I played baseball from the time I was five years old through my first two years of college, and one of the things I love most about baseball is the mental battle between hitter and pitcher. It’s far more than one guy throwing a ball and the other trying to hit it. It’s a guessing game between the two opponents. The pitcher has tendencies. The batter has strengths and weaknesses, but his weaknesses can be less weak if he knows what the pitcher is doing and makes an adjustment. At the same time, the pitcher has to anticipate the adjustment- and alter his own tendencies to counteract the batter’s adjustments.
Loads of information is processed in seconds, decisions are made, and then the pitch is thrown…and we discover who got it right, and who got it wrong. There’s a clear winner and a clear loser on each pitch. There is no in between.
And that’s exactly the problem with many of our conversations.
You’ve got a point.
In general, we tend to approach conversations with one simple goal: we have a point to make, and we want to get it across.
No matter what the conversation is about- whether it’s about everything going on in the world right now, from the corona virus, to matters of race, to presidential politics, or about matters that are closer to home, like why your teenager should have a curfew, or why your spouse shouldn’t have said that, or why one thing fits in your budget but something else doesn’t- the dynamic is the same. We have our point of view, and we want that point to get across.
Why? Well, because we believe our point is right, of course.
So we build our argument ahead of time. We anticipate their objections. We understand their weaknesses or logical inconsistencies. We imagine ourselves driving home our point in epic fashion and the other person’s eyes lighting up when they hear the depths of our wisdom and insight, such as the world has never seen, and they utter those words that we so long to hear: “You’re right!”
It’s a fun day-dream. But it never really works out that way, does it?
What we find out in reality is the other person isn’t so easily convinced. Our perfect, undeniable logic (which makes me think of VICKI from I, Robot) just doesn’t seem to make it through to the other person- who not only denies what we think is perfectly logical, but comes back swinging with their own counter points. They aren’t impressed with our insight or thoughts. More than that, now they aren’t just disagreeing with you- they are angry with you! The discussion rapidly moves away from an debate about ideas to an all-out assault on each other’s character. Now, it’s not just about right and wrong, it’s about how the other person is a truly terrible human being whose ideas are not just inaccurate, but the source of all evil. Words start flying that cant’ come back, feelings get hurt, and the point gets completely lost among the debris.
Chances are you’ve seen that dynamic take place in your own life. Probably recently.
Why doesn’t it happen like that?
It’s not about whether you win or lose, but how you play the game
I used to despise it (not an exaggeration) when someone would use that phrase. My push back was “The only people who say that are people who lose!” And maybe that’s true when it comes to sports. But when it comes to personal interactions, that saying actually holds a lot of wisdom- and it reveals why our point never gets across in the first place.
When we approach an argument like a pitcher or a batter and believe the result is there will be one winner and one loser- and no in between- then the goal we drive at is “winning the argument.” And when our goal is to “win” the argument, we’ve made a fatal mistake in our approach, namely this:
We place the emphasis on winning the argument instead of loving the other person.
When that happens, whether we realize it or not, we’ve completely dehumanized the other person. We’ve set them up as an idea to be conquered rather than a human being who needs to be cared for. And when the goal is conquering, then we’ll come across with the posture of a fighter playing to “win” – and our goal is no longer a discussion. It’s to defeat the other person. For us to win- and for them to lose.
And when the goal is to win an argument, we inevitably lose people in the process. And when we lose people, they couldn’t care less about our point.
That’s the reason our “point” never gets across. Others can tell when you’re trying to win- and they immediately understand that means if you win, they lose. No one wants to be a loser. So, even if our point has merit and makes perfect sense, it will never get across to the other person as long as they are convinced we are trying to defeat them.
And eventually, people who are convinced you want to defeat them will disconnect from you. Which means that when we neglect “how to play the game”, we’re guaranteed to lose…even in the rare event we “win.”
If our goal is to get a point across, we’ll never get our point across. So, in order to get our point across, we have to stop trying to get our point across.
Of course, the tension there is our point may be right. It may be just. It may be 100% correct. So we can’t just ignore it our let it slide.
But we can change our approach.
If you want to give someone salt, don’t feed them the whole shaker
Salt is healthy. And the Bible compares truth to salt. Which is interesting, because Paul writes this in Colossians 4:6:
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” (Emphasis mine)
Do we need salt? Sure. Do people need to hear the truth? ABSOLUTELY.
That doesn’t mean, though, that I have to take the cap off the salt shaker and try to dump it down their throat. If I do that, I may be “arguing for truth”, but the other person will think I’m a jerk.
On the other hand, if I prepare medium-rare steak and season it with salt and serve it, all of a sudden that salt becomes exponentially more agreeable- and even delicious.
We’re never told to abandon truth. If your point is true, you should not abandon it.
You should, however, reconsider how you’re framing it. Don’t give people the whole shaker of salt. Try putting some on a steak and serving it that way first. Here’s how we’re going to do that.
Focus on connection instead of correction
It’s a cliche, but it’s true: people don’t care about what you know until they know you care.
If we’re approaching other people as an argument to be won- something to be conquered- that can be smelled a mile away, and it doesn’t come across as caring. After all, there’s no such thing as a benevolent conqueror.
So we’re going to change the way we approach the conversation.
We’re going to lead with connection instead of correction.
We’re not going to lead with what we know. We’re not going to lead with how wrong we think the other person is. We’re not going to lead with our logic, and our argument, and our facts and our data and our rebuttals.
We’re going to lead with listening. We’re going to lead with empathy. We’re going to lead with asking questions. We’re going to lead with seeking to understand them first. We’re going to put ourselves in their shoes.
We’re going to recognize that the other person is a human being- and a very complex one at that. We aren’t going to assume we know what they are thinking and why they are thinking it. We aren’t going to assume we know all there is to know about why they say what they say and think what they think, because- just like us- they have a story that is far more complex than we conceive.
We’re going to recognize that, even when it’s a matter of right and wrong, our perception of things is often very gray.
We’re going to lead with humility. We’re going to remember that we have been and are still, in many ways, wrong in our own thinking. We’re going to remember that we haven’t always known what we currently know- and recognize that we still have a lot to learn.
We’re going to be patient with the process. We’re going to be more discerning about what we say and when we say it. We’re going to build a relational bridge before we bring the truth across it. We’re going to build a real, genuine, honest friendship with the other person. We’re going to let them know by our words, actions, and attitudes that they are loved unconditionally.
And that’s the type of relationship that opens the door for truth to come across. Because all of us- without exception- are far more likely to accept hard truth from someone we know has our best interests at heart than someone we think is trying to defeat us.
Certainly, there are ideas that need correction. And there are people- ourselves included- that need to be corrected.
But before we go about correcting, we’re first going to lead with caring. Because when our goal is only to get my point across, we lose people in the process.
But when our goal is to love people, the result is people become open to our point. And when that happens, we don’t have to fight to push the point home, because the relationship we’ve built has opened their heart, and the point can go right in.