I Respectfully Disagree How to Have Difficult Conversations in a Divided World

Start building bridges instead of barriers! This essential guide offers a simple 5-part framework that will help you have honest and enlightening conversations despite deep and fundamental disagreements.

Divisions are on the rise around the world, and 2024 may well be a peak year. We’re losing the ability to disagree without dehumanizing. There is a deep need for this practical and accessible guide to having challenging conversations in any situation, from the workplace to the classroom to the dinner table.

It’s not about saying the right words at the right time but something vastly deeper. In this book, you’ll discover the 5 pillars of respectfully disagreeing:

• Challenge your perspective
• Be the student
• Cultivate your curiosity
• Seek the gray
• Agree to respect

But this is not a weighty tome. Each chapter features a cartoon, and Justin Jones-Fosu tackles this serious subject with a playful and compassionate tone. For example, he writes “I have become more and more intentional in my desire to respectfully disagree with others (except those who think putting ketchup on eggs is wrong…there is no hope for respect there).”

With a wide range of examples and exercises throughout, this is a timely and reader-friendly handbook to disagreeing with someone’s ideology while passionately pursuing their humanity.

Justin Jones-Fosu is CEO of Work. Meaningful., a firm focused on workplace engagement and inclusion that he founded in 2007. He consults with, speaks to, and trains 10,000 to 20,000 people per year. He is a former radio host and former workplace contributor to NPR’s The Takeaway and is known for his ability to connect to a broad range of people in a down-to-earth, humorous way. He is the author of The Inclusive Mindset and Your Why Matters Now.