Getting yourself into difficult conversations has become commonplace in today’s extremely divided world. With everyone having their own opinions, beliefs, and perspectives, you will always meet someone who disagrees with you. Leadership speaker, author, and entrepreneur Justin Jones-Fosu joins the People Strategy Forum to discuss how to find common ground and respectfully disagree with others. He explains why this approach is highly needed to create healthy organizational structures and build better manager-employee relationships. Justin also talks about the dangers of toxic positivity, the benefits of implementing an out-the-door policy, and the concept of Golden Respect.

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Listen to the podcast here

 

Difficult Conversations In A Divided World With Justin Jones-Fosu

We are a show that guides leaders on how to elevate the workforce. We believe that people are at the heart of successful organizations and a team member’s well-being, rewards, and career development. It’s all essential to a happy, healthy, and highly productive workforce overall. This show discusses the practical and effective leadership strategies for top executives, senior professionals, and talent managers. I would love to introduce you to our group of our hosts. We have a full house. I’d like to introduce you to Howard Nizewitz. He’s a Senior Compensation Professional Advisor and also a Strategic HR Consultant for many years. We are glad to have him here.

Also, on the show, we have Sumit Singla. He’s an experienced HR Consultant. He is broadcasting out of India. He helps companies across the globe and usually those small and medium-sized enterprises scale globally with cutting-edge practices and solutions, and then also we have Char Miller who is a Strategy Skills Consultant at the Strategic Thinking Institute. She’s also a Talent Management Strategist and Career and Entrepreneur Transformation Coach. She helps a lot of you out there who are entrepreneurs and are looking to improve your career and get started as entrepreneurs. Char knows it all. She’s done it, and so she’s a great resource there. We are here to bring the show to you.

I do have a very special guest. We have the pleasure of speaking with Justin Jones-Fosu. The inspiring Founder and CEO of Work Meaningful. Justin is not only a dynamic business speaker, but he speaks everywhere around the world. He’s an author, a passionate social entrepreneur and a researcher dedicated to creating meaningful work environments. He speaks extensively across the globe, as I mentioned, and so we are glad to have him to hear.

In our discussion, we are going to be talking about his new book titled I Respectfully Disagree. It dives into how to have those difficult conversations in a divided world. Justin is going to share his expertise on navigating challenges and how to have meaningful dialogues between people and those difficult topics.

He is known for his humor and impactful insights. Anybody who’s been to one of Justin’s events has these feelings engaged in and ready to make a difference in the world. Join us as we explore practical strategies for bridging divides and fostering understanding and personal setting in a personal setting, whether you are at work or home. Welcome, Justin. It’s wonderful to have you here.

I am super pumped to be here with you all. You all have no idea how awesome the smile and joy that’s radiating are.

Personal And Career Background

Justin, if you could tell us for those people who are joining and don’t know your background, how did you get into this business and become such a huge magnet for people who are willing to make a change in their lives and also in their businesses, and then the inspiration that you put out in your events and your talks.

Like most things, I got it from my mother. My mom is a psychologist. One of the things that she taught me early on is a lot of different lessons. She was one of the first Black female aircraft controls in the Air Force. I remember she would take us to events that we disagreed with. She would take us to events that we didn’t know a lot about, and she taught us how to learn consistently, not learn about ideas and theories, but how do we learn about people and the humanity of people? That became my quest for empowering and impacting people and meaningful ways.

With our company, Work Meaningful, we have been gone for about years and it’s been a fun ride and we have had different iterations, and we have settled in this place at this intersection of meaningful work and inclusion. That place has been powerful for us. That led us to a lot of different companies, from Fortune 50 to Fortunate Fourth Graders, who are having a great time spelling their name.

I love what I do. I’m very passionate about it, but that was like the underpinning and so a former HR professional worked for a top financial firm and then worked in education for one of the top universities in the country and found ways of leaving people better than I found them. I challenged myself to do that as a leader and a manager, and now, it’s a company on two continents, both here and in Ghana. I’m excited about that.

I bet having a parent in the military. Did you travel a lot or did you experience a lot of different cultures?

I was like a post-mom in the Air Force. I remember good boats and bad boats. We went to Alaska once, but I was little. We didn’t travel quite a bit after she got out. I remember my mom brought the world to us, so we traveled the world in our little place. We went to Oktoberfest in Polish festivals and Hispanic Heritage Month events. We had exchange students from France, Japan, Germany, and even Brazil. I realized like my mom, even though we couldn’t afford to travel and the way that the military probably afforded her, we traveled locally and she traveled the world with books and ideas and even people.

I know that you are a proud father of four and you cherished that responsibility. How are you bringing the new concept of Work Meaningful not only to their lives but into everyone else’s as well?

