Distrust your first instinctive impression. Our first natural
reaction in a disagreeable situation is to be defensive. Be
careful. Keep calm and watch out for your first reaction. It
may be you at your worst, not your best.
Control your temper. Remember, you can measure the size
of a person by what makes him or her angry.
Listen first. Give your opponents a chance to talk. Let them
finish. Do not resist, defend or debate. This only raises barriers.
Try to build bridges of understanding. Don’t build
higher barriers of misunderstanding.
Look for areas of agreement. When you have heard your
opponents out, dwell first on the points and areas on which
you agree.
Be honest, Look for areas where you can admit error and
say so. Apologize for your mistakes. It will help disarm your
opponents and reduce defensiveness.
Promise to think over your opponents’ ideas and study
them carefully. And mean it. Your opponents may be right.
It is a lot easier at this stage to agree to think about their
points than to move rapidly ahead and find yourself in a
position where your opponents can say: “We tried to tell
you, but you wouldn’t listen.”
Thank your opponents sincerely for their interest. Anyone
who takes the time to disagree with you is interested in the
same things you are. Think of them as people who really
want to help you, and you may turn your opponents into
friends.
Postpone action to give both sides time to think through
the problem. Suggest that a new meeting be held later that
day or the next day, when all the facts may be brought to bear. In preparation for this meeting, ask yourself some hard questions:
Could my opponents be right? Partly right? Is there truth
or merit in their position or argument? Is my reaction one
that will relieve the problem, or will it just relieve any frustration?
Will my reaction drive my opponents further away
or draw them closer to me? Will my reaction elevate the
estimation good people have of me? Will I win or lose?
What price will I have to pay if I win? If I am quiet about it,
will the disagreement blow over? Is this difficult situation
an opportunity for me?
* Bits and Pieces, published by The Economics Press, Fairfield, N.J.
Opera tenor Jan Peerce, after he was married nearly
fifty years, once said: “My wife and I made a pact a long
time ago, and we’ve kept it no matter how angry we’ve
grown with each other. When one yells, the other should
listen-because when two people yell, there is no communication,
just noise and bad vibrations.”
PRINCIPLE 1
The only way to get the best of an argument
is to avoid it.
2
A SURE WAY OF MAKING ENEMIES
-AND HOW TO AVOID IT
When Theodore Roosevelt was in the White House, he
confessed that if he could be right 75 percent of the time,
he would reach the highest measure of his expectation.
If that was the highest rating that one of the most distinguished
men of the twentieth century could hope to
obtain, what about you and me?
If you can be sure of being right only 55 percent of the
time, you can go down to Wall Street and make a million
dollars a day. If you can’t be sure of being right even 55
percent of the time, why should you tell other people
they are wrong?
You can tell people they are wrong by a look or an
intonation or a gesture just as eloquently as you can in
words – and if you tell them they are wrong, do you
make them want to agree with you? Never! For you have
struck a direct blow at their intelligence, judgment,
pride and self-respect. That will make them want to
strike back. But it will never make them want to change
their minds. You may then hurl at them all the logic of a
Plato or an Immanuel Kant, but you will not alter their
opinions, for you have hurt their feelings.
Never begin by announcing “I am going to prove so-and-
so to you.” That’s bad. That’s tantamount to saying:
“I’m smarter than you are, I’m going to tell you a thing
or two and make you change your mind.”
That is a challenge. It arouses opposition and makes
the listener want to battle with you before you even
start.
It is difficult, under even the most benign conditions,
to change people’s minds. So why make it harder? Why
handicap yourself?
If you are going to prove anything, don’t let anybody
know it. Do it so subtly, so adroitly, that no one will feel
that you are doing it. This was expressed succinctly by
Alexander Pope:
Men must be taught as if you taught them not
And things unknown proposed as things forgot.
Over three hundred years ago Galileo said:
You cannot teach a man anything; you can only
help him to find it within himself.
As Lord Chesterfield said to his son:
Be wiser than other people if you can;
but do not tell them so.
Socrates said repeatedly to his followers in Athens:
One thing only I know, and that
is that I know nothing.
Well, I can’t hope to be any smarter than Socrates, so
I have quit telling people they are wrong. And I find that
it pays.
If a person makes a statement that you think is wrong
– yes, even that you know is wrong – isn’t it better to
begin by saying: “Well, now, look, I thought otherwise,
but I may be wrong. I frequently am. And if I am wrong,
I want to be put right. Let’s examine the facts.”
There’s magic, positive magic, in such phrases as: “I
may be wrong. I frequently am. Let’s examine the facts.”
Nobody in the heavens above or on earth beneath
or in the waters under the earth will ever object to your
saying: “I may be wrong. Let’s examine the facts.”
