Changing Hearts and Minds: Curiosity and Constructive Conversations

Wilk Wilkinson, host of the Derate the Hate podcast and a leader with Braver Angels, about what it really takes to bridge deep divides. During the pandemic, Wilk worked at a job where he was forced to enforce a mask mandate he disagreed with. The tension between his personal belief and professional responsibility was powerful, and that moment sparked a personal and professional transformation in his life. He dedicated himself to depolarization and constructive dialogue. This conversation explores why curiosity, humility, and a willingness to be wrong are essential for meaningful conversations, why “you can’t hate someone into changing their mind.” Wilk offers a hopeful vision: if more people embraced these habits of curiosity, we might move from zero-sum politics toward genuine understanding and shared solutions.

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Transcript

Michael Lee : [00:00:00] When we disagree is a show about arguments, how we have them, why we have them, and their impact on our relationships and ourselves. Nothing in life matters as much as you think it does while you're thinking about it. This focusing illusion explains why we overestimate the impact of any single factor on our happiness or on our success.

If I was skinny, I'd be happy. If I had a different job, I'd be happy. Whatever we're currently focused on seems monumentally important, distorting our judgment and fueling disagreements about priorities. This focusing illusion can warp relationship conflicts during an argument about housework. Chore distribution becomes the defining issue of our relationship while discussing money.

Financial management seems like the only thing that matters. When focused on intimacy issues, everything else fades away. Each conversation makes it topic feel like the relationship's central problem when [00:01:00] it's really just what you're thinking about right now. And political discourse exemplifies the focusing illusion.

Whatever issue dominates. Current news seems like the most important thing facing society, like immigration, healthcare, climate change, education each becomes the issue when focused upon, and it makes compromise impossible because everyone's focused on different things. This is especially the case with single issue voters.

We can't prioritize when everything seems equally critical, depending on where we're looking. And understanding the focusing illusion can help us maintain some perspective. The issue consuming your thoughts. It's important, but maybe not as important as it seems right now. That disagreement, that feels relationship ending.

It matters, but it's not everything When making decisions, we can consciously shift our focus to other factors to break this illusion. What seems monumentally important today might be forgotten next month, or altered or changed. This focusing illusion says, [00:02:00] whatever you're looking at is huge, and wisdom means remembering.

There's always more outside your current view. I'm Michael Lee, professor of Communication and Director of the Civility Initiative at the College of Charleston. Our guest today on when we Disagree is Wil Wilkinson. Wil is a devoted husband, father, Christian, conservative host of Derate, the Hate podcast and volunteer leader with Braver Angels by offering practical tips and tools for positive change.

On his podcast and through his work with Braver Angels, he hopes to inspire others to embrace personal growth, cultivate gratitude, and approach life's hurdles with grace and understanding. Wilke, tell us an argument story. 

Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you first Michael for having me here. And I'm somebody Michael who's had who's had more than my share of arguments over my time, which is, one of the reasons I started the Derate the Hate podcast.

Early on in 2020 with the pandemic coming into [00:03:00] and affecting all of our lives in a, in. Ugly way. There were a lot of conversations that were happening at the beginning and I was one who was immediately put off by a lot of the things that were happening in in response to the pandemic.

And I, and at the time I was I was still an operations manager in the in in the transportation world, which is what I came out of when I started doing, depolarizing work and podcast work full time. But, at the time I was still an operations manager overseeing several drivers.

And in the state of Minnesota our governor had placed a mask mandate on everybody in public spaces. And I was somebody who strongly disagreed with the idea of having having to wear masks didn't feel that they were effective. And but [00:04:00] unfortunately. Being in the position that I was in, Michael I had to enforce a rule that I did not agree with in any way.

And and it got into a pretty heated conversation between me and one of the drivers that reported to me. And and I almost had to let somebody go for for. Not wearing a mask that I knew was absolutely ridiculous. So it was it was a very tough time for a lot of people and it put into perspective a lot of things for me in terms of how we deal with people that, that report to us, that depend on us and having to enforce rules that we don't agree with.

