Speak to be understood

No matter how grounded you are, it’s very easy for emotions to become tangled up in a discussion. This leads you to make the problem worse, your ego gets into it, and you start trying to convince everybody else of how hard it would be to change your position on an issue. Which makes it harder to change your position when a better idea comes up, which happens constantly.

A strategy I like to combat this is being aggressively cooperative. Don’t roll over to whatever some other stakeholder wants, and don’t make concessions for the sake of the relationship. Be tough, but make sure it’s on the problem you’re all trying to solve, not on the other person. This is where the shared experiences and the precedent you’ve set can be incredibly valuable, because you can be concrete about your requirements while being flexible about how they happen. You can shift your thinking on how to implement something without losing face or giving ground.

Thinking about Windows of opportunity and their three streams can help you be flexible on this. Usually, the problem and political streams are relatively fixed, though [[problem framing]] can help. More frequently, switching the solution can shift the alignment of your three streams and create an opportunity.

If you don’t stay flexible, it’s easy to become invested and go into a meeting talking like you’re trying to win a debate, by scoring points on the other person or convincing some third party who isn’t even there. Try to think about really speaking to be understood, rather than to win.

Similarly, if somebody has a concern that you think is off topic or misplaced, don’t ignore it. They’ll just keep worrying about it and bringing it up, thinking you haven’t heard them or understood. Write it down somewhere, ask somebody to make a note of it before you move on. Sometimes it’s useful, sometimes it’s not, but you’ll never get anywhere until you demonstrate you understand them.

References

Fisher, Roger, and William Ury. Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without Giving In. Edited by Bruce Patton, Third edition, Revised edition, Penguin Books, 2011.