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Resilience. What does that word mean to you? Perhaps building it is an important part of how you approach your work and life or it’s integral to how you lead your team. Perhaps it’s part of the values you have built into the culture of your organisation. Maybe it’s simply a buzzword.
Resilience, as a term, covers many aspects of our work and personal lives: how we deal with setbacks, how we respond to challenges, how we deal with and manage workloads, and, crucially, how we respond to the people we work alongside (some of whom we may like and some we may not).
We will have an instinctive approach to those situations and, with varying degrees of success, we will have created our own innate levels of resilience. Whether we would consciously name it resilience or not, what you will have created is a ‘method’ or a way of working that helps you deal with, and then recover from, challenging situations.
This is good news. We would encourage everyone to be conscious of their own methods because doing something on purpose and with clarity makes it repeatable: if I can break it down step by step, I can repeat the process.
Here’s the potential problem: often the methods we’ve created may relate to objective and tangible activities. For example, if you once struggled to manage your time and workload but have learned a few techniques to help, it’s likely you can handle the challenge of a busy schedule. You now know what to do to recover from a stressful period of activity. In turn, this improves your resilience.
The problem may occur when our resilience is connected to a challenging relationship and the difficult conversations that may occur repeatedly as a result.
Building resilience levels when it comes to handling difficult conversations is hard. When we are in conflict with people it can cause hardship and adversity, primarily because it can be emotionally draining and because the solution can be more complicated, less linear. It’s not a ‘do this’ and ‘get that’ equation.
Focusing on disagreement is not an obvious route to increasing resilience in these situations. We would disagree. When we work with individuals or decision-making groups, we know that disagreement, managed well, leads to more trust and connection in relationships.
So, how can disagreement improve resilience? The answer to that question begins with two important steps:
In our previous article (Transform, Mar/Apr 2025), you will have read that language matters when it comes to shaping culture, informing our mindset and shifting perceptions. Before we get into the myths around disagreement, let’s start with a small change. We recommend that you expand your description of disagreement to ‘well-formed’ disagreement.
This is a simple change and it is incredibly effective when it comes to how we feel about disagreeing with others: it’s not chaotic or adversarial but structured and well-formed.
1. It’s better to have difficult conversations ‘in the moment’.
With this myth, we convince ourselves that having a conversation ‘in the moment’ is better and less stressful because it’s over and done with quickly – well, technically it is, but only for you. The problem is, it’s often not a repeatable or helpful conversation and so the stress level continues from conversation to conversation.
Replace this myth with structure.
2. I can just wing it – I don’t need to prepare, I know what I need to say.
With this myth, we can congratulate ourselves a little on our approach because it can give us a short-term, but potentially false, sense of confidence. We feel brave, we know what we want to say and so away we go…
Replace this myth with discipline.
3. We’ll fall out and it will damage our relationship so I just won’t address it.
With this myth, we can avoid the possible discomfort or upset by replacing the conversation with avoidance. We do acknowledge that this is a good short-term strategy to help you find the right time for a conversation, but as a long-term strategy, it will only increase stress levels.
Replace this myth with skill.
You don’t have to; there is always a choice. It could be that your current relationships and the level of discomfort you feel about disagreement means you can maintain a reasonable level of resilience in your work or personal life.
But holding on to these myths can be strategically risky and personally unsustainable. From experience, we see the following when individuals and teams hold on to these three myths:
Apply our three pillars to your meetings, conversations or anywhere that true discussion and collaboration is needed, as outlined in ‘The three pillars in practice’.
These pillars are an introduction to our methodology. We use these simple tools to break through the myths around disagreement and increase your individual resilience within those conversations. It can feel empowering to know you can approach harder conversations and with simple changes maybe even enjoy them.
THE THREE PILLARS IN PRACTICE
PILLAR 1: STRUCTURE
Your responsibility here is to think clearly about what you want to discuss.
Be clear, be specific. Once clear, explain it to the other person, then set up the date/time/location for the conversation. The risk here is that you might get drawn into having the chat ‘in the moment’.
Potential outcome? More structure and thoughtful timing for the conversation increase the likelihood of a calmer dialogue.
PILLAR 2: DISCIPLINE
Your responsibility here is to take time to write down the key points you want to say and to reflect on how the conversation might progress. You cannot control the entire conversation, but you do have personal discipline to stick to what is important.
Potential outcome? Taking control of our own input gives us more confidence in the moment and reduces our stress during the conversation.
PILLAR 3: SKILL
Your responsibility here is to help your brain work for you, not against you. Research suggests that our brains cannot exist in fear and curiosity at the same time. How do we employ curiosity? Ask a question and listen to the response. Then ask another question.
Potential outcome? Curiosity is an amazing tool to gather more information and solve a problem. We can use it to reduce our anxiety levels.
Can disagreement improve resilience? If we rush into conversations with little preparation and curiosity, then the answer to that question is ‘no’.
In the short term, it’s more exciting to build small, repeatable steps into your routine so you have a strong foundation for braver conversations on topics you may have avoided.
In the long term, shifting your perspective and embracing well-formed disagreement as a critical part of your own, your team’s and your organisation’s overall resilience will increase your ability to innovate into the future. Now that’s truly exciting.
Sara Hickman is principal consultant and owner at We Are BRAVE wearebrave.co.uk/brave-principles
