How can any company know if its processes, products, people are safe? Only if everyone is watching and telling the truth. The first part can be assumed; the second cannot.
Margaret HeffernanRead
[For constructive conflict,] we have to resist the neurobiological drive which means that we really prefer people mostly like ourselves.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the need to overcome our natural bias towards similarity in order to benefit from constructive conflict.
Margaret Heffernan highlights the importance of embracing diversity in perspectives rather than gravitating towards those who resemble us in thoughts and beliefs. Constructive conflict can lead to growth and innovation, but it requires an effort to resist our innate preference for similarity and engage with differing viewpoints for a richer dialogue.
Themes
ConflictDiversityPerspectivesSimilarityEngagement
In practice
Example use cases
In a team meeting, to promote collaboration, I shared this quote to encourage everyone to voice different opinions.
More from Margaret Heffernan
All quotes βMost executives I know are so action-oriented, or action-addicted, that time for reflection is the first casualty of their success.
Margaret HeffernanRead
Once you have power, you are inevitably surrounded by people who have their own agendas and will tell you whatever advances them.
Margaret HeffernanRead
If the company depends entirely on you - your creativity, ingenuity, inspiration, salesmanship or charisma - nobody will want to buy it. The risk and the dependency are too great.
Margaret HeffernanRead
Those in powerless positions aren't about to complain about bullying bosses, abusive supervisors or corrupt co-workers. There is no safe way to do so and no process that promises redress.
Margaret HeffernanRead
Bosses and leaders everywhere should cherish the people who bring them bad news, disappointing data or hard problems.
Margaret HeffernanRead
Similar quotes
I think . . . I said things to Silas. He'll be angry.' 'If he didn't care about you, you couldn't upset him,' was all she said.
Neil GaimanRead
I just always knew that I lived in two worlds. There was the world of my house and community, but to make my way in that white world I had to modify the way I spoke and acted. I had to sometimes not make direct eye contact.
Samuel L. JacksonRead
He that outlives a wife whom he has long loved, sees himself disjoined from the only mind that has the same hopes, and fears, and interest; from the only companion with whom he has shared much good and evil; and with whom he could set his mind at liberty, to retrace the past or anticipate the future. The continuity of being is lacerated; the settled course of sentiment and action is stopped; and life stands suspended and motionless.
Samuel JohnsonRead
He loves me, he doesn't love my bowels, if they showed him my appendix in a glass he wouldn't recognize it, he's always feeling me, but if they put the glass in his hands he wouldn't touch it, he wouldn't think, "that's hers," you ought to love all of somebody, the esophagus, the liver, the intestines. Maybe we don't love them because we aren't used to them, but if we saw them the way we saw our hands and arms maybe we'd love them; the starfish must love each other better than we do.
Jean-Paul SartreRead
Parents need to listen as much to their kids as they do to them: "The first duty of love is to listen."
Paul TillichRead
I really wasn't heavy in high school. But no one feels right in their own skin, particularly in high school.
Tina FeyRead