This story appeared last night on CBS’ 60 Minutes. Oprah Winfrey did the story. 
One year into Donald Trump’s presidency, Americans remain divided, often unwilling to listen to what the other side has to say. It’s happening in families, among friends and at the workplace. We witnessed that schism first-hand last fall when we went to Grand Rapids, Michigan, and gathered 14 people – seven who voted for Mr. Trump, seven who did not – for a wide-ranging discussion about politics, policy and the president himself. To mark President Trump’s first year in office we decided to repeat the experiment. We never intended to go back to Grand Rapids. But then we learned that, after disagreeing on virtually everything, our group stayed in close touch. Members from opposite sides of the divide actually became friends, organizing outings and talking every day in a private facebook chat group.  All of that made us want to go back.
You should watch the segment on 60 Minutes’ website. I wasn’t intrigued so much by the political banter or debate, but by the fact that 14 people split right down the middle in maintaining very opposite views would continue to engage with each other. The conservative pollster Frank Luntz had assembled the group for CBS. He said, “I was surprised that they stayed together because there was every reason, based on the conversation, that they would pull themselves apart. But what I liked about it is that they came to respect each other, appreciate each other, and live each other’s lives to some degree so that they could empathize. That was a laboratory.”
The Peer Advantage isn’t fiction. It’s real and last night we saw a demonstration of it on a prime time legendary news magazine TV show, 60 Minutes. 
Lauren, one of the members of this 14-person group offered this:
I don’t have access to Trump voters outside of this group. In fact, during the election, I pretty much deleted everybody, who believed in the values that Trump espoused. So this group has helped me to understand perspectives that I would not have had access to. And so I’ve been able to take that out to my friends who don’t have access to Trumpers, and they come back and say, “Hey, I really learned a lot.” That’s huge. Because everybody wants to feel understood, but it’s quite a different thing to want to understand. And I think most of us have gotten that out of this.
Business owners and CEO’s can be every bit as jaded as people with strong political positions. We know what we know and mostly, we feel convinced we’re right. But as this – and many other stories – show, being right isn’t the goal. It’s about being understood and understanding. 
What You Don’t Know Will Hurt You
Business leaders hate blind spots. We grow annoyed when something occurs that we knew nothing about. It’s made worse when we find out somebody in our organization knew it but failed to share it. 
Leaders crave information, data, and facts. Because these things fuel our ability to make wiser decisions. And business leaders – perhaps more than the average person – hate being fooled, or getting it wrong because we didn’t see it correctly (or because we didn’t see the whole thing). Many of us are comfortable if we make a mistake because we were trying something new or innovative. But we can’t stand to be defeated by a lack of information, or a lack of insight – things we mostly feel could have been avoided, but weren’t. 
Why then do you continue to live with your assumptions as though they’re facts?