Don't tell someone they're wrong. You'll never convince them, even when you're right. It's not worth the ink (or the blood pressure).
Instead, guide them towards the path to figuring out for themselves that they're wrong. Build a foundation of truths and facts they can evaluate their own beliefs against. If they change their mind, great. If they don't learn, you're no worse off than you were before (and your blood pressure will remain lower).
Studies have shown that trying to convince people they're wrong with facts and/or truths will instead cement them in their beliefs harder than if you did nothing.
This was a hard learned lesson for me, and I still suck at it sometimes. Because, let's face it, arguing is a time honored form of entertainment.
> Instead, guide them towards the path to figuring out for themselves that they're wrong. Build a foundation of truths and facts they can evaluate their own beliefs against. If they change their mind, great. If they don't learn, you're no worse off than you were before (and your blood pressure will remain lower).
I had a manager who would quietly disagree with things we said, then try to gently steer us toward the answer he wanted by asking a lot of leading questions. "Socratic method", he called it. He thought he was doing us a great favor by helping us discover the correct answer through his questioning.
There was a problem: He was sometimes wrong. In certain domains, he was frequently wrong. He often misunderstood a situation and would launch into multiple days or weeks of leading questions designed to gently guide us to the "correct" answer, often leaving us with "something to think about" that we were supposed to ponder overnight.
Some times we'd spend days trying to guide him back to seeing where he was wrong, or why he was asking the wrong questions. Once he convinced himself he was right and we were wrong, it was hell to stop his socratic method questioning and get him to look at the facts again.
It was awful. I spent so much of that job trying to guess what he was thinking. We always had to reverse engineer what he wanted us to say with his questions, because he wouldn't just tell us like adults talking to each other.
If I learned anything from that job, it's that I can't stand working with people who won't communicate directly. We lost so much time because he thought he was being clever by not telling us when he disagreed with us.
Yup I have seen this technique used by someone who thought they were being tactful, but just came across as being totally patronizing and wasting a large amount of time.
Polite directness is best. Explain your position as clearly as possible, your reservations with the alternative, what it would take to change your mind, and actually be open to considering alternatives and changing your mind.
That being said, I think it is possible to be direct while also employing the socratic method.
Exactly. You can both state your reasoning AND ask a question that not only tries to lead someone else to your conclusion, but also allows them to rebut your conclusion with their own better one.
Assuming that that last doesn't exist is just insufferably patronizing asshole.
When I ask "what did I miss?" I'm really asking that.
Sure I know I've put a lot of time and thought into the topic (otherwise I'm not trying to state anything in the first place), and sure I may even be pretty sure I'm the authority in the immediate viscinity, but obviously anyone else from any background at any time on any topic may know something I don't know or have considered something I never considered, and may actually have an answer. In fact it happens all the time.
Totally agree. It can really feel passively aggressive to me if someone politely asks you to reflect. IMHO it is really important to be transparent. It is important for the opposite to understand also how important something is to you and why. I tend to really dislike people whose trained communication strategies you can observe, even it is something like nonviolent communication (whose underpinning I understand but am particularly bad at)
Of course poor communication skills will cause problems. It's well worth asking for clarifications in such situations; I have few problems playing the dumb oaf and admitting my lack of understanding if it gets someone to ELI5 their point. And generally, someone who brags about using the Socratic method out loud will gladly display their brilliance you've blundered past.
In the end, I'm not advocating for confusing the person you're communicating with, I'm advocating for not butting your head against their beliefs; against their ego. Perhaps this advice is better suited to online debates, but I've also seen it too often in real life to waste my time trying to change someone's beliefs.
The issue is that it is often very important in engineering to get to the point and state what you believe as directly as possible, so that others (and yourself) can compare it to the facts quickly and easily. And listen, and figure out where they might be wrong afterwards.
And we can and should expect everyone in Engineering to do the same for what they believe too. Because otherwise we all waste time we can’t afford to waste, and end up with more broken situations.
What you’re describing is fine for politics and social meet and greets. It wastes time, causes confusion, and results in expensive (and sometimes fatal) mistakes when the facts matter.
Engineers too are human. They have egos and beliefs and care more about the things they build than they should. Their feelings get hurt when people are rude, short, or belittling - or when they perceive that someone's being rude, short, or belittling.
The perfectly rational engineer (read: human being) doesn't exist outside of a select few neurodivergant folks. Acting as if every engineer is perfectly rational is now, and always has been, a mistake.
Just ask Linus' more verbose colleagues; have a look at how he has changed over the many years he's lead the kernel development.
It is entirely possible to be direct without being an asshole.
Being indirect, Socratic questioning, etc. has its place too. But it can easily just result in someone being a passive aggressive asshole instead of a direct one, or, as others noted in the thread, being confusing and a drag on everyone because they won’t actually say what they think.
