8 ms·

How to remove conflict from conversations when people doubt or challenge you

68 points by mgdo 11y ago

altendo 11y ago
neat find. I think this post can be best summarized as: 1) be compassionate to others 2) don't take anything seriously I recommend the read, I especially love the discussion of "why" versus "how" - as someone who self-reflects, I often ask myself "why" more than anything, but it may be myopic to over-rely on that, as stated in the article.
- Justsignedup 11y ago
  So its an interesting situation: Why = get more rationale for their thinking How = get them to do critical thinking
  - avmich 11y ago
    This left me wondering - sometimes asking "why are you happy" really brings the person down and the good mood disappears.
    - scrupulusalbion 11y ago
      Happiness can trivially be due to things beyond our understanding, so challenging that emotion can make one conclude that one has no good reason to be happy. Unfortunately, I don't think this works very well with emotions like anxiety or depression.
giltleaf 11y ago
Really enjoyed this. I'd often get in political and fiscal discussions with my friends and found that it just really wouldn't click with some people. They'd get mad and things would get personal (I can get pretty defensive myself). The realization that "When you attack someone’s opinion, you attack their identity" was huge for me. People have different values of associations with different opinions, and while it's a shame I can't discuss things like international development issues with some friends because they hold their opinions about that too close to their personality, it has helped me to start looking out for bad conversation paths. However, as the top comment on reddit says: "They're still my friends, but I just don't ever have any actual proper conversations with those ones - we instead just have boring conversations about cheese or something."
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
stared 11y ago
When it comes to that matter I recommend Dale Carnegie "How to Win Friends and Influence People" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influen..., it's in the public domain: https://archive.org/details/BooksOfArslanhowToWinFriendsAndInfluencePeople https://archive.org/details/BooksOfArslanhowToWinFriendsAndI...). I read it half a year ago and I regret not reading it earlier (don't be dissuaded by its title!).
- abfan1127 11y ago
  its a great book to re-read annually :) I need to re-read it again.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
nate 11y ago
Alex Osborn was a partner at BBDO and had many secrets to his brainstorming sessions. The most important rule: don't criticize each other. In 2003, Charlan Nemeth, a professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, put that to the test. She had folks brainstorm a problem. One group was told not to criticize the ideas, the other group told: "you should debate and even criticize each other's ideas." The group told to debate and criticize each other? Generated 20% more ideas. And when asked for more ideas after the experiment was over, again, the critical/debating group produced on average of 7 more ideas each vs. the "don't criticize each other" group of 3 ideas each. Criticism and argument didn't kill creativity, it created even more of it. Osborn's ideas, though well intended, don't exactly all work when tested. I increasingly find that the best companies/organizations are simply those groups that now how to argue well. I recently took over Highrise from Basecamp and so being a long time 37signals/Basecamp fan I have this weird "almost" 3rd party perspective now getting to see how things work on the inside. The early founders/employee trio of Jason Fried/DHH (the co-founders) and Ryan Singer argue. A lot. It was surprising at first. It was a handful of months before launching their latest version of Basecamp, Basecamp 3. And they were in a conference room, and though all the walls in this Basecamp office are made of sound dampening cork, you could hear them arguing. Strong opinions about some feature that was necessary, and someone else thought wasn't. When they broke for lunch, you could feel the heat come out of that room. I went to lunch with them and it was like no argument even happened. We had a pleasant, fun, meal amongst friends. And I keep seeing this in the way the chew on their ideas. Nothing is sacred. But they realize how talented each other is and the rest of their team. There's nothing personal about the arguments. A huge reason I think their stuff is designed so well is that the stuff that stands the barrage of attack is the good stuff. The stuff that doesn't gets iterated on or thrown out and the stakeholder moves onto something else. You hear a lot of this at Pixar too amongst the creators (http://www.fastcompany.com/3027135/lessons-learned/inside-the-pixar-braintrust http://www.fastcompany.com/3027135/lessons-learned/inside-th...) and even when Catmull had to argue with Jobs http://firstround.com/review/Spark-Creativity-with-These-Tips-from-Pixars-President/ http://firstround.com/review/Spark-Creativity-with-These-Tip...) So, want to get more creative and have better decisions. Probably don't go the route of censoring argument; get better at arguing.
- avmich 11y ago
partycoder 11y ago
My philosophy is: 1) you cannot always be right. 2) truth is truth no matter it comes from. 3) denying or avoiding truth to protect your social rank is not ethical. admit when you are wrong and step on the shoulders of giants. If you let the best ideas prevail, everyone wins. If someone cares a lot about social rank, and comes up with comments such as "don't tell me what to do", "i know how to do my job", etc... that's the kind of people that you should just ignore and avoid. Those are people that are stuck in their ego bubble and will eventually stay in an ignorance limbo.
- mwfunk 11y ago
  This is all fine and dandy, but it's based on a very optimistic view of human cognitive abilities. It only makes sense as a personal philosophy if you only attempt to apply it to your own behavior, and never ever use it as a way to explain away people who disagree with you. "Truth" is straight-up unattainable, and if you ever think you've found it the only thing you can be sure of is that you are wrong. It's like something you asymptotically approach by learning stuff and thinking really hard all the time, but you still never actually get there. Even in supposedly cut-and-dried things like engineering decisions, there is very little capital-T Truth. People think their technical preferences are based on objective criteria but more often than not they are just as subjective as anything else. The only difference is that they can articulate an argument that on the surface sounds like it's about cold hard facts rather than personal preferences. It's uncanny how often people who fail to get other people to do things their way feel like they lost that battle because their "truth" couldn't overcome someone else's "ego" (scare quotes intentional). It's also uncanny how often people who resent other people for trying to tell them how things should be done will perceive that as someone else's "ego" trying to steamroll their "truth". So, I do try very hard to apply those ideals of objectivity/rationality/egolessness to my own life, but even then it's on a best effort basis because the human mind's ability to delude itself into thinking things like "I am right because of logic and they are wrong because of feelings" is utterly staggering, and that is just as true of myself (if not moreso) than it is of other people. By trying really really hard to overcome this common cognitive bias, I may actually do better than some or most other people in this regard. Or maybe not. All we can do is try, and also try very hard to not fall into the trap of thinking that other people aren't also trying (perhaps in their own way that doesn't completely make sense to us).

