"If disagreement is a tree, anxiety and cognitive dissonance would be the water and air that help the tree grow, and the fruit that we have spoken of in passing up until now – security, growth, connection, and enjoyment – is what the tree produces. A disagreement that’s oriented entirely around the fruit of security will never yield productive questions because in those conversations information and questions are used to attack and defend our positions. There’s no reason to ask your enemy a real question, because the assumption is that they see uncertainty as a vulnerability and will try to use it against you—and vice versa.

"In order to shift out of battle mode, we need to remember to value different kinds of outcomes, reorienting the purpose of the conversation away from security and toward growth, connection, and enjoyment. When you do this, incidentally, security also comes along indirectly. Each of these four fruits of disagreement can be sought after individually, but the art of productive disagreement will ultimately show us how to seek all of them together."

Book Excerpt: Why Are We Yelling?: The Art of Productive Disagreement