I went from 2 to 4. It wasn’t twins. I got married, which has been a great blessing. I’m telling him the same lessons. Those same lessons that I teach. That Toyota at the headquarters. The same lesson I was teaching them. I’m teaching my kids about things like the Circles of Great Challenge and asking where the places that they disagree with are.

Even at the dinner table. I’m asking every day, “Tell me about a place where you fail and what you learn about it.” There are a lot of these unique things that I’m like, “How do I incorporate this,” even to the birthday challenge. For most people who know our message, it’s not about finding meaning in your work. It’s all about bringing me to your work which is based on original job crafting research by Wrzesniewski and Dutton in 2001.

 

Even with the birthday challenges for my kids, I’m saying, “How do you bring meaning to this New Year?” It’s been pretty cool seeing my son accomplish what was a visit to swim in the ocean. We did that both in California, Catalina Island and as well as in Ghana. My daughter is launching her book, so her first book is coming out. I’m excited. Those are the same principles that we are teaching.

What did she choose as a topic for her book?

She’s passionate about sustainability. Her book is called The Day Before Earth Day, and so she’s walking through these mythical figures that she meets. She doesn’t like the Earth. She’s fallen asleep when they are talking about all this stuff and then in her dream, she’s introduced to these awesome characters and so it’s designed to make a recycling and sustainability fund for kids, and so it’s about to design it for 8 to 12-year-old, but she’s finished with her illustrator and her editor. Now she’s typesetting and launching likely the day before Earth Day.

Respectful Disagreement

I’m sure you’ve been a big inspiration in helping her through that journey yourself, which brings us to the topic of helping our leaders. Help our leaders understand how they can create environments that are more meaningful to their employees so they can better attract the best talent that’s out there. What are the things that we need to think about to bring or attract those people into our organizations? What can leaders do to enable that?

I will put this in the context of respectful disagreement, which is the essence and there’s a lot, especially in our society with everything from politics to wars to the number one or the biggest social issue of all times who’s the GOAT Michael Jordan or LeBron James. I’m joking, but the interesting component that we found sounds so simple, but it’s profound leaders who were willing to do two things. One model is behavior. Oftentimes, it’s like, “What do I do for this?” Rather than, “What do I do for me?” As I model the behavior, it permeates through the organization because people are watching and looking at leaders.

They are looking at the executives and asking what they are living. How are they modeling this behavior with lip service? It’s one of those things like, “Here’s our mission, but then it’s never talked about. It’s not seen in practice, it’s never revisited and it becomes a piece of artwork in many organizations rather than something embodied through the leader’s mission and values.” Number one is in modeling the behavior. Even in our presentation, work leads to a different beat. The reason it does not lead to a different beat is that we have to model that behavior. That’s number one.

Number two is this process of leading with vulnerability and sharing mistakes and places where people have messed up, or you, a leader, have, “I’m pretty negative and disagreement at this moment, but here’s one of the areas where I have learned and able to grow,” because we all make mistakes and the people know that you are talking about us and the cafeterias or now, the virtual cafeteria for some. The question is, are we honest and trustworthy enough to admit those mistakes and be vulnerable with our people? Brené Brown has shaped that for us in many ways. Those are the two things.

The last I’d say and this is big. I said two, but I will give you this bonus one. It’s the power E word and it is not a soft skill, empathy. It is not. It is a business skill because it’s been research after research that has shown that it is one of the top predictors of executive effectiveness and a multi-country study with over 6,000 people showing us empathy. It’s one of the better predictors of executive effectiveness.

Empathy doesn’t mean you are like, “I’m so sorry.” Empathy is being able to see something from the other person’s perspective, connect, show that understanding, help them walk through and navigate that, and empower them to navigate it. That’s the beauty of that. That’s what respectful disagreement is. It’s seeing things from the other person’s perspective and lens and being able to connect with them even when we disagree with them. When we model the behavior, we choose to be vulnerable and we express that empathy. It allows us to operate in a great place of executive effectiveness.

Empathy is seeing something from the other person’s perspective, connecting with them, and empowering them to navigate through it. Share on X

That’s a big topic nowadays. Our audience is familiar with the division that is taking place in the United States and, frankly, across the globe on a lot of different topics and so forth. We seem to become more polarized, and I think that maybe some social media and news events put us in that place, which puts us on one side or the other. How do we work on closing that divide? What are the learnings that you are showing in your book?

One of the things that we dove into was a lot of research, academic journals, business books, and all this stuff and we identified five Pillars. Now, let’s be very honest. It could be 100 pillars, but I have read a very long book that no one would have read. We took a macro approach, and we looked at and summarized the key pillars that we found that can help people make progress. We are not to be perfect and not to have perfect organizations but to make progress so that we can continue to move forward. The five pillars are simple. Pillar number one is to challenge your perspective. Pillar number two, be the student. Pillar number three, cultivate your curiosity. Pill number four seeks the gray, and pillar five is greedy respect.