That’s the ‘no one is an asshole, everyone is an asshole’ type of BS that muddies the waters.
Linus has been an asshole, he didn’t have to be, and everyone agreed on that, including him.
He’s getting better at being less of an asshole.
That is what I’m referring to. It isn’t ambiguous. It isn’t ‘a bad day’. It isn’t one person getting offended about something that no one else saw. Pretending it is does no one any favors.
Saying that someone is perfectly rational is not saying they have no emotions. Nor is it an insinuation that someone is somehow less human for prioritizing rationality in decision making.
And I say this as an outspoken neurodivergent myself.
And neither is anyone who’s neurodivergent “perfectly rational”. That’s not a helpful stereotype, all on its own, without any characterization of our emotional capacity or supposed prioritization of whatever mode of thought.
Also when did I say anyone was guilty of anything? I should probably stop coming back and rereading this response and wondering why what little I said is being construed as the opposite of what I said.
Every part of your comment was an accusation based on your own embellishments.
They are not guilty of claiming or even implying that all neurodivergent are purely rational. You produced that yourself, and said it's wrong. Well, true it is wrong, and they are not guilty of saying that. Your comment was in response to theirs and not in a vacuum, and so the most reasonable interpretation of your comment is as response to theirs.
I specifically said I didn’t think it was intended.
> They are not guilty of claiming or even implying that all neurodivergent are purely rational.
That’s not what I thought they said either. They said that “perfectly rational engineer (read: human being) doesn't exist outside of a select few neurodivergant folks”. My objection is that no person is perfectly rational, neurodivergent or otherwise, and identifying even a select few as such might reinforce the stereotype even unintentionally.
I think the point of the parent comment wasn't about communication per se, but that you can't always be right (even when we like to think we are) and your method of trying to lead others to adopt your wrong conclusions can be hell to deal with.
People often misuse the Socratic method like that. Socrates asked those questions not to guide the students to a certain answer, but because he himself didn't know where the questions would lead. It really was a dialogue and not a way to get students to some particular preconceived answer.
“ We lost so much time because he thought he was being clever by not telling us when he disagreed with us.”
Are these insights from a confession or somehow related by a confidant? Otherwise, isn’t this conclusion just speculation?
Lack of leadership is frustrating. Indecisiveness wastes time. That said, the job and style of the manager invite different styles of management.
My current boss is very opinionated and direct. And this makes sense for a sole-proprietor who has to make decisive choices and decisions. Also, in accounting consulting (the domain) clear leadership is very productive, which is tied to our business model. Of course you can argue and swing opinion, and soon find more responsibility to your plate. Haha
I’ve lead projects where I was the programmer and others were closer to the content and context. I worked to gently guide them to look for the patterns of their content, so i could determine if there were higher orders of complexity—which I was struggling to understand how to solve.
The picture I’m working to paint is that over my career I’ve seen different models and used some in low stakes business—not rocket science or healthcare. YMMV
A great description! I've worked with someone who abused the Socratic method, and it was infuriating. Especially considering he wasn't a particularly good technologist, his only claim was that he was the manager.
I'm remembering all the days spent with him asking leading questions, where after the first question it was immediately obvious he wanted us to "realize" a seriously inferior solution. It felt very patronizing, and a huge waste of time as I'd immediately start to explain why his end result couldn't work for some glaring reason, but he'd be certain I somehow misunderstood the problem and keep asking questions. Sometimes he was right, and legitimately guided the team to a better solution, but maybe only 1/3rd of the time. Whew.
Thank you for this comment. I feel that I have been operating in the same mode of your former manager and never considered how this could be as harmful as being too direct.
> Instead, guide them towards the path to figuring out for themselves that they're wrong. Build a foundation of truths and facts they can evaluate their own beliefs against.
But before you do that, examine the context. Would they care to even find out the truth?
In over half the cases, I submit to you that they do not. Assuming that they value the truth as you do makes much of this submission relevant.
Very often, they want to have a conversation, and there are needs behind it - and usually "discover the truth" is not one of them.[1] Trying to guide them towards the path of truth is, simply put, derailing them. That's not the path they seek.
[1] I mean I'm sure it is for me and you, but we are in the minority.
Nope. But sometimes a good shove down that path is the right thing to do. I've seen a lot fewer posts in an extended family chat about drag shows after posting my own comment about how we were all entertained by Klinger, Mrs. Doubtfire, Bugs Bunny, Monty Python, et.al.
Have they changed their views? Not that anybody has said, but the quiet is nice.
> Trying to guide them towards the path of truth is, simply put, derailing them. That's not the path they seek.