And that one stood out pretty hard for me in terms of, personal account. Personal accountability, personal responsibility, and and having to do things that, that we disagree with when we're in positions of authority. 

Michael Lee : Yeah. Say a little bit more about what that conversation felt like.

If I'm understanding you correctly, you have to. And this operations manager [00:05:00] will enforce a mask mandate that you do not agree with. You get a challenge from one of your drivers who also doesn't want to wear the mask. Then you have to enforce it at the risk of this person's job potentially. 

Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah. Yeah.

And that's, that, that's a very good way to sum it up because the deal was is. So the governor places this this statute in place in the state of Minnesota, the state in which I live that basically says if if you're in charge of this public place and you don't enforce our rule of making sure that everybody's wearing a mask in this public place, we can come down on you as the, proprietor of the establishment or whatever it is, so now at this point I'm put in a position where I've got a driver who absolutely does not want to wear a mask. Is walking around in the building without a mask. There's all kinda windows on the front of the building that I'm in and I'm like, okay, now you're putting me in a [00:06:00] position. To be the bad guy in a situation where I agree with you completely.

And so it was one of those things where where it's okay, I am not going to suffer a fine. Because you don't want to do, I don't want to do what I'm being told to do, but I'm having to do it, and now you don't want to do it, and I'm gonna suffer for it. So it was definitely a conversation.

It did get heated. It was ugly. It was not fun at all. One of, certainly one of the low points of my career at the time and, it just it drove home for me, Michael that there, there are so many things that, that people don't understand. When it's outside of their particular lane, whether it be in business or in politics or life in general.

We're just all forced to do certain things that we don't like to do. And it's better to, instead of, argue, try to empathize with that person and say, what is it that they're dealing with as opposed to what I'm having to deal with. And and a little [00:07:00] bit of understanding goes a long way in those situations.

Michael Lee : I'd love to hear you talk a little bit more about your transition from this operations manager space and into depolarization work and podcasting work. When the pandemic was radicalizing for so many people across the political spectrum, and they came out of that experience and during that experience they were engaged in lots of demonization of the other side.

The other side doesn't care about me and people like me and then our politics have certainly corson it seems. Much more largely since then, you have a different story. You change careers, you get into depolarization work, you're trying to understand where different people are coming from. Talk about that transition, if you don't mind.

Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah, so I, I was in trucking and transportation, Michael, for 26 years of my adult life. I I started driving a truck in 1999 and and then became after 15 years as a driver. In 2014, got into operations management, still within transportation and trucking. Started managing [00:08:00] drivers training drivers.

Managing the operations at different facilities and over the course of that time I obviously, I grew as a person. I changed my mindset on a lot of different things and started working on this personal journey of bettering my life so that I could be a better influence on other people, in business, in, in family life, all things.

And during, at the beginning of the pandemic. I would say I was still quite polarized in, in terms of politics and and was still engaging in some ugly things online politically and things like that. Beginning of the pandemic, I started speaking out about the government's response to the pandemic.

I started a podcast that I, was really about in the beginning it was about promoting a very bad t-shirt company that I had, that I thought I could ex, as long as I could explain to people how ridiculous their point of view was through these very poorly [00:09:00] designed t-shirts that I could just change people's minds.

I figured out very quickly Michael, that is not how things work and, but through that podcast journey became part of an organization called Braver Angels that that has now become a very big part of my life. I volunteered with that organization for about five years, and now I work for them full time.

But, it it was a transition that over the course, like I said of my mental journey and then realizing that during our own as individuals, our own journey to, to bettering ourselves. We can better the way that we interact with each other and make the world a better place. 

Michael Lee : I'd love to hear you say a little bit more about the movement between, you said quote, I used to be so polarized that I would say ugly things online, and then of course making t-shirts, it sounds polarized, sort of one-sided T-shirts.