I want to park and we will stop there because I don’t want to dominate the conversation and challenge your perspective and number one. It’s the last pillar we added, but we found it the most pivotal and significant because most conversations around disagreement, civil discourse, and conflict are more reactive. It’s when you are in the moment, this is what you do. Take ten deep breaths or other things.

What we found was missing in a lot of the approaches to disagreement is what happens before you disagree. How do you prepare yourself in the first place? That’s why challenging your perspective is a pre-disagreement or pre-conflict perspective. What does that mean? Challenge your perspective is where you are consistently intentionally going and things that will challenge your perspective.

I’m giving you two fronts, one as a leader, for themselves, but the leader in their organization. One is a Circles of Grace Challenge. It’s a very practical way. I want to challenge this theory of open-door policy. Executives, please cancel the open-door policy. Most of the employees already know that the door is closed when you are opening the door policy, but we have been challenging leaders to move from an open door policy to what we call the door policy.

Open door policy implies passivity. “If you need me,” but oftentimes, people don’t feel that they can utilize it. When we move to an outdoor policy, we intentionally go and hear the stories and experiences of our people. How do we do that because you are saying, “I’m already overworked. I have a lot going on.” I will give you a mathematical formula to do this. We call it one MC over W. One MC over W is simply this, one meaningful connection per week where you build into your calendar 15 to 20 minutes to intentionally go out and hear the stories of your people.

I heard some of you saying, “That’s 52.14 times a year.” If that’s the case, yes, in a leap year. Flip the W upside down and make it one meaningful connection per month. Maybe it’s the ones but you have to build it into your calendar where it’s about. “What brought you to our organization? What’s been your journey? How was life?”

Learning and engaging with the people, we found ways that not only attract people because they feel like there’s a heart-based approach to leadership but also retain your best people because they feel valued and cared for when you are willing to intentionally not wait for them to come to you but to go and engage with them. That’s one practical way.

 

Organizational Structure

Having a proactive approach. Char, I’d love to hear about your coaching of leaders. In your experience, have you found leaders to be very inquisitive about their employees in your experience and your career?

I have seen a lot of leaders wishing they had more time and that’s why I like Justin’s point. I mentioned on LinkedIn that the span of control is such that some, particularly nurses. I have had leaders with over 40 reports and manager meetings to get to, and executive PowerPoints to present. Justin, you get what I’m talking about and lots of busy work, and the inability to go out and spend the time with their employees, and so I have heard this.

A lot of times, it’s a system matter and a management structure issue that does not address the span of control. The organization or the senior leaders need to analyze that. Also, I was saying this whole discussion reminds me of the time when the CEO, who I don’t think was a big fan of mine because I wouldn’t let him fire people every day. The CEO said, “That person doesn’t report to you.”

He finally sat down with me for lunch in the cafeteria. I thought that it was nice of him to sit down and have a dialogue over a sandwich. Justin, I do agree with you. It takes twenty minutes for me even if you are busy. It seems like, “Why can’t we find twenty minutes to have a sandwich with somebody?” What do you think about the span of control and the challenges of spending time with your people and having meaningful connections?

You are brilliant and I love that you were able to challenge that CEO to not fight everybody. Thank you for that because people are paying attention. It’s almost like this sports analogy of the coach who doesn’t care about their team members.

He had this magical list of 30 people he wanted to chop off the block. He didn’t realize they had reported to other people and that they were not even on a write-up. HR guys get it.

It sounds like Deion Sanders at Colorado. That is brilliant because we think about the span of control and the organizational structure. Yes, it can be very overwhelming, and until you are able to strategically navigate and move through that, take a process approach of maybe one launch a month and build it into your calendar and identify that as very important.

For 40 direct reports, it’s going to take you over 3 years, but if you change your transformation and empower, level out some of the organization with some of the amazing consultants that are here that can help you through that strategy. It helps you have fewer direct reports to empower them and then empower the rest of your team, and that’s been helpful even in our organization.

Our team from Ghana, I used to be heavily influenced by and engaging with. I’m not in any of those meetings. I touch base once a month for our care call, which has nothing to do with work, but just how everybody is doing and how I’m doing it as a person. Other than that, I’m not in the day-to-day operations of those people. If you can level out and even a level behind that, we have one of our people leaders in Ghana who is now managing a team and Ghana. There are these levels that, when truly empowered, can help. You are brilliant at that.

