
How to remove conflict from conversations when people doubt or challenge you - mgdo
https://www.reddit.com/r/everymanshouldknow/comments/2yvlbo/emsk_how_to_remove_conflict_from_conversations/
======
stared
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_Influen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People),
it's in the public domain:
[https://archive.org/details/BooksOfArslanhowToWinFriendsAndI...](https://archive.org/details/BooksOfArslanhowToWinFriendsAndInfluencePeople)).
I read it half a year ago and I regret not reading it earlier (don't be
dissuaded by its title!).

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

------
giltleaf
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."

------
partycoder
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.

~~~
jdmichal
In my experience, the problem is rarely "truth", which has a disproportionate
load of philosophical baggage for one little word. The problem is typically
bound up in "value", and recognizing that perceptions of "truth" are bound up
in differing "values" and therefore differing ideas of what's "best". That is
a huge step forward in being able to understand other people's arguments and
work towards commonality or compromise.

~~~
partycoder
Well, if your values are not in the best interest of the company or project,
then my views are: I don't care about your views.

Companies define their values and if they're not defined you can ask a manager
or stakeholder. If some anarchist dude shows up not wanting to unit test their
code because of some hippie ideals I cannot care less.

~~~
jdmichal
That's a great viewpoint if your target is monoculture. Which _is_ sometimes
the goal, such as your example of testing. It's a terrible viewpoint if your
target is persuasion or compromise.

~~~
partycoder
Ideally you want an evolutive monoculture. Have everyone on the same page,
while collecting the best of everyone's feedback. You will need of course to
establish "values" as previously mentioned. Those values will differ depending
on what your goal is... a proof of concept, a functional prototype, a stable
product, a bulletproof platform...

~~~
jdmichal
So then, thought experiment time. Given that you have at best blatantly
ignored and at worst openly ridiculed everyone's approach to testing that did
not fit the company line... How exactly do you expect to be collecting all
this valuable feedback on how better testing would look?

The problem with developing monocultures is that when you need something else,
it's pretty hard to find.

~~~
partycoder
To have an established way of doing things doesn't mean to outright ignore
everything else immediately.

You can reject an approach, but the key is HOW: if you are rejecting an idea
it needs to be the result of a serious dialog, comparing ideas side to side
and being open to accept that the dominant approach can be replaced or
improved.

Now even if the idea is better, the gains need to be significant enough to
compensate for the cost of changing the way of doing things and getting people
on the same page.

~~~
jdmichal
Well that's certainly a more nuanced position compared to your response a few
posts up. I know I called you on it (though hopefully politely) and am glad to
read this response now.

------
nate
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-
th...](http://www.fastcompany.com/3027135/lessons-learned/inside-the-pixar-
braintrust)) and even when Catmull had to argue with Jobs
[http://firstround.com/review/Spark-Creativity-with-These-
Tip...](http://firstround.com/review/Spark-Creativity-with-These-Tips-from-
Pixars-President/))

So, want to get more creative and have better decisions. Probably don't go the
route of censoring argument; get better at arguing.

~~~
shostack
>"I increasingly find that the best companies/organizations are simply those
groups that now how to argue well."

While I agree with this point, I think it is only one piece of the puzzle. In
order to have productive "arguments" it is important to also make sure you
provide an environment conducive to it. That means finding ways to eliminate
concerns one might have with "arguing against a boss or executive's point" due
to fear of risking their job, or simply being steamrolled due to rank.
Cultures that place a strong emphasis on building consensus can also breed
situations where people don't speak against someone because they are playing
things politically and need that person's support for their own pet project
and don't want to risk giving up that capital just to voice a contrarian
opinion.

Beyond that, it also takes the right temperament of people in the room. I've
worked with some people that I can only classify as "overly-sensitive." They
are very passive-aggressive people, and read into any random negative thing
they hear as a personal attack against them. There's simply no effective way
to have a constructive debate with people like that in my experience.

But I do agree that this sort of "bare it all" dialogue is critical to moving
things forward. The real question I have is how to transform an organization
or team to that state in as painless a way as possible.

~~~
mistermann
> The real question I have is how to transform an organization or team to that
> state in as painless a way as possible.

Or even get them to consider the possibility that the organization might
suffer from the problem _in the very slightest_ , let alone solve it.

------
altendo
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
So its an interesting situation:

Why = get more rationale for their thinking

How = get them to do critical thinking

~~~
avmich
This left me wondering - sometimes asking "why are you happy" really brings
the person down and the good mood disappears.

~~~
scrupulusalbion
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.