Turns out, didn't feel like those were very persuasive at all or move the needle, but it's one thing to just stop doing that [00:10:00] and it's another thing to do the opposite. Why did you start doing the opposite? 

Wilk Wilkinson: So one of the big things that, that in, in my journey, Michael, has been coming to the understanding that you can't hate somebody into believing what you believe.

You cannot you cannot hate or berate somebody into changing their mind on a particular topic. And when you. Would you just look at things online nowadays and the keyboard warriors that, that use the anonymity of the internet to just berate each other and destroy each other via the words that they're using online to to say the things that they're saying.

I realized very quickly that you. Can do a lot more to bridge divides and open minds by listening with intention to people that you disagree with. I talk a lot about comfort zone [00:11:00] and how we don't grow within our. Within our comfort zone, we have to step outside of our comfort zone.

Our comfort zone is basically just Li living within our own silo, listening to people that agree with us on most things, not listening to people that disagree with us on most things. But the reality is, Michael, that I'm not here to change anybody's mind. I'm just here to open people's minds and the best way to open somebody's mind to what you may believe.

Is to listen to what they believe, and not only what they believe, but why they believe it. We cannot a again, I'll go back to what I said. You can't hate or berate somebody into believing what you believe. But but if we listen to people with intention and find out why they believe what they believe.

They might just listen to why you believe, what you believe and there we can probably find some common ground in terms of, where we're at, where we want to go, and how we're gonna get there. 

Michael Lee : You mentioned that you're not [00:12:00] here or you're not in your work to change minds, and I take that for what it is, but I also hear at least a position on how minds change that you would like others to accept, which is that you might not be trying to change people's minds about X, Y, and Z or the Republican or Democratic party or masks or vaccines or something.

But you do have a position about how mines change that you would like people to be more open to. 

Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah, absolutely. I think the only way your mind will ever change is if you're open to the idea that you might be wrong. And I think that takes a lot of courage. It, it takes an awful lot of courage to sit there and say, I might be wrong about a particular thing, but we'll never get there by, by, trying to hate somebody into our position.

So I have my beliefs and I have my strongly held convictions when it comes to politics and things like that, Michael, but when I'm having a conversation with somebody, I'm not there to try and change their mind on whether they believe abortion is right or wrong, or [00:13:00] guns are right or wrong.

I know where I stand on both of those issues, but if we can have a conversation without me trying to browbeat you into believing what I believe, if you just open your mind to the idea that you know what? The way that I see this thing and I try to enter into every conversation that I'm having in the same way, is I might not have all the facts.

I might have oversimplified something along the way and made it into something that it's not or this thing could be far more complex than I ever thought about. But if I open my mind to the idea that there is more to this than I've been aware of then I can learn something. And I hope that by doing that, that the person that I'm engaging with does the same thing.

And again, we may not find any common ground on a particular thing, but at least we're not beating each other up trying to make sure that you believe what I believe or I believe what you believe. 

Michael Lee : There's a certain set of perspectives we could even call them [00:14:00] skills that your approach seems to imply.

And I'll read off a few of them to you and I'd love to hear you either negate those or add to this list. So embracing complexity in gray areas of issues that we might think we have settled to that event, diminishing our own sense of righteousness and what we can really know, which also means increasing our own humility.

Perhaps also increasing our curiosity about the things we don't know as well as people we don't know, and what in their life has led them to believe the things that they currently believe without shaming those. And then keeping an open mind as we go about engaging the world and one another.

What would you add or subtract from that list? 

Wilk Wilkinson: I think you nailed it. When you start talking about words like complexity curiosity, humility things like that, Michael it's it, you're really grasping the whole way that we have to be able to interact with each other in a civil society.

Engaging with curiosity, having the humility to. To, [00:15:00] believe that we could be we could be wrong or did not see the full complexity of a, of an issue. These are all hugely important things in our interaction. One of the things that that I would add to that is we have to give people the latitude to be wrong.