Thank you for calling me brilliant. That’s very nice. I also do want to mention there are ways. We can stand at the water cooler. Most people need to drink some water during the day. We can stand by the coffee machine. We need to be more present. It was interesting as an HR person coming in at night in the ER and spending people in the break room. More visibility like that means so much. I’m so interested in what the rest of my colleagues have to think.

Golden Respect

The one thing I see with leaders sometimes trip up is that they can jump to conclusions. I know that you have that concept in your book called Golden Respect. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Golden respect challenges this norm of what we define as respect. We have identified ten characteristics, but I’m going to spare you one and talk about three. Number one is the concept that respect must be earned. We begin asking and challenging that and saying, “Why? Where did this philosophy that I have to earn respect or somebody has to earn my respect?” No. We can choose to freely give it to them because every single person is worthy of value and dignity. That’s the golden respect.

Respect must be freely given to others. Every single person is worthy of value and dignity. Share on X

Golden respect us all so where it’s not about your title like you are into respect. Not because you are the leader. It’s because you are a human being. Whether the janitor or CEO, every single one of those is where they respect. Last but not least, we have sometimes conflated honor and respect. When we talk about that, I can say something like, “You lost my respect.” No. You may have lost your honor. You may not hold them in high esteem or higher regard because of actions and behaviors in our values, but each person is still worthy of respect. When we talk, I respectfully disagree. The concept is that respect is a choice. Respect is showing that a person has value and dignity. Respect could even mean that when we disagree with their ideology, we can passionately pursue their humanity. That’s what we mean when we talk about gold respect.

I’d love your perspective, Sumit, that sometimes, when there are these so-called villains in society. The people that we hear about in the news that we have this preconceived notion about. Do they deserve our respect? What are your thoughts?

Everyone deserves respect. We may not honor them. We may not value their ideology. We met 100% disagreed with the ideology. I keep coming back to that point. I can disagree with someone’s ideology and yet passionately pursue humanity. One of the things that’s been important for me is that I tell people that this is my perspective. I don’t protest. I’m okay with protests. I don’t mind them, but I don’t protest people.

If people choose to protest, I encourage people to protest ideology because people can change. People’s perspectives can change, but when we protest people, we are now challenging this aspect of valuing humanity. What does this look like? Give me a great preemptive from the Circles of Grace from the challenge of perspective.

I encourage people to take the Circles of Grace challenge. It may seem simple but the Circle of Grace challenge is something I created because I realized I wasn’t living up to my mom’s ideals. As I shared, when she was stationed in Japan for those two years, she found that some people had never left base. She was like, “I don’t want you and your brother to be like that and never leave your home base.”

I realized many years ago that I was confining myself to my circles of comfort. People who looked like me thought and believed like me, and I wasn’t leaving my home base to experience society. The Circles of Grace challenge is simply this. Every 6 to 12 months, I go to events and experiences, or I engage with people in either, which I don’t know a lot about and/or disagree with and I only go asking two questions. What did I learn about the event and experience as an old person and what did I learn about myself as I experienced them? What’s fascinating is that many times, I have walked away and said, “I still disagree, but I have gotten first-hand information, and I have been able to humanize people.

The last piece of this is you can also do this as an organization. We took the Ford Family Foundation through this, and we did the Circles of Grace Challenge, which they chose to focus on the people that they serve. People within their Industries and things that they engage and it was profound. The debrief at the end of the six months was amazing because they talked about things that they made assumptions about things. They jumped to conclusions about things that they talked to people, listened to, went to events, and experienced even the cafeteria’s great call-out, Char. They found opportunities to make those connections even in ideologies that they were against.

Power Of Three

Especially in the States now, it can get so heated with people in terms of political beliefs and who they support. You can go down the rabbit hole and dig. Each person is going to stand their ground and you can disagree with someone and that’s not going to change. Is there a way to steer the conversation to let’s talk about things we have in common? How do we solve problems that we have in common versus you taking one stance and me taking the opposite?

I love that statement. We can nuance it a little bit. Let’s say I’m having a conversation with someone. One of the things that we often want to immediately jump to and we call this a double dutch style of communication. If you don’t know, a double dutch is a single rope. Double Dutch are two ropes and somebody is waiting to jump in. That’s what we often do when we are communicating. We are waiting to jump in. Waiting to say you are wrong, but you don’t know the facts. Have you seen this study? Did you read this book?

Rather than what we call the power of three, which is a practice of deep listening. The power of three, one of the things we encourage people to do is lean in at least to the third level of the conversation. Instead of immediately saying, “That’s a stupid idea, how could you believe that? Why would anybody?” We might ask a deeper question. “How did you come to this understanding? When did you first believe this?” Even if you don’t know what to say, you use the power of three words to tell me more because it allows a person to deepen.

