Smarter Ways For Teams to Disagree, Explained Through DISC

You might not want to hear it, but disagreement at work is normal and healthy. Years of research point to the benefits of debate, which, when idea-focused rather than adversarial, can deepen interpersonal understanding, heighten empathy and even spark the creative solutions needed to solve your most challenging problems. In other words—your team needs to disagree if you want to improve your work.

But how do you get from unproductive disagreements that lead to conflict and hurt feelings to healthy, productive disagreements?  

Recent research published in the Harvard Business Review points to the difference between constructive and destructive disagreements, and it’s all about the words you choose. The adage “it's not what you say, it's how you say it” is fundamentally correct because the same message can feel like a challenge, a warning or an invitation, depending on how it lands. 

Enter DISC, a personality framework designed specifically for the workplace. DISC measures preferences across four primary personality styles: Drive, Influence, Support and Clarity. It is primarily used in workplaces to improve teamwork, productivity and communication, and it can help your team shift their focus from what they want to say to how others need to hear it for the disagreement to land as helpful.

Here are seven DISC-informed strategies for healthier disagreement at work.

1. Frame Disagreement as a Collaborative Event 

In the DISC system, Drive and Influence types are more likely to voice their opinions and speak before thinking than the more conflict-avoidant Clarity and Support types who generally are more reluctant to voice their opposing opinions. When these types stay silent, you can’t assume it’s because they’re in alignment—they probably just want to keep the peace.

So how do you create a conversation where everyone feels able to speak up? 

The best way is to reframe your meetings as mini-debates. Instead of hearing the same thoughts from the same people and seeing everyone nod in agreement, tell your team you want to hear everyone’s opinion on the topic at hand. You might go around the room and ask each person to name one concern they have, or you could ask them to write it down if some team members prefer to be anonymous. 

Open the floor to dissenting opinions and reassure your team that these are judgment-free meetings and everyone’s comments should focus on the work, not individual contributions. In the early days, as your team gets used to speaking up, you’ll need to model this behavior by encouraging kind, helpful language with a clear message so you can reach an agreement on the best way forward together.

2. Teach Your Team the Value of Acknowledgment 

Acknowledgment in this context is the act of acknowledging what someone just said before sharing a different perspective. It keeps disagreements productive by showing that people have been heard, even when they are not fully agreed with.

This strategy applies to all DISC types on your team, but it hits each type differently:

• Fast-talking, fast-thinking Drive types will be more likely to overstep and skip this step  as they push ahead with their own point. However, they feel disrespected if others don’t acknowledge their perspective, so they’re usually easy to persuade once they see the value of the rule.
• When Influence types feel dismissed, they may become reactive and respond emotionally rather than thoughtfully. They are usually more willing to engage when their ideas are recognized first, so a brief acknowledgment can help keep the conversation open and productive.
• Support types may take direct disagreement personally and withdraw entirely if their perspective is being challenged too abruptly. They’ll feel more psychologically safe when people show they’ve listened to their opinions, even if they disagree.
• Clarity types often come to meetings having done their homework, with the facts, figures and reasoning already in hand. When others acknowledge and incorporate that logic, they’re more likely to stay open to alternative ideas.

In and outside of personality type systems, acknowledgment is an easy way to prevent a conversation from quickly escalating into fruitless territory.

3. Encourage a “Devil’s Advocate” Culture

Even when you succeed in getting your quieter team members to speak up, your Support types, and to a lesser degree your Influence and Clarity types, might be so concerned about hurting other people’s feelings that they sugarcoat their feedback and soften their criticism to the point that the real issue gets lost. One way to counter that is to assign a devil’s advocate role so someone is explicitly tasked with challenging ideas and pressure-testing assumptions. Tell the team bluntly, “Everyone getting along all the time isn’t more important than raising the bar, and that’s why we’ve created this role” 

To keep things fair, have the role change hands each meeting so everyone gets the chance to take the floor and share their strongest arguments against ideas, proposals, policies and other topics. Set a rule that others stay quiet until after the devil’s advocate has finished making their point. This will most benefit your Support types, but it should encourage everyone to engage better in active listening when others are speaking.