68 points by mgdo 11y ago

neat find. I think this post can be best summarized as: 1) be compassionate to others 2) don't take anything seriously I recommend the read, I especially love the discussion of "why" versus "how" - as someone who self-reflects, I often ask myself "why" more than anything, but it may be myopic to over-rely on that, as stated in the article.

Justsignedup 11y ago
So its an interesting situation: Why = get more rationale for their thinking How = get them to do critical thinking
- avmich 11y ago
  This left me wondering - sometimes asking "why are you happy" really brings the person down and the good mood disappears.
  - scrupulusalbion 11y ago
    Happiness can trivially be due to things beyond our understanding, so challenging that emotion can make one conclude that one has no good reason to be happy. Unfortunately, I don't think this works very well with emotions like anxiety or depression.

giltleaf 11y ago

Really enjoyed this. I'd often get in political and fiscal discussions with my friends and found that it just really wouldn't click with some people. They'd get mad and things would get personal (I can get pretty defensive myself). The realization that "When you attack someone’s opinion, you attack their identity" was huge for me. People have different values of associations with different opinions, and while it's a shame I can't discuss things like international development issues with some friends because they hold their opinions about that too close to their personality, it has helped me to start looking out for bad conversation paths. However, as the top comment on reddit says: "They're still my friends, but I just don't ever have any actual proper conversations with those ones - we instead just have boring conversations about cheese or something."

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

stared 11y ago

When it comes to that matter I recommend Dale Carnegie "How to Win Friends and Influence People" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influen..., it's in the public domain: https://archive.org/details/BooksOfArslanhowToWinFriendsAndInfluencePeople https://archive.org/details/BooksOfArslanhowToWinFriendsAndI...). I read it half a year ago and I regret not reading it earlier (don't be dissuaded by its title!).

