MHEN 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, judgement, 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 the 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: ‘Recognising 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 Honour, 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 favourite 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.1
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 judgement. 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.
The next day another friend dropped in, admired the draperies, bubbled over with enthusiasm, and expressed a wish that she could afford such exquisite creations for her home. My reaction was totally different. ‘Well, to tell the truth,’ I said, ‘I can’t afford them myself. I paid too much. I’m sorry I ordered them.’
When we are wrong, we may admit it to ourselves. And if we are handled gently and tactfully, we may admit it to others and even take pride in our frankness and broad-mindedness. But not if someone else is trying to ram the unpalatable fact down our oesophagus.
Horace Greeley, the most famous editor in America during the time of the Civil War, disagreed violently with Lincoln’s policies. He believed that he could drive Lincoln into agreeing with him by a campaign of argument, ridicule and abuse. He waged this bitter campaign month after month, year after year. In fact, he wrote a brutal, bitter, sarcastic and personal attack on President Lincoln the night Booth shot him.
But did all this bitterness make Lincoln agree with Greeley? Not at all.
Ridicule and abuse never do.
If you want some excellent suggestions about dealing with people and managing yourself and improving your personality, read Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography – one of the most fascinating life stories ever written, one of the classics of American literature. Ben Franklin tells how he conquered the iniquitous habit of argument and transformed himself into one of the most able, suave and diplomatic men in American history.
One day, when Ben Franklin was a blundering youth, an old Quaker friend took him aside and lashed him with a few stinging truths, something like this:
Ben, you are impossible. Your opinions have a slap in them for everyone who differs with you. They have become so offensive that nobody cares for them. Your friends find they enjoy themselves better when you are not around. You know so much that no man can tell you anything. Indeed, no man is going to try, for the effort would lead only to discomfort and hard work. So you are not likely ever to know any more than you do now, which is very little.
One of the finest things I know about Ben Franklin is the way he accepted that smarting rebuke. He was big enough and wise enough to realise that it was true, to sense that he was headed for failure and social disaster. So he made a right-about-face. He began immediately to change his insolent, opinionated ways.
‘I made it a rule,’ said Franklin, ‘to forbear all direct contradiction to the sentiment of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbade myself the use of every word or expression in the language that imported a fix’d opinion, such as “certainly,” “undoubtedly,” etc., and I adopted, instead of them, “I conceive,” “I apprehend,” or “I imagine” a thing to be so or so, or “it so appears to me at present.” When another asserted something that I thought an error, I deny’d myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing immediately some absurdity in his proposition: and in answering I began by observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appear’d or seem’d to me some difference, etc. I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engag’d in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I propos’d my opinions procur’d them a readier reception and less contradiction; I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily prevail’d with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I happened to be in the right.
‘And this mode, which I at first put on with some violence to natural inclination, became at length so easy, and so habitual to me, that perhaps for these fifty years past no one has ever heard a dogmatical expression escape
me. And to this habit (after my character of integrity) I think it principally owing that I had earned so much weight with my fellow citizens when I proposed new institutions, or alterations in the old, and so much influence in public councils when I became a member; for I was but a bad speaker, never eloquent, subject to much hesitation in my choice of words, hardly correct in language, and yet I generally carried my points.’
How do Ben Franklin’s methods work in business? Let’s take two examples.
Katherine A. Allred of Kings Mountain, North Carolina, is an industrial engineering supervisor for a yarn-processing plant. She told one of our classes how she handled a sensitive problem before and after taking our training:
‘Part of my responsibility,’ she reported, ‘deals with setting up and maintaining incentive systems and standards for our operators so they can make more money by producing more yarn. The system we were using had worked fine when we had only two or three different types of yarn, but recently we had expanded our inventory and capabilities to enable us to run more than twelve different varieties. The present system was no longer adequate to pay the operators fairly for the work being performed and give them an incentive to increase production. I had worked up a new system which would enable us to pay the operator by the class of yarn she was running at any one particular time. With my new system in hand, I entered the meeting determined to prove to the management that my system was the right approach. I told them in detail how they were wrong and showed where they were being unfair and how I had all the answers they needed. To say the least, I failed miserably! I had become so busy defending my position on the new system that I had left them no opening to graciously admit their problems on the old one. The issue was dead.
‘After several sessions of this course, I realised all too well where I had made my mistakes. I called another meeting and this time I asked where they felt their problems were. We discussed each point, and I asked them their opinions on which was the best way to proceed. With a few low-keyed suggestions, at proper intervals, I let them develop my system themselves. At the end of the meeting when I actually presented my system, they enthusiastically accepted it.