In the sense that. We, I can only speak for myself, but I know that I've not I've been wrong about things, plenty in my life. And if I didn't surround myself with people and there were, there was a time when I didn't, but if I didn't surround myself with people that gave me enough latitude to be wrong and then encourage me to learn from the mistakes that I have made, I wouldn't be where I am today.

I, one of the big things that I would say and like I said, you, you nailed it with the curiosity, the humility, the complexity and not boiling things down to just black or white. There's a lot of gray area and a [00:16:00] lot of things. But give people give people the latitude to be wrong on things.

Encourage them and help them. When you know, when, especially, when people have that aha moment, when you have the right kind of interaction and you're listening to somebody with intention and they know that you're listening to them with intention. And then they listen back with intention to you, and all of a sudden, you see that light bulb go off and they'd be like, oh, I never thought of it that way.

One of the greatest books that from a fantastic friend of mine Monica Goman who's also done a lot of work with Braver Angels, she wrote the book, I never thought of it that way. And and it's just. When somebody has that aha moment, I never thought of it that way. And they see things for the first time through, through a perspective that they didn't see it before.

It's a beautiful thing. So it, like [00:17:00] I said, you're not gonna hate people into believing what you believe, but if you have the right kind of conversation, it might open their mind to the idea that there was something there that they didn't see, that they will see now. 

Michael Lee : Let's do a thought experiment where a voting majority, 51%, 61%, 71%, whatever the number is, a voting majority of the country embraces these skills, these gray areas, complexities, humility, and so forth.

And we have a voting majority of people who have diminished their own righteousness and are really curious about having, I never thought of it that way. Moments. What is your hopeful outcome as to the world that those folks could create? 

Wilk Wilkinson: I think I think that's a great question and I think of we, we've boiled down politics in this country in so many ways now, Michael to a zero sum game.

Where where in order for me to win, you have to lose. But if we start having real curious conversations again and then [00:18:00] start working with each other again, and the idea that. I'm not gonna get everything that I need all of the time, and you're not gonna get everything that you need all of the time.

But if we both realize, and when I say both when we're talking about sides or whatever, if we start to realize again that we are. Together, we are going to be something greater than the sum of our parts and if we start to work with each other and try to synergize rather than work on these lose things, to quote Stephen Covey from.

The seven habits of highly effective people. Instead of constantly looking at, lose or win lose situations. But we try to come together and synergize through curious conversations, intentional listening and working with each other. We can come to much greater solutions and have a true sum, greater than a true whole, greater than the sum of its parts.

But if we continue on this zero sum [00:19:00] game where where it's I in order for me to win, you have to lose. Ultimately, that's a race to the bottom and we all lose. 

Michael Lee : I always try to save the best one for last. So here comes the last one. We'll see if it's the best. When and if, when? Is it ever important to close your mind about either people or topics?

Wilk Wilkinson: Oh, close. The, that is a, that's an interesting question that I'd never heard of or thought of before but the reality is when.

Like I said I've got strongly held convictions on, on, on certain things, and there are things that, that we have to truly understand as as facts. If for instance if somebody comes up to me and says [00:20:00] that, water's not wet and gravity doesn't exist. And that's the, that's where we're starting this conversation.

I, I think I can, confidently say this conversation is probably not gonna go anywhere productive. We can try for a minute or two, but I don't have to be a martyr for your cause. I'm not going to sacrifice my peace of mind because we can't agree on certain facts. There, there's going to be times Michael where people are having conversations and one side of that argument is just going to be completely incapable.

Of working from a fact-based area. And at that point it, I think it's best to say, look I don't think we're starting in a good place. I don't think we're gonna get to a good place. I appreciate you as a human being and I wish you the best, but I can't be a martyr for your cause and it's time for me to move on.

Michael Lee : Wil Wilkinson, thank you so much for being open-minded on when We Disagree, is [00:21:00] recorded at the College of Charleston with creator and host Michael Lee. Recording and sound engineering by Jesse Conns and Lance Laidlaw. Reach out to us at When We Disagree at gmail com.