Only then do I feel like we can engage with the process of understanding. Now I know what they mean, where they are coming from, and what the context is that they mean. To give you a great example. I love when people tell me, “We don’t value diversity and inclusion.” I love it when I hear that statement, and the reason I love it is because my first question instead of, “How could you not like diversity and inclusion? Studies have shown a business case.” No. I don’t even go that route.

How do you define diversity and inclusion? It gives me an insight and how people are approaching it because oftentimes, I realize we are talking about two different concepts. I’m talking about every single person and valuing them no matter what they believe or where they come from, and they are talking about very specific social ideals at times. Those are the opportunities when we listen deeply, and we can then connect to seek the gray and that’s a common understanding.

Common Ground

The gray area is the common understanding to find that middle ground. Is there often a middle ground? Is it weighted to one side? I know that there are ways for us to come to an understanding in a negotiation, but should we always seek that middle ground in an argument?

If you would allow me to nuance that statement, I don’t think it’s the middle ground because middle implies this equality or equality here, but I do like common ground. Where are those little places to Howard’s point that we have in common? What are the things we sometimes hear in terms of, let’s say, we are talking about gun rights or gun control? Maybe the first step leading into that is, “One of the things that I’m hearing you say and I appreciate about both of us is that we care about the safety of our families.”

That’s a way to enter into that conversation and a much more meaningful common ground that even if you still end up disagreeing on the outcomes and what it looks like, you can engage. This whole great research on this talk is conversational receptiveness, and it talks about four things that are helpful for that, one of which is hedging your claims.

When you hedge your claims, instead of speaking in absolute this never happens, or it may be something. Sum, I appreciate your point about X. One of the things I found from my perspective is that small hedging of the claim of my perspective, the way I approach this, the way I engage this, what I have seen is one of those things that allows people to want to have more conversations even when they disagree.

Sometimes, when you are trying to have a good conversation with a person, it turns into a sparring match and sometimes they take it to an extreme. As he said, you try to have a balanced conversation and they go, “What if this happens?” How do you pull that back in line to where you can have that more beneficial conversation where you are finding that common ground?

I love that you brought this point up because often, when the sparring match happens, guess what happens to our ego? Now, we are in defense mode. We talked about what we call the three selves. The three selves are simply this. You have a superior self that you are better than, and when you are in those sparring matches, you start edging up towards your superior self. You have inferiority yourself where you might feel like you are less than others for different reasons, but we encourage people to practice what we call equal self. This is going to sound unique, but it’s been proven to work, even in moments when I’m writing this book. Let me be very clear. In all my retreat writing, I respectfully disagree. I disrespectfully disagree with someone.

What I’m not saying is that this equals perfection. I noticed this as I was having a conversation with one of my colleagues. I started operating from my superior self because you throw away food, and when he threw away food, as a person who grew up without a lot of money and didn’t have the luxury to throw away food, I started making a lot of assumptions. You do not value it. I asked you that your kids throw away food. Now, I’m attacking his parenting. I realized how defensive he was getting at that moment. I was like, “I realized that I operated from my superior self because it was something that was of value to me.”

I stepped back and asked this question myself, the third person in my head, I didn’t ask it out loud. I said, “What would equal self Justin do?” Now, you may say, “Why would you need to do that?” Were there some psychological benefits to that? I may be messing up the term, but it’s some aspect of cognitive dissonance where you separate yourself and ask the question of a third person. How would I approach this if Justin or Char approached it?

It allows you to operate a little bit of distance from the emotion of it to be able to have a much more meaningful thing. When I asked that, I said, “Equal self Justin would have listened more.” What if that’s more questions? I went back to my colleague and apologized, and I said, “I realized I was operating a little bit like a superior self there.” I love to hear like, “How did you grow up with food?” It turned into a good conversation where he said, “I may challenge how I parent a little bit differently,” but before he was defending it.

Leadership Style

In that context, I want to make some space for Sumit to be around the world. There’s a little bit of a delay in being able to speak. Sumit, talking about styles. There are some leaders out there that go straight and I’m bringing that towards principle. I want to dive into it. Some leaders go in there and try to jump straight to a point where there may be a more strategic element. What do you see as far as leadership and in different styles and as that relates to success and connection with people?

In this part of the world, it’s fairly common for leaders to try to include people and expect respectful agreement. It’s a dumb thing, but it’s very difficult to distinguish between disrespectful agreement and respectful agreement because of the point you made about respect and honor. We, at least in Asia, that’s what I observe a lot, there are people who can be respectful without honoring you. Therefore, as a leader, if you are not having those water cooler conversations that Char spoke of, you will never figure out whether they are agreeing with you respectfully or disrespectfully. You might be happy that I have got an agreement. That’s what it takes and move on. That’s one of the interesting challenges that leaders in this part of the world have to solve.

