged conversations in a skillful way.
what you really need to be doing is developing people’s ability to listen to each other, to care about each other, to understand each other as humans, so that if there are differences, the the the risk that it turns into a you know a real clash are much lower and the opportunity, the ability for people to work through it and talk to each other about, why do you see that so differently goes goes way, way up. and that’s a pretty simple thing to work into a workplace. That’s like
Rachel Cossar:
Right. Mm-hmm.
Neil McGaraghan:
I said, that’s fifteen minutes a week.
Rachel Cossar:
Yep.
Right. I mean there’s a nice framework around that too. And I think I do think that a lot of it is in asking the right questions or having a series of questions that can get to something that’s easier to understand and relate to faster, right? Whether it’s like like y I think you framed it earlier really specifically where it’s like, that’s that’s so interesting, like like what is it that you’ve experienced that led you to
to think that or to have that opinion, like what what was what has been different about your experience than mine, then I hold this opinion and you hold this one. And I actually find that if you can get to the core of like, well, because I experienced this and therefore I feel or I think this, you know, you can be like, wow, okay, I hadn’t I didn’t have an experience like that at all. And so I feel differently. And you can at least understand, right? You st you don’t you don’t have to do to agree. There’s such a difference between understanding and agreeing that I think can also be really powerful. Like I understand that. I don’t agree with it and that’s okay.
Rachel Cossar:
Right.
Neil McGaraghan:
I really like that that’s such an important point, difference between understanding and agreeing. and being able to accept a person that d has a different view because you understand them a little bit better. there’s also this great article, Gurevich is the man who wrote it study, turned into a scholarly article called The Power of Not Understanding.
Rachel Cossar:
Mm.
Neil McGaraghan:
which is the realization that in some cases what’s really needed is to just accept that you you won’t understand where somebody is coming from, maybe because the experience is so dramatically different, or for some other reason and his work was done mostly in the context of Israel and and Palestine and the sort
Rachel Cossar:
Yes.
Neil McGaraghan:
of the the conflict that has been there for eight. This is an I mean probably a two decade old article.
Rachel Cossar:
Yeah.
Neil McGaraghan:
so the work that he was doing then maybe maps on to today in some ways also. But in any case
I don’t have to get all the way to the place where I understand. it’s
Rachel Cossar:
Yeah.
Neil McGaraghan:
it’s worth trying, it’s worth listening, it’s worth being curious, it’s worth like
Rachel Cossar:
Mm-hmm.
Neil McGaraghan:
letting you know that I value you. But some things are gonna be just beyond my ability to understand because I don’t share that same experience that you had that was so formative and so powerful for you. I just there’s no way I can have that same experience.
Rachel Cossar:
Right. Right.
And in a in a somewhat related note, I feel like part of that mindset shift that you’ve just described can also maybe help people get away from this feeling of wanting to win an argument. Right.
Like how do you like i would you s would you add anything to that if if if you know, you’re talking to someone who like I mean, I’m like this a hundred percent. I want I want to feel like I’m winning these
Neil McGaraghan:
Yeah. Yeah.
Rachel Cossar:
arguments and it’s like that’s really kind of maybe shouldn’t be the goal.
Neil McGaraghan:
Yeah. Yeah, I want to win or I want to persuade them to
Rachel Cossar:
Yes.
Neil McGaraghan:
yeah, right. that’s it’s hard not to fall into that.
Rachel Cossar:
Yeah.
Neil McGaraghan:
and I think
Think that’s particularly true. The better your relationship with the person, the closer the relationship. So in families, it’s much harder for people to accept
Rachel Cossar:
Yes. yes.
Neil McGaraghan:
that their family members see something so differently. And you can’t imagine that you can’t persuade them to see it the way you do. Right? We came from the same place, we grew up in the same way,
Rachel Cossar:
Yeah.
Neil McGaraghan:
we had the same parents, and yet I you see this so differently. I can’t accept that. You I must be able to persuade you. So, anyway, really challenging in families
Rachel Cossar:
Mm-hmm.
Neil McGaraghan:
and close personal.
relationships. And you’re right, or I think I I’m what I’m hearing in in what you said is that like maybe a little bit like the understanding and and agreeing are not the same. Discussing and learning and understanding is not the same as as having to persuade. In fact it’s the opposite of having to persuade.
But it’s but it’s hard not it’s hard not to do. Maybe that’s one of those things that
Rachel Cossar:
Yeah.
Neil McGaraghan:
is, you know, along with teaching yourself and and and and coaching and and training oneself to be curious about somebody else’s story, it is also coaching oneself to say this is not a place to try to w win or to lose, but to understand.
Rachel Cossar:
Right.
Neil McGaraghan:
And you know, maybe there’s something about it’s hard to do in the moment and you realize that you have maybe stepped a little further than you needed to in this sort of direction of trying to persuade and you come back to it another time and say, Hey, I think what I was trying to do is persuade you. Let’s start again. I I want to understand. And you like it’s not like it all has to be done in one sitting. I think that’s one thing maybe we forget too. It can be a process and probably sometimes should be a process. that’s okay.
Rachel Cossar:
Yeah. it’s it’s all yeah, it’s all very amazing. So the one other the last question I wanted to ask, kind of veering into the AI space a little bit. it’s fascinating to see the way people are interacting with AI, right? Particularly I think on that like relational level. And I’m curious, because virtual sapiens were very specific about
our AI being used to practice difficult conversations in a safe space to experiment, slalot, but they’re always like short conversations. The AI avatar is always different. You’re not building a relationship with the AI. And I just wonder if you see or are concerned about like
certain like human skills around empathy or like do do you see
Having conversations with AI as something that is going to be a net benefit to the way that humans then interact and converse, or do you see that it could be maybe something that starts to develop atrophy in some critical ways? Particularly related to like the interpersonal part of the human experience.
