Learn, Share, Grow - 4 EQ Ways to Accept People Who Don't Share Your Values

February 28, 2022

Below is a lesson from Fast Company on using emotional intelligence to accept people who don't share your values, as well as our key learnings.

The Blue Courage team is dedicated to continual learning and growth.  We have adopted a concept from Simon Sinek’s Start With Why team called “Learn, Share, Grow”.  We are constantly finding great articles, videos, and readings that have so much learning.  As we learn new and great things, this new knowledge should be shared for everyone to then grow from.

4 emotionally intelligent ways to accept people who don’t share your values

It’s easy to spend your life with people who think like you. Yet hanging out with like-minded people is the opposite of open-mindedness.

BY TOMAS CHAMORRO-PREMUZIC AND BECKY FRANKIEWICZ 5 MINUTE READ

Values are the core beliefs that guide people’s behaviors and interpretations of the world. We see the world through the prism of our own values, which function as an inner compass and help us determine what is right and wrong, especially in the absence of an external moral code. Without our values, we would be lost. And there would be no cultural, generational, or personal differences between people. Life would be a lot more homogeneous, predictable, and boring.

It would also be a lot simpler.

Many of the problems we have at work and in life come from having too much rather than too little diversity around values. As individualism (itself a meta-value) increases, cultural values become commoditized, personalized, and tribalized. We use values to make important “identity claims.” They signal our beliefs and affiliations to the world. Above all, we use them as a frame of reference to connect and develop relations with others at work and in other areas of life. 

We like people who share our values because they provide external validation for how we define ourselves. Liking people who think and act like us is a discrete tactic to unleash our own narcissistic tendencies. It explains why managers often hire and promote on their own image, why couples look like each other, why friends and spouses become more alike as they spend more time together, and why dogs often look like their owners (this is not merely anecdotal).

But if you want to live in an inclusive world that harnesses the power of psychological diversity, then you have to learn to accept, tolerate, and perhaps even embrace those who don’t share your values. It is easy to spend your life with people who think like you. Yet hanging out with like-minded people is the opposite of open-mindedness. It signals a reluctance to learn and grow, and a false sense of security about your own values, perhaps because you are afraid to have them challenged as they are the core definition of yourself, or you fear that they are too fragile to hold when exposed to a different form of thinking.

Continue reading here.

Key Learnings:

• Values are the core beliefs that guide people’s behaviors and interpretations of the world.

• Many of the problems we have at work and in life come from having too much rather than too little diversity around values.

• We like people who share our values because they provide external validation for how we define ourselves.

• But if you want to live in an inclusive world that harnesses the power of psychological diversity, then you have to learn to accept, tolerate, and perhaps even embrace those who don’t share your values.

• Four simple tips for accepting people who don’t think like you -- enriching the cognitive diversity of your own networks and life: 

  • CHOOSE TO LEARN - If you step back and think about the conversation as an opportunity to learn versus the need to defend, it helps open the aperture into a dialogue vs a debate. If we make the choice to continuously learn from other’s perspectives, learning can be lifelong, and knowledge can grow vs. sustain.
  • RECOGNIZE THAT SEEKING TO UNDERSTAND DOES NOT MEAN AGREEMENT - It’s okay to want to listen and learn and still hold onto your own beliefs and values. The act of listening doesn’t indicate agreement. The difference between judging and pre-judging is understanding and that in order to understand you really need to be willing to listen and learn.
  • EMBRACE CURIOSITY AND PATIENCE YET ACKNOWLEDGE EMOTION - Curiosity seeks out understanding and acknowledges and often embraces difference. Emotion likely won’t be removed from values conversations, yet acknowledging it and choosing to lead with curiosity keeps the lines of communication open. Patience is also required when managing emotion as we want to jump in, cut the other person off, express our views.
  • STAY ACTIVE IN THE CONVERSATION - By staying in the dialogue, you can learn, and you can demonstrate respect, even if you don't agree with the other person. Wanting to be heard is a value we all desire, yet it requires working on the reciprocal behavior of listening and staying engaged.
• Discussing values - we can choose to see it as the ultimate signal of respect for what an individual brings into your life: cognitive diversity which can create something better than sameness.

• The path to accepting differences in values begins with the mindset of learning, a recognition that listening does not equal agreement, the curiosity and patience to listen to a different point of view, and requires the discipline to stay in the dialogue even when what’s being said doesn’t reflect your personal values.  There is rich learning about your differences and likely more similarities than you initially realized existed.