If they actively want to lie to themselves you are not gonna easily stop them. But sometimes you still gotta put up the signposts for them to discover. Because guess who is more likely to walk down the wrong path:
A) someone who is never presented with facts that don't fit into their world image
B) someone who sees these facts constantly and from all different kinds of directions
Influencing someone's world view is a incredibly slow process. So even observing the difference one made is hard. And sometimes you don't do it for them, but yourself, because you have to live with not having done enough if they end up drifting into a cult.
The situation is much more complicated than can be dealt with by a single strategy. Human group discourse is a bit of a hydra where most individual people employ a single strategy but any strategy has its time and place and the group elevates speakers based on the moment. Eg, in an executive setting (military, business) there often isn't time or need to convince everyone. If you have a person who is consistently right, they should be in charge and they probably have a habit of telling other people they are wrong. In an academic setting it gets more extreme, incorrect arguments have to be just flat out demolished. There can't be tolerance for untruths in an academic setting or the academic culture collapses. And yet both cultures will also have extreme diplomats who just refuse to argue and sometimes get given the spotlight when it seems appropriate.
Broadly speaking "Don't tell someone they're wrong." is an effective high-status technique. But it also degenerates badly towards groupthink and tolerance of damaging idiocy if that is the only tactic acceptable to a group of people. There needs to be diversity.
Calling someone wrong, in the extreme sense, could be taken as an insult. Whereas when calling an idea wrong, the scope of negativity is limited to that idea. Even better is to focus only on the right, and minimize the time spent on the wrong.
Not sure how to measure my success here, but having realized this myself I try to be the kind of person I want others to be and actually accept painful information into my head. That doesn’t mean I always agree with the latest opinion I hear, but I don’t close down just because what I’ve heard hurts my ego. It helps that I have friends that are willing to cautiously challenge my beliefs
The change I’ve made is from wanting others to be wrong to wanting myself to be right.
Ehhh… Sure you won’t convince the person you’re talking too, but it’s often worth it because if you really destroy their argument in a way that’s visible to bystanders, you could quietly convince a lot of them (since they can change their minds quietly without any ego cost).
I think when you "really destroy their argument," the average human bystander thinks "... what a jerk."
If you quietly make a few good points, don't push too hard, and ask sincere questions to help you understand the other person's perspectives, the average human will think "that guy is a class act. He had a good point, too."
Convincing anyone other than a hyper-rationalist of almost anything significant is more about emotions than it is about cold, hard facts.
And most humans, for better or for worse, are emphatically not hyper-rationalists.
It depends if your relationship with that other person exists in a vacuum or not.
If that other person is being manipulated by cult like behavior from some other party it can be very difficult to convince them of anything. The other party has no problem with lying then doubling down on the lies forever.
"Destroy their argument" as a tactic is likely to get you in trouble eventually because few people are always right about being right.
The first time one of those bystanders sees you come in hot when you're wrong - or even just when they think you're wrong, since many arguments are fuzzier - you lose a lot of credibility you may never get back.
Depends on the context. On HN, sometimes I’m dead wrong, sometimes I’m spot on. I’d bet that there are people who downvoted me when I was wrong, upvoted me when I was right, and didn’t realize I was the same person. Heck, I’ve probably done that to other people on here too.
The way I put it is, “Don’t tell me I’m wrong. Instead, improve my understanding to the point that you don’t have to.” (If your correction doesn’t translate into an improved general understanding, then you should reconsider whether it’s actually correct.)
Imho that's true in a corporate setting where the primary problem you're solving is organizational dynamics. But when the problem is the actual problem, it's better to just go right for it.
People will learn since you will also be wrong often when you try to state your model of the world. Some implied fact will have turned out to have not actually been implied.
So in a startup where org dynamics are not dominant since the org is small - just go right for the facts that you can both agree on and then find the disagreement fast.
OP article is a bit long winded, though. LLM assisted perhaps?
Sorry if it came across too blunt, I actually mostly agree with parents point but just wanted to highlight the thin/ill-defined line betwee his approach and what I think people mean by gaslighting. This is interesting in my opinion because they seem to be so similar conceptually but are actually connotated in a very positive and negative way respectively.
I think I misinterpreted you! but that's one of the problems with low-information/provocative posts. Your follow-up post here is of course totally fine.
Even though WanderPanda's comment could have been written with more care (and thank you for your work in pointing this out), FWIW I think it's possible to charitably interpret it in interesting ways.
Don't tell someone they're wrong. You'll never convince them, even when you're right. It's not worth the ink (or the blood pressure).
Instead, guide them towards the path to figuring out for themselves that they're wrong. Build a foundation of truths and facts they can evaluate their own beliefs against. If they change their mind, great. If they don't learn, you're no worse off than you were before (and your blood pressure will remain lower).
Studies have shown that trying to convince people they're wrong with facts and/or truths will instead cement them in their beliefs harder than if you did nothing.
This was a hard learned lesson for me, and I still suck at it sometimes. Because, let's face it, arguing is a time honored form of entertainment.