4. Create a Rule for Idea-Based Language 

Every one of your DISC types may take an opposing opinion as a personal attack, though they’ll feel it in different ways. Drive types, for instance, tend to view differing opinions as a  competitive challenge, an invitation for them to sharpen their argument and push harder for their preferred outcome, which, of course, makes them defensive. Influence types tend to take rejection personally, so they may view an opposing argument as a reflection of their professional image. Support types are team players. They dislike it when people disagree and will feel off-kilter because they want harmony at work. Clarity types may feel that someone is judging them as incompetent.

While you won’t always be able to keep your employees from taking disagreement as a personal attack, you can mitigate it by requiring a specific use of language. Instead of phrases like “Claire is wrong” / “James doesn’t know what he’s talking about” / “You’re missing the point” / “That idea doesn’t make sense,” encourage your team to use language that clearly frames the idea’s potential challenges.

Try statements like: 

• “I see Claire’s point, and that could work, but I wonder if we’re missing something.”
• “That idea could be good, but I want to propose another strategy.” 
• “My concern is how the idea will play out in practice.”
• “We need to examine the risks here and look at some other options so we find the absolute best solution.” 

By reframing language in this way, your employees will feel respected and part of the discussion, rather than singled out.

5. Add a Pause, Reflect and Question Rule

Drive and Influence types are fast-talkers who deliver ideas rapidly—Drive types because they want to make a decision quickly and “get it done”, and Influence types because they brainstorm out loud and have lots of ideas to share. This can alienate Support and Clarity types who prefer a slower approach and need time to reflect on what’s been said.

Building on your “acknowledgement” rule, teach your team to pause, reflect and question before sharing their opposing view. So, instead of moving straight to their rebuttal, a team member might ask questions like: 

• “I want to make sure I understand. Are you prioritizing speed or creativity here?”
• “Can you elaborate on what your idea entails?” 
• “What problem are we trying to solve with this technique?”
• “If [insert worst case scenario happened], how would we turn your method around to problem-solve?”
• “Would you mind explaining your reasoning more?”
• “How do you think success would look if we went with your idea?”

When team members learn to prioritize curiosity, they’ll learn that speed isn’t always the best approach. Sometimes, to understand someone’s perspective, you need clarification and time to process the pros and cons. Research shows that curiosity-based language can help conversations feel less aggressive and encourage mutual trust.

6. Get Types to Hedge Rather Than Commit to Their Stance

Drive and Clarity types focus on tasks and outcomes rather than people and relationships, and they tend to voice their opinions as absolutes “for the good of the project.” Others may view their confident, know-it-all energy as arrogance, a problem that can be reduced by encouraging the team to use hedging language. So, instead of framing ideas as “the only way,” everyone uses softer cushioning such as“I could be wrong, but,” “This is just a thought, but” and “I’m wondering if…”

Hedging language prevents your more forthright types from appearing too cocky and makes their opinions feel more open to discussion. It should reduce the risk of more reserved and people-oriented types feeling closed off to what other team members have to say.

7. Be Supportive and Model the Same Behaviors 

As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” You can implement policies to encourage your staff to change, but if you’re not setting a good example, you’re not going to see results. 

Do the work to evaluate how you manage disagreements. Do you take things personally or bite your tongue to keep the peace? Are you receptive to other viewpoints and willing to compromise, or do you shut ideas down before other people have a chance to speak? Try any of these methods to take a personal inventory of your behavior: 

• Take the DISC assessment yourself to increase self-awareness of your leadership style. 
• Each week or month, ask the team to fill out anonymous comment cards about your management style and where you could improve.
• Ask a superior to give you a performance review.
• Keep a daily diary of important interactions with your staff, including how you felt and what happened in the conversations. You might notice you’re more closed-minded—or less assertive—than you imagined.

Creating Healthy, Productive Disagreements at Work

Intentional disagreements—the kinds done with tact, active listening and curiosity—are healthy. They can lead to positive results at work if your team knows how to disagree productively, and the strategies to do so are easy to implement when you keep your team members’ DISC types in mind. And once you start, you’ll see that when your employees stop viewing disagreements as a bad thing, everyone opens up to growth and new ideas.

Want a clearer picture of how your team works together? Explore Truity@Work to give your team simple, personality-based insights that make communication clearer, collaboration easier, and disagreement more productive.