You Can't Win An Argument
In his 1936 work “ How to Win Friends and Influence People now one of the bestselling books of all time, Dale Carnegie wrote: “I have come to the conclusion that there is only one way under high heaven to get the best of an argument — and that is to avoid it. Avoid it as you would avoid rattlesnakes and earthquakes.” Excellent book by the way highly recommend it.
Hopefully, you’ll be familiar with the expression ‘you may have won the battle, but you haven’t won the war’. You may have won the argument, and prevailed in ensuring that your point of view came out on top, but at the same time you unwittingly damaged your relationship — hence you really lost the argument. This happens usually in any situation where the relationship is with family, your partner, friends, work colleagues, boss/direct reports. Pretty much most personal or professional contacts.
What many people don’t realise, or easily forget, is that relationships are always primary if you want to get on in life and business. Think about leadership and teams in general and they’ll all point to the fact that maintaining strong positive relationships is fundamental to success. Unfortunately, when you ‘win’ an argument you often damage the relationship at the same time.
Why do you say that Eddie, I hear you ask?
Well, in my opinion, it’s always best to avoid creating enemies, or people who don’t have good things to say about you — because you never know who someone is, or who they know. We’ve all heard the expression ‘it’s not about what you know, it’s about who you know and there’s a lot of truth in that. We’ve also all heard stories about someone who got one over on someone else (who may well have deserved it), only to turn up at a job interview sometime later to find that person is the interviewer, or go to meet their new girlfriend/boyfriend’s parents and discover that it was their Mum/Dad or some similar tale… you never really know who’s who, or knows who, so my golden rule of thumb is, “if you can’t leave a positive impression on people try to leave on equal terms.
To make this happen will require a change in your attitudes. It’s not about sucking up to people, but it does mean shifting your attitude towards creating an outcome that works for both parties A win-win for everyone or at worst finishing on agreeing to disagree. This also requires that you give more consideration to the other person's point of view, rather than just dismissing it.
You have to let go of ‘being right’ or ‘winning’ and become open to listening to and hearing the other person’s point of view. You both hold on to everything you know to be true and believe, and at the same time remain engaged open to influence. The conversation then becomes a creative exploration searching for new meaning and outcomes. It's like playing a game of ‘Trump’ with playing cards. Instead of each player placing their card down on top of the other person’s and trying to trump them with each turn of a card and win the game, it’s more like placing all the cards side by side and then choosing the winning cards at the end of the game — together.
This might sound overly simplistic, but please don’t underestimate its power. The simplest and most effective tools I know to achieve this is called ‘Yes, And…’ — it involves beginning your contribution to the discussion with genuine acknowledgment of what the other person has just contributed. That doesn’t mean agreeing with them unless of course, you do. The easiest way to get started with this is by completing the sentence ‘What I like about that is…’ (find something, anything, and mean it!). Don't say the word BUT replace it with AND then add whatever you have to say next. This keeps the line of communication open. It may sound all too simple I know, but as I have already said don’t underestimate its power to create “win-win’s” and influence others.
Most of us rarely pay attention to others and their opinions if they’re not willing to listen to ours, so don’t forget it goes both ways