Can I speak to that? Sumit, it’s like, “Yes.” I love that. What is our term for that? Initially, we were trying to solve respectful disagreements. Are we trying to make disrespectful disagreement into respectful disagreement? We realized it was a whole different category that you are speaking of called disrespectful agreement, and what do by that? Two different fronts. Disrespectful agreement could be the person that I may be talking to Howard. I’m like, “Howard, That’s a good idea. I loved your point,”

I’m talking to Char at the water cooler. I’m like, “What was Howard thinking? That was the most stupid idea ever. I am doing what young people may call gaslighting or seeing one thing in front of your face but behind closed doors. I’m disrespecting you because I agree with you in a moment, but it could be on the other side of that. You might have grown up growing up as a child and been told things like, “Children should be seen and not heard,” or you grew up in a culture where there is a high deference for those in authority, like Ghana.

As a Ghanaian-American that’s one of the things that’s big for me. I’m constantly challenging my team because my team is like, “Okay, yes.” Sometimes they joke around, “Yes, boss.” I’m like, “No.” They will say yes even if they don’t understand. They will say yes and agree because of the difference in authority. What I have had to do and I encourage leaders, no matter where you live, is to do three things.

Number one is to make the statement. I would like for you all to disagree with me and help us to make something better. The statement by itself will do nothing, but I have noticed, as I have said, that the second thing that we do is when it’s happening to call it out in a positive way. Sum, thank you so much for that. It led me to a better point that I didn’t have before.

People are paying attention and what’s reinforced is Meaningful. Last but not least, I love the change management model and the reinforcement is rewarding your employees or your team for disagreement. What I mean by that is that I’m not talking about compensation or it’s on their 360. What I mean by reporting is at the end of the meeting and when you’ve made a decision to come back, whether it’s by email or the next meeting, and say, “One of the things I want to appreciate is that I appreciate Howard for bringing a perspective that was different than mine and disagreeing with me, because it helped us to come to this solution that is a far better solution.”

When people disagree with you while presenting a different perspective, it usually leads to a far better solution to the problem at hand. Share on X

When the results are seen, they come back to that. Those are opportunities that you can start crafting in that culture where people feel like they don’t have to disrespectfully agree, but that they can respectfully disagree because you’ve asked for it and you’ve created a better culture that has more progress in that area.

This is what I want to mention. I appreciate it. It’s about the cultural aspects. In one of the hospitals I worked at, the Service Excellence Department, put a little mirror in front of your phone with a smiley face in the front so that when you are on the phone, you are smiling when you are talking to people even though they are screaming about the job classification code that they have to input into the form.

You are like, Yes, Mr. Jonesy. You need to put the job classification number on that. Don’t scream at my HR assistant.” As I was doing my sociology study, I watched Outlast, a Survivor show on Netflix. What I love about this is the four men, the big Hurley men from Texas, who are 6 foot 3 and have big muscles; they immediately ran for the axes. There were four axes and they got to run and pick up the axe and that meant that they were now the leader of the group and they got to pick the rest of their group. The one little lady was the last one picked.

Everybody’s like, “He’s got the axe and he’s picking the group. I’m not going to say anything. I’m going to keep my mouth shut even though we need food and water. Kill the squirrel. We need shelter. I know how to hunt, but he doesn’t. He wants to run around with his axe.” The point is that it all starts at the beginning. It starts with the time that you hire the employee. You are going to have Alpha people, not males. People who are immediately going to take charge, particularly with new hires and team development and supporting one another.

I have been there. You are afraid to say anything because you are going to be hit with the axe. If you are not going to get with the axe then the real sense is oftentimes the nonverbal, the bureaucracy, the political aspects, and those things that happen behind your back. You speak up. Ultimately, retaliation is going to have.

I agree. It needs to be an expectation. Now, I’m going to the workforce, not on an island in Alaska. I would say it needs to be part of that culture, and we should openly talk about it and call it out as a performance issue. Yes. This can be a performance issue. We have people bullying others. Not allowing others to speak. Like I’m doing right now. I’m talking too much. Sam calls me out. He says, “Char, you are talking too much.” I’m sorry. Yeah. I agree with you, Justin. How do we keep this in a cultural aspect to make it a performance matter? People are taking over too much of other people and conversations.

I love that perspective. To your point, it is a performance issue because if I feel like I’m constantly guarding what I’m saying, if I feel like I’m constantly holding back and walking on eggshells, it is going to impact Innovation, creativity, and new ideas. Let’s take it to that step of performance of asking the questions potentially providing it to people’s evaluations about, “Are you able to disagree or not with your leader? How comfortable are you with respectfully doing that?”