abfan1127 11y ago
its a great book to re-read annually :) I need to re-read it again.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

nate 11y ago

Alex Osborn was a partner at BBDO and had many secrets to his brainstorming sessions. The most important rule: don't criticize each other. In 2003, Charlan Nemeth, a professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, put that to the test. She had folks brainstorm a problem. One group was told not to criticize the ideas, the other group told: "you should debate and even criticize each other's ideas." The group told to debate and criticize each other? Generated 20% more ideas. And when asked for more ideas after the experiment was over, again, the critical/debating group produced on average of 7 more ideas each vs. the "don't criticize each other" group of 3 ideas each. Criticism and argument didn't kill creativity, it created even more of it. Osborn's ideas, though well intended, don't exactly all work when tested. I increasingly find that the best companies/organizations are simply those groups that now how to argue well. I recently took over Highrise from Basecamp and so being a long time 37signals/Basecamp fan I have this weird "almost" 3rd party perspective now getting to see how things work on the inside. The early founders/employee trio of Jason Fried/DHH (the co-founders) and Ryan Singer argue. A lot. It was surprising at first. It was a handful of months before launching their latest version of Basecamp, Basecamp 3. And they were in a conference room, and though all the walls in this Basecamp office are made of sound dampening cork, you could hear them arguing. Strong opinions about some feature that was necessary, and someone else thought wasn't. When they broke for lunch, you could feel the heat come out of that room. I went to lunch with them and it was like no argument even happened. We had a pleasant, fun, meal amongst friends. And I keep seeing this in the way the chew on their ideas. Nothing is sacred. But they realize how talented each other is and the rest of their team. There's nothing personal about the arguments. A huge reason I think their stuff is designed so well is that the stuff that stands the barrage of attack is the good stuff. The stuff that doesn't gets iterated on or thrown out and the stakeholder moves onto something else. You hear a lot of this at Pixar too amongst the creators (http://www.fastcompany.com/3027135/lessons-learned/inside-the-pixar-braintrust http://www.fastcompany.com/3027135/lessons-learned/inside-th...) and even when Catmull had to argue with Jobs http://firstround.com/review/Spark-Creativity-with-These-Tips-from-Pixars-President/ http://firstround.com/review/Spark-Creativity-with-These-Tip...) So, want to get more creative and have better decisions. Probably don't go the route of censoring argument; get better at arguing.

avmich 11y ago

partycoder 11y ago

My philosophy is: 1) you cannot always be right. 2) truth is truth no matter it comes from. 3) denying or avoiding truth to protect your social rank is not ethical. admit when you are wrong and step on the shoulders of giants. If you let the best ideas prevail, everyone wins. If someone cares a lot about social rank, and comes up with comments such as "don't tell me what to do", "i know how to do my job", etc... that's the kind of people that you should just ignore and avoid. Those are people that are stuck in their ego bubble and will eventually stay in an ignorance limbo.

mwfunk 11y ago
This is all fine and dandy, but it's based on a very optimistic view of human cognitive abilities. It only makes sense as a personal philosophy if you only attempt to apply it to your own behavior, and never ever use it as a way to explain away people who disagree with you. "Truth" is straight-up unattainable, and if you ever think you've found it the only thing you can be sure of is that you are wrong. It's like something you asymptotically approach by learning stuff and thinking really hard all the time, but you still never actually get there. Even in supposedly cut-and-dried things like engineering decisions, there is very little capital-T Truth. People think their technical preferences are based on objective criteria but more often than not they are just as subjective as anything else. The only difference is that they can articulate an argument that on the surface sounds like it's about cold hard facts rather than personal preferences. It's uncanny how often people who fail to get other people to do things their way feel like they lost that battle because their "truth" couldn't overcome someone else's "ego" (scare quotes intentional). It's also uncanny how often people who resent other people for trying to tell them how things should be done will perceive that as someone else's "ego" trying to steamroll their "truth". So, I do try very hard to apply those ideals of objectivity/rationality/egolessness to my own life, but even then it's on a best effort basis because the human mind's ability to delude itself into thinking things like "I am right because of logic and they are wrong because of feelings" is utterly staggering, and that is just as true of myself (if not moreso) than it is of other people. By trying really really hard to overcome this common cognitive bias, I may actually do better than some or most other people in this regard. Or maybe not. All we can do is try, and also try very hard to not fall into the trap of thinking that other people aren't also trying (perhaps in their own way that doesn't completely make sense to us).