Going along to get along? Could be a trap.

So I was going to do a blog post on the 4th of Jennifer Garvey Berger’s mindtraps — the tendency for most of us to seek harmony and agreement, even when deep inside we don’t agree at all. (Having one to law school, I suspect i met a sizable chunk of the population who prefer to fight.)

Anyway as fortune would have it, Jennifer beat me to the punch and published her own short piece, which you can read here.

If you’ve never agreed to something in a meeting with the secret knowledge that you can undermine or ignore it later, please raise your hand. Anyone? Anyone?

Even though Jennifer’s post is short, it might be tl;dr for you, in which case here’s the hack for escaping the agreement mindtrap. In a potential conflict, ask yourself — could this conflict deepen your relationship? If you’re disagreeing in order to be right, you’ve piled a mindtrap on top of a mindtrap. If your disagreement is coming from an authentic place, however, then this might be way forward.