11/12/2025
Have you ever walked into a conversation already knowing you disagree with the person across from you? You prepare ahead of time, telling yourself: "Okay, I want to come across as open, interested in learning their point of view, and be open-minded." But then the second the conversation starts, you can tell your words do not match your intentions? You leave feeling frustrated with yourself and you know you created distance rather than connection.
Yeah, I've been there too!
I’ve read many books and articles on concepts like Crucial Conversations, Radical Candor, and Never Split the Difference, yet I still struggle to ensure my intentions match my behavior. Apparently, this is aptly named the intention-behavior gap. It turns out a lot of individuals struggle with this and organizations struggle to teach these skills.
There’s a new article in HBR this month titled, “A Smarter Way to Disagree - It’s what you say, not what you think that matters.”
There’s a lot in the article that feels similar to things we’ve already heard in popularized books about conflict and disagreement in the workplace. But one aha moment I did have about this came from their discussion on the intention-behavior gap. The authors tell us we are all familiar with this gap if you’ve ever made a New Year’s resolution. You’ve told yourself, "Okay, I’m finally going to exercise more and eat less," and then reality hits, and our good intentions go right out the window. But on the flip side, if you’ve ever had a New Year’s resolution go successfully, it’s probably because you didn’t focus on your intention but instead focused on a behavior or habit to get you to that goal. To stick with the analogy here, instead of saying, "I want to exercise more and eat less," you said, "I’m going to walk for 30 minutes before work every day."
The authors argue the same principle holds true for workplace disagreement. Instead of simply advising employees, "Go into the difficult conversation with an open mind, a mindset of learning, and try to express empathy," they advocate for providing actionable, linguistically specific steps that will help them engage.
For example, if your intention is to learn about the other person's perspective, here is what you can say (linguistic action) to demonstrate that: “Hey, it seems we are seeing this differently. I am curious how you think about XYZ.”
If we teach employees to engage in this way, then monitor and mentor from a place of, “Hey, you told me you wanted to learn about the other person's perspective, but I didn’t once hear you say,[insert linguistic action].’”
We now have something to teach and hinge our accountability on. I don’t think this is a new concept, but there was something about the analogy that hit harder for me than most.