Neil McGaraghan:
Yeah. I mean I my general understanding of most people’s engagement with you know an an AI companion call it or a s an AI agent that they interact with is that the agent is pretty
Forgiving and friendly and agreeable and tries to sort of walk the a a line that avoids a lot of tension. And I suppose that’s a lot like being in your own echo chamber and hearing the same opinions and the same friends say the same things and you read the same opinions and that definitely does atrophy your ability to stay curious and open and w want to learn something about others. I should definitely
Definitely.
receptive, agreeable, friendly counterpart on AI works a little bit of that same function. But I’m no expert on AI. I’m I mean if anything, really a novice. I mean I love what you all do with it to make it a tool for people to practice and actually build their skills. And I don’t I don’t know what it would be like to be at a place where you could actually empathize with an AI agent or an A AI
personality to build real empathy skills. I don’t know. That would be a really lovely and fascinating way to build a sort of a relationship up that you actually have to have empathy with or for.
instead of as you say, in like little micro bursts and short practices, could you develop a real relationship? And I suppose AI has the capacity to do that. I mean, it seems to have the capacity to do an awful lot of things in the way we interact. why not have it be one that builds the ability to be more empathetic and more curious and more observant of others?
Rachel Cossar:
Yeah.
Neil McGaraghan:
I I mean I’m one of those people that worries about AI more than like ex exalts its
Rachel Cossar:
Yeah.
Neil McGaraghan:
sk it’s but I’m a little bit of a I’m well I told you I was born in the sixties, so I’m older than the lot of people are obviously who are coming up into the AI world in ways that are will sort of long outlast me.
Rachel Cossar:
Yeah.
Neil McGaraghan:
Yeah, I d I w I wish I wish I had something that was really easy, but I like what you all do with it. What I mean the the model
Rachel Cossar:
Mm.
Neil McGaraghan:
that you’re talking about. Let’s use it pr constructively to go let me practice. I I’ve got skills that
Rachel Cossar:
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Neil McGaraghan:
I’m missing and I can practice them here.
Rachel Cossar:
Mm-hmm.
Neil McGaraghan:
If I were to limit it to only talking to an an AI, then of course I don’t get the chance to to really practice it in the real world where you see people’s faces and you see the
Rachel Cossar:
Yes. Yeah.
Neil McGaraghan:
hurt look and or you see the joy and you’re able to react in real time to real emotion. a lot of that is visual and and auto and audio.
Neil McGaraghan:
you lose that obviously if you’re just practicing your skills with somebody who’s responding on a screen. Even if even if it’s just a friend on screen. I mean texting loses a lot of that.
Rachel Cossar:
Mm-hmm, yes. Well that’s the interesting thing is that obviously none of this comes none none of the way that or none of the facility with which we interact with AI comes in a vacuum, right? It’s all been kind of conditioned
over the course of the way we have evolved and technology has evolved alongside us in our communication habits, right? So we can actually surprise ourselves by, you know, a conversation we’ve had with an AI agent that feels so human or whatever and it’s just new wasn’t, you know, so because we also text with our mother and our husband and our partner or whatever via text too. So there’s a lot, I mean this is probably a a topic for another time, but I I do think that I I think that there’s a lot
To me, AI is like a psychopath that can be so convincing through its mimicry, but is not like it’s just not feeling those things. It’s it’s like, you know, it’s almost like just putting on a show to appease you because that’s what it knows it’s supposed to do to make you happy. And even if we were to find a way to create an AI that in a net positive way can help us develop empathy and listening and la la la.
it would still be something that I would be concerned about in the long run, I think, for the the expectation and the dependency that it might create and and some of the friction that it would take away because the reality is that like you know you have to go through so much mess with a human being to like make a relationship sticky and worthwhile and like good, you know.
Neil McGaraghan:
Yes, yes.
Rachel Cossar:
So anyways, Neil
Thank you so much. We’ve g we’ve gone way over my cute twenty-five minute limit as I kinda thought we would. But anything else you’d like to share with our audience before we wrap up today?
Neil McGaraghan:
no, only that I am really grateful to have had the chance to talk through some of these questions. They’re super important. They’re fun to wrestle with and they’re also that but they have really important implications for the way we interact with each other and sort of thinking for not just to the workplace but to our communities and like you said, like local events. We we need to be able to engage with each other in ways that at the moment it feels really challenging to do. And there are I think devices and tools and and and strategies and skills that we can build to do that better. And we’re
Moment that feels really hard and it’s maybe not all that different from other times in history, and we have managed to continue, and I think we can here too. just gonna take a little bit of work. I mean, things like what you’re doing, spread the word, like get more people listening and thinking about maybe imagining a different role for themselves and the discussions that they have with people that are hard ones. But anyway, I’m really grateful that you’re doing this and grateful that I got the chance to talk to today.
Rachel Cossar:
Well, thanks so much, Neil.
I think what you’re up to is so valuable and I’m excited for our audience to tune in. So thank you so much. And is LinkedIn the best place for people to follow your work? Okay. All right, perfect.
Neil McGaraghan:
I think that’s great. Yeah. Yeah.
Rachel Cossar:
Well, we’ll make sure to tie that in. as always, everyone, thank you for tuning in and we’ll see you next time.