Lessons from Malala Yousafzai: How to Disagree Better

To bring about change, advocates like Malala have to engage with people who hold very different beliefs. What can she teach us about navigating a polarized world?

You’d think most families would be proud to count a Nobel Laureate as a member, but even the globally admired activist Malala Yousafzai had relatives who were less than impressed by her work.

In a recent conversation we had for a Yale event, Malala told me about a time when a close family member was asked to accompany her to a press conference… he was appalled. 

“He was pretty frustrated and he complained to my dad that: 'Malala should not appear in front of TV cameras!'”

Malala is a fierce advocate for women’s rights and access to education; but she comes from a place and a culture where many people deeply (even violently) oppose her views. 

But these days it feels like a lot of us are butting up against people who don’t share our views on a range of important – yet polarizing – issues. Things like reproductive rights and gun control. 

It’s right to get angry about injustice – but being constantly angry isn’t always good for our wellbeing or our decision-making. And shouting and raging and feuding with the people we’re close to takes a toll on our happiness. 

When Malala (who has a newsletter of her own which you should check out, btw) agreed to let me interview her, I really wanted to hear how she’s been able to bridge those gulfs. After all, an effective advocate can’t just preach to the converted - Malala often engages with people with whom she doesn’t see eye to eye. 

“This is something that's on my mind all the time,” says Malala. “How can we take part in this conversation without doing it the wrong way.”

We’ve all had these tough conversations go wrong – and found ourselves furiously arguing with uncles, taxi drivers or even total strangers online. 

There’s a ton of new research on how to make these types of conversations go better – or at least feel less fraught. Some of the best work is being done by my friend Jamil Zaki, a professor of psychology at Stanford University and author of The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World. 

Jamil teaches a class on empathy, and for one assignment has his students identify a person with whom they fundamentally disagree on an important topic. The student then has to initiate a discussion – but rather than clashing over the issue, they have to find out how their conversation partner came to hold the views they did. They need to hear the other person’s story.

“When you start with narratives, instead of either calling people out or saying how wrong they are, you get to a new type of discussion right away,” say Jamil. 

“One in which it actually doesn't matter as much if you would agree on every point. But something just as important happens, which is that they grow to appreciate that people they disagree with are not necessarily bad people. They're just people with different stories than their own.” 

This work chimes totally with Malala’s experience – she too approaches opponents with empathy and a curiosity to understand what underpins their positions. 

“Sometimes we have this idea, like: ‘We are the righteous ones and we are on the right path and [anyone] in disagreement with our opinions is wrong!’ We should not have this approach at all.” 

“We should be always open to new ideas and try to understand [new] perspectives. We may not fully agree with them, but sometimes we realize that we start with the same frustrations and that somehow leads to different conclusions.” 

“It's quite important to understand what are the frustrations that other people are facing? So it's finding those commonalities. It's finding what can bring us together and saying: ‘We agree it's the same problem that we're talking about. So how can we address that?’’

It’s often tempting to physically cut ourselves off from people with whom we disagree – avoiding that one relative at a family gathering, for example. But Malala has a really interesting take on this. 

“Sometimes it's not a conversation that actually changes people's minds and perspective… it's the time that they spend with you.”

Some of the people in Malala’s community wrongly assumed that giving women access to education would make them bad people. This is ridiculous, but rather than ridiculing these people or turning her back on them, Malala decided to demonstrate how baseless their concerns were. 

“The more experience that they have with you, [the more they] really change their perspective. I am educated, and more girls are receiving their education and it doesn't make us like any different. We're still the same women.”

Malala – who has endured so much in her short lifetime - has seen first-hand the power that empathy can have. Her decision to keep engaging with critics, even those within her own family, has paid off. Even with the relative who thought she shouldn't go before the cameras of the press. 

“Today that same family member,” Malala beams. “Is the biggest supporter of mine.” 

Stay well and stay happy,

Laurie