One of our class members who used this approach in
dealing with customers was Harold Reinke, a Dodge
dealer in Billings, Montana. He reported that because of
the pressures of the automobile business, he was often
hard-boiled and callous when dealing with customers’
complaints. This caused flared tempers, loss of business
and general unpleasantness.
He told his class: “Recognizing that this was getting
me nowhere fast, I tried a new tack. I would say something
like this: ‘Our dealership has made so many mistakes
that I am frequently ashamed. We may have erred
in your case. Tell me about it.’
“This approach becomes quite disarming, and by the
time the customer releases his feelings, he is usually
much more reasonable when it comes to settling the
matter. In fact, several customers have thanked me for
having such an understanding attitude. And two of them
have even brought in friends to buy new cars. In this
highly competitive market, we need more of this type of
customer, and I believe that showing respect for all customers’
opinions and treating them diplomatically and
courteously will help beat the competition.”
You will never get into trouble by admitting that you
may be wrong. That will stop all argument and inspire
your opponent to be just as fair and open and broad-minded
as you are. It will make him want to admit that
he, too, may be wrong.
If you know positively that a person is wrong, and you
bluntly tell him or her so, what happens? Let me illustrate.
Mr. S—- a young New York attorney, once argued
a rather important case before the United States
Supreme Court (Lustgarten v. Fleet Corporation 280
U.S. 320). The case involved a considerable sum of
money and an important question of law. During the
argument, one of the Supreme Court justices said to him:
“The statute of limitations in admiralty law is six years,
is it not?”
Mr. S—- stopped, stared at the Justice for a moment,
and then said bluntly: “Your Honor, there is no statute
of limitations in admiralty.”
“A hush fell on the court,” said Mr. S—- as he related
his experience to one of the author’s classes, “and the
temperature in the room seemed to drop to zero. I was
right. Justice – was wrong. And I had told him so. But
did that make him friendly? No. I still believe that I had
the law on my side. And I know that I spoke better than
I ever spoke before. But I didn’t persuade. I made the
enormous blunder of telling a very learned and famous
man that he was wrong.”
Few people are logical. Most of us are prejudiced and
biased. Most of us are blighted with preconceived notions,
with jealousy, suspicion, fear, envy and pride. And
most citizens don’t want to change their minds about
their religion or their haircut or communism or their favorite
movie star. So, if you are inclined to tell people
they are wrong, please read the following paragraph
every morning before breakfast. It is from James Harvey
Robinson’s enlightening book The Mind in the Making.
We sometimes find ourselves changing our minds without
any resistance or heavy emotion, but if we are told we
are wrong, we resent the imputation and harden our hearts.
We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs,
but find ourselves filled with an illicit passion for them
when anyone proposes to rob us of their companionship. It
is obviously not the ideas themselves that are dear to us,
but our self-esteem which is threatened. . . . The little word
“my” is the most important one in human affairs, and properly
to reckon with it is the beginning of wisdom. It has the
same force whether it is “my” dinner, “my” dog, and “my”
house, or “my” father, “my” country, and “my” God. We
not only resent the imputation that our watch is wrong, or
our car shabby, but that our conception of the canals of
Mars, of the pronunciation of “Epictetus,” of the medicinal
value of salicin, or of the date of Sargon I is subject to revision.
We like to continue to believe what we have been
accustomed to accept as true, and the resentment aroused
when doubt is cast upon any of our assumptions leads us to
seek every manner of excuse for clinging to it. The result is
that most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments
for going on believing as we already do.
Carl Rogers, the eminent psychologist, wrote in his
book On Becoming a Person:
I have found it of enormous value when I can permit
myself to understand the other person. The way in which I
have worded this statement may seem strange to you, Is it
necessary to permit oneself to understand another? I think
it is. Our first reaction to most of the statements (which we
hear from other people) is an evaluation or judgment, rather
than an understanding of it. When someone expresses some
feeling, attitude or belief, our tendency is almost immediately
to feel “that’s right,” or “that’s stupid,” “that’s abnormal,”
“that’s unreasonable,” “that’s incorrect,” “that’s not
nice .” Very rarely do we permit ourselves to understand
precisely what the meaning of the statement is to the other
person.*
* Adapted from Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1961), pp. 18ff.
I once employed an interior decorator to make some
draperies for my home. When the bill arrived, I was
dismayed.
A few days later, a friend dropped in and looked at the
draperies. The price was mentioned, and she exclaimed
with a note of triumph: “What? That’s awful. I am afraid
he put one over on you.”
True? Yes, she had told the truth, but few people like
to listen to truths that reflect on their judgment. So,
being human, I tried to defend myself. I pointed out that
the best is eventually the cheapest, that one can’t expect
to get quality and artistic taste at bargain-basement
prices, and so on and on.