I work with one organization, which I will not put on name and they suffered from toxic positivity. It was like everything was good and happy because the leader was all about, “Things are good. You make it what you want to be. All these things, you have to focus on good things.” I’m seeing this and I’m in the meetings, and I’m working through this with them, and then as I’m having these one-on-ones with people, I noticed them start to go against what I’m seeing globally, but in those micro conversations, it wasn’t as positive as It was made the scene.

I think what was happening was that the leader unintentionally was creating an environment where everybody felt like they couldn’t say anything bad. They couldn’t say anything negative because it would harm the reputation of the leader and/or the organization. Instead, being the leader would create a space where people could be open, honest, and productive. Not just being negative because you want to throw out negativity.

 

As they failed to do that, one of the things that they could continue to operate in, even in some of the work that we did, was toxic positivity, and the leader needed to see that. It’s because everyone looked to that leader asking, “Can I be honest?” This is what people do. We may go to a workshop. We may hear on the People Strategy Forum about creating these atmospheres with honesty and having all these things, and then when somebody tries it, we should be very mindful that we are encouraging that. Even when somebody gives us feedback, or somebody gives us honesty or disagrees with us. Even if we completely disagree with what they are saying. Thank them.

It comes back to pillar five, agree to respect. Let’s stop saying that we should agree and disagree because many people do that very dismissively and disrespectfully. When we agree to respect, we leave people fully acknowledged. I love Xuan Zhao, a Stanford professor. She had this statement called Thank You Because Research Space. When we practice, Thank You, Because it allows people to feel valued even if we don’t decide to go that route. Let me give you three options. Howard, thank you because having this conversation taught me something new that I never knew before. Sumit, thank you because you mentioned three things, and number two stood out, which I’m going to dive in deeper and learn a little bit more about. Char, this is a tough conversation and I want to say thank you. I want to appreciate you leaning into this conversation because you didn’t have to.

Not once did I say I agree with you. Not once did I say, “What you said was the best thing ever.” In all these examples, I’m acknowledging you and your journey, and I’m taking it a step further when I can thank you and show I have an understanding of how you got there. Those are things meaningful leaders can do to make an impact within their organizations and in their conversations.

I often find that one of the main things that people are looking for is a little bit of grace or acknowledgement of their thoughts. What do you think, Sumit?

On a slightly funny note, this reminded me of that popular meme about what British people say and what they mean. Another one prevents misinterpretation when somebody is saying, “That’s a very interesting idea.” You interpret that as he finds my idea interesting, but the actual interpretation in British terms is this is nonsense and absolute rubbish.

Leaders need to be real. I have been in organizations where they tried to court this by having the one-level skip management lunches. People are saying, “I have to go to this and they are going to ask me to share.” It felt forced and then nothing happened anyway. Then people say, “Worry about bothering.” There has to be a reality and there has to be some impact.

The reality and impact that we want to focus on is that it comes back to one of my favorite books growing up. The Tortoise and the Hare is a powerful book. We send all of our clients this book because it is the shortest for those who don’t know that fable. This rabbit and a tortoise are about to race and they go and race and the rabbit is overconfident. Thinks that they have it all together and they race off. The rabbit is like, “I’m good. I’m faster than this turtle anyway, so I will go and relax.” Goes takes a nap and wakes up, realizing the tortoise has already crossed the finish line. It was too late.

The moral of the stories we call slow and steady wins the race. I have been arguing for years that we have been calling the tortoise the wrong name. The tortoise wasn’t slow. The tortoise was strategic. We only called the tortoise slow because we compared the tortoise to the hare. When we operate in a place in our organizations from a tortoise approach where we are building sustainable and long-lasting foundations that can consistently build, we will see real long-lasting impact.

When we take the hare approach, which many organizations are taking, it’s quick fixes. It’s quick moments. I tried this one initiative and we didn’t operate from a change management framework and we see it fail. Then we say, “It didn’t work anyway.” Imagine you went to a workshop for your significant other and to share some feedback about what they did. You try it one day and like, “It didn’t work. They yelled at me for not washing the dishes.” We can’t take that same approach in organizations that, “It didn’t work.” When we take this strategic and consistent approach, we realize the why behind it is powerful that it attracts better employees and retains the best employees. Those are the things that will drive consistent and long-term impact over the short-term hare moments that we see.

When you take a strategic and consistent approach, you can retain the best employees and drive consistent, long-term impact. Share on X

Closing Words

Some great Insight. I love that piece you talk about in your book and a lot of the discussions that you’ve been having online on that concept. Thank you, Justin. As we are coming to the end of our time here, what are some of the top things that you want leaders who are reading to think about shortly?