‘I am convinced now that nothing good is accomplished and a lot of damage can be done if you tell a person straight out that he or she is wrong. You only succeed in stripping that person of self-dignity and making yourself an unwelcome part of any discussion.’
Let’s take another example – and remember these cases I am citing are typical of the experiences of thousands of other people. R.V. Crowley was a salesman for a lumber company in New York. Crowley admitted that he had been telling hard-boiled lumber inspectors for years that they were wrong. And he had won the arguments too. But it hadn’t done any good. ‘For these lumber inspectors,’ said Mr. Crowley, ‘are like baseball umpires. Once they make a decision, they never change it.’
Mr. Crowley saw that his firm was losing thousands of dollars through the arguments he won. So while taking my course, he resolved to change tactics and abandon arguments. With what results? Here is the story as he told it to the fellow members of his class:
‘One morning the phone rang in my office. A hot and bothered person at the other end proceeded to inform me that a car of lumber we had shipped into his plant was entirely unsatisfactory. His firm had stopped unloading and requested that we make immediate arrangements to remove the stock from their yard. After about one-fourth of the car had been unloaded, their lumber inspector reported that the lumber was running 55 percent below grade. Under the circumstances, they refused to accept it.
‘I immediately started for his plant and on the way turned over in my mind the best way to handle the situation. Ordinarily, under such circumstances, I should have quoted grading rules and tried, as a result of my own experience and knowledge as a lumber inspector, to convince the other inspector that the lumber was actually up to grade, and that he was misinterpreting the rules in his inspection. However, I thought I would apply the principles learned in this training.
‘When I arrived at the plant, I found the purchasing agent and the lumber inspector in a wicked humour, both set for an argument and a fight. We walked out to the car that was being unloaded, and I requested that they continue to unload so that I could see how things were going. I asked the inspector to go right ahead and lay out the rejects, as he had been doing, and to put the good pieces in another pile.
‘After watching him for a while it began to dawn on me that his inspection actually was much too strict and that he was misinterpreting the rules. This particular lumber was white pine, and I knew the inspector was thoroughly schooled in hard woods but not a competent, experienced inspector on white pine. White pine happened to be my own strong suit, but did I offer any objection to the way he was grading the lumber? None whatever. I kept on watching and gradually began to ask questions as to why certain pieces were not satisfactory. I didn’t for one instant insinuate that the inspector was wrong. I emphasised that my only reason for asking was in order that we could give his firm exactly what they wanted in future shipments.
‘By asking questions in a very friendly, cooperative spirit, and insisting continually that they were right in laying out boards not satisfactory to their purpose, I got him warmed up, and the strained relations between us began to thaw and melt away. An occasional carefully put remark on my part gave birth to the idea in his mind that possibly some of these rejected pieces were actually within the grade that they had bought, and that their requirements demanded a more expensive grade. I was very careful, however, not to let him think I was making an issue of this point.
‘Gradually his whole attitude changed. He finally admitted to me that he was not experienced on white pine and began to ask me questions about each piece as it came out of the car. I would explain why such a piece came within the grade specified, but kept on insisting that we did not want him to take it if it was unsuitable for their purpose. He finally got to the point where he felt guilty every time he put a piece in the rejected pile. And at last he saw that the mistake was on their part for not having specified as good a grade as they needed.
‘The ultimate outcome was that he went through the entire carload again after I left, accepted the whole lot, and we received a check in full.
‘In that one instance alone, a little tact, and the determination to refrain from telling the other man he was wrong, saved my company a substantial amount of cash, and it would be hard to place a money value on the good will that was saved.’
Martin Luther King was asked how, as a pacifist, he could be an admirer of Air Force General Daniel ‘Chappie’ James, then the nation’s highest-
ranking black officer. Dr. King replied, ‘I judge people by their own principles – not by my own.’
In a similar way, General Robert E. Lee once spoke to the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, in the most glowing terms about a certain officer under his command. Another officer in attendance was astonished. ‘General,’ he said, ‘do you not know that the man of whom you speak so highly is one of your bitterest enemies who misses no opportunity to malign you?’ ‘Yes,’ replied General Lee, ‘but the president asked my opinion of him; he did not ask for his opinion of me.’
By the way, I am not revealing anything new in this chapter. Two thousand years ago, Jesus said: ‘Agree with thine adversary quickly.’
And 2,200 years before Christ was born, King Akhtoi of Egypt gave his son some shrewd advice – advice that is sorely needed today. ‘Be diplomatic,’ counselled the King. ‘It will help you gain your point.’
In other words, don’t argue with your customer or your spouse or your adversary. Don’t tell them they are wrong, don’t get them stirred up. Use a little diplomacy.
PRINCIPLE 2
Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say, ‘You’re wrong.’
. Adapted from Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961), pp. 18ff.
