Crossing a great divide with “bridge questions”

30 Dec.,2024

 

Crossing a great divide with “bridge questions”

Welcome to a short excerpt from the new chapter &#;Asking Questions to Engage & Influence.&#;

Excerpt

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&#;We all have it within us,&#; says the radio interviewer Krista Tippett, &#;to formulate questions that invite honesty, dignity, and revelation.&#; I think of such questions as &#;bridge questions&#;&#;because they can help us traverse the divide that separates us from others. If you&#;d like to try building a question bridge that might help you reach out to someone you&#;ve been having trouble connecting with (be it a co-worker you tend to disagree with or an uncle with sharply different political views), here are a few ideas.

You might begin by asking yourself a question: Why am I trying to cross this particular divide? It&#;s often a worthwhile and admirable thing to attempt&#;but just make sure you&#;re doing it for the &#;right&#; reasons. Those might include: trying to repair or strengthen a personal relationship that&#;s important to you; trying to promote civil discourse and greater understanding among people within your circle at work, among friends, or at home; or, it could be that you want to broaden your own thinking.

However, if you&#;re planning to cross that divide just so you can convert someone on the other side to your point of view, forget about it. It probably won&#;t work&#;and you may end up doing more harm than good to the relationship.

Decide, at the outset, that you&#;re going to be driven by curiosity&#;and that your &#;guiding question,&#; throughout this interaction, will be: What can I learn from this person who sees things differently than I do?

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Lead with curiosity by using a &#;question sandwich&#;

As you begin asking questions, lead off by announcing your curiosity and end with your rationale for asking this question (the &#;question sandwich&#;): I&#;m genuinely curious about why you believe what you believe&#;and the reason I&#;d like to understand this is because I want to try to see these issues from a different perspective.

Try to focus on how each of you came to hold such differing positions, suggests author David McRaney. &#;The idea is to have two people go shoulder to shoulder,&#; he says, &#;and try to understand: Why do you think we disagree? What are the motivations, the assumptions and prior experiences that led each of us to this point? How are they different?&#;

It&#;s important to note that as you try to find possible areas of agreement, this does not mean you have to back down from your own stance or beliefs. It isn&#;t necessary to agree with someone else&#;s overall position; the idea is to try to find some element of their belief that seems reasonable and understandable. It could be their intentions, their concerns, or their values.

Values is a particularly rich area to mine: Research shows that if you simply get people talking a bit about their values&#;how they feel about, say, family, honesty, being a good neighbor&#;they subsequently tend to become less argumentative and more reasonable.

Questions are a great tool for finding common ground. James Ryan, president of the University of Virginia, often relies on the question: Couldn&#;t we at least agree that ___? (You can fill in that blank with anything that seems like a reasonable point both sides can accept.) According to Ryan, &#;Asking Couldn&#;t we at least agree? is a way to push back against polarization and extremism, because it is an invitation to find some areas of consensus.&#; He told me he uses the question &#;whenever there&#;s an impasse.&#; For example, during heated discussions with fellow educators about different teaching methods, Ryan may ask something like, Couldn&#;t we at least agree that everyone in this room wants to improve education for our students? That question can lower the temperature in the room and help move the conversation forward.

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