To take the Circles of Grace challenge. I encourage you to consider doing this personally. It’s a great opportunity. A way that you can model the behavior of going to experience events, indoor talking, and engaging with people that you don’t know a lot about. I was talking about working with Adidas and quarters, and one of their senior HR people shared that they initially joined an employee resource group that had nothing to do with them and went to learn and experience.

They were so appreciative of this person being there and part of this for two years that a senior HR executive became one of their executive sponsors. That’s one thing, and when challenging our perspective, we end up creating connections with people that would be unexpected, so the number one challenge is your perspective.

Number two is to consider taking that out-the-door policy. Maybe once a month, build it into your calendar, and make it a sacred time because your people are worth it. How do you engage the people, whether formally and/or after the water cooler? It’s very important, and last but not least, how you craft this within your organization matters.

It’s not going to happen overnight, but some of the best organizations that we have seen create this. They have modeled that behavior in front of people. They have had two key executives talk about something that they disagreed on and they showed it in a company-wide form and a respectful manner that they were able to walk through. Why is it important to your division to be able to ask questions and engage?

That modeling behavior taught all the other people who are under them or reported to them that this is okay and this is the expectation of what we want in our culture. Last but not least, just don’t leave this for work. Choose to do this outside of work. As former HR professionals, we used to tell people, “Leave work at work and home at home,” and you and everyone reading know that doesn’t work, and our employees and team members know that doesn’t work. What will you do even outside of it because it’s about practicing and building up the muscles? You don’t go to the gym on January 2nd and expect to be fit all of a sudden, but it’s the consistent going back that allows us to have a meaningful impact.

Suits And Heritage

Thank you. One final question. Where do you get those cool suits? Are those all custom-made?

Yes. I got these done and Ghana and this came from respectful disagreement. I was going to confront my dad for not being in my life in Ghana in 2019. I still have a great therapist. Please, you all get therapy. It’s very helpful. Not because things are wrong. Even though my kids would say something different to keep things going right, my leadership was Charlotte Cohort. They helped me to transform what I was going to take as a confrontation into a conversation.

As I chose to hear my dad’s story, as I chose to seek the grey, and as I chose to be a student who cultivated curiosity and agreed to respect, it led me to choose to forgive my dad and as I forgave him, what I didn’t realize on the other side of that was a whole aspect of my heritage that I have been holding back. My dad was from Ghana and my mom is from America. That makes me African-American. You may get that joke later, but the interesting thing is that all of those moments of hearing my dad’s story and respectfully disagreeing allowed me to embrace an aspect of heritage so that Dad didn’t know I was missing.

That’s some of the important work that you are doing that can help those connections across hundreds, if not thousands, of people. Thank you for the important research and your effort to bring this message to our readers. Thank you, Justin.

Thank you. Thank you, brilliant minds, for asking great questions and being a resource for so many people.

Episode Wrap-Up

For leaders who want to learn more and go beyond your book, what steps should they take?

Three places. One, the easiest is HowToRespectfullyDisagree.com, where we are adding new things there all the time. Our Respectful Disagreement Quotient is coming out. Even with our fourteen modules, a micro-learning self-paced course is coming out to help people lean into that. WorkMeaningful.com is our umbrella organization where we are helping organizations and professionals become more meaningful, and I love LinkedIn. Connect with me on LinkedIn, Justin Jones-Fosu. You don’t even have to send me a direct note. Don’t feel pressured to do that, but I do love connecting there and learning from you and the process, so those three places.

That’s been a true pleasure. Thank you so much, Justin, for your time.

Thank you all.

See you, everybody else, in the next episode.

 

Important Links

• Work Meaningful
• I Respectfully Disagree
• The Tortoise and the Hare
• HowToRespectfullyDisagree.com
• LinkedIn – Justin Jones-Fosu

 

About Justin Jones-Fosu

Justin Jones-Fosu is a leadership speaker, author, and entrepreneur who specializes in meaningful work, diversity, and leadership development. He is the author of the book I Respectfully Disagree: How to Have Difficult Conversations in a Divided World. This book provides a practical, five-step framework for engaging in productive and respectful conversations, even when people hold opposing viewpoints. The framework encourages curiosity, empathy, and understanding, helping people bridge gaps and foster connections despite differences.

Jones-Fosu’s work goes beyond just communication strategies; he is also the founder of Work. Meaningful. A company that focuses on helping organizations create more inclusive and purpose-driven workplaces. He is passionate about integrating diversity and inclusion into everyday leadership practices and helping organizations build stronger teams through empathy and mutual respect.

His insights are particularly valuable for organizations looking to foster better communication, especially in times of polarization or conflict. Through his keynote speeches, workshops, and consulting, Justin empowers teams to engage in difficult dialogues while maintaining mutual respect and understanding. He has been praised for his ability to take complex topics and make them accessible, engaging, and actionable.