How To Win An Argument

I want to pick up from a post that I recently wrote called ‘Chunky Monkey Builds A Plane’ I think I did the skill of chunking a huge disservice in my original post because I only focused on the aspect of chunking down and never mentioned chunking up or sideways. Jumping to my own defense, because let’s face it nobody else will be bothering to, I was talking about procrastination issues due to overwhelm, and in that respect, chunking down was my weapon of choice.

Last week and again this week I have been working with clients on issues that benefited from having the ability to chunk up. Each time I talked about it to my client I thought about my first post with a certain sense of unease. It was as though I’d let you my loyal and lovable reader down by only giving you half the story.

Today I intend to make reparation and show you why chunking up is the tool of choice for hostage negotiators and how it can help you in hopefully more mundane situations where you want to get your own way.

Let’s suppose you’re a balding male guy having a bit of a midlife crisis and you just know the best way out of it is to buy yourself a new BMW Z4 with the family savings. Obviously that is just a random hypothetical situation and not one I have ever been through myself, but it works well for our example.

You decide to tell your partner that you need this new car and that it will be the answer to all your mid-life problems and make you eternally happy. She is less than convinced because she is in touch with her Zen side and knows that happiness only comes from within, unless of course it’s a Tiffany necklace, a Coach handbag or a pair of Jimmy Choo’s, then and only then, it can be external.

You could get into the typical backwards and forwards debate that swiftly moves into heated argument closely followed up by banging of doors, shouting of insults and careful instructions as to where you can place your new car. You may eventually get your own way, or you may not, but to coin a military term, you’ll not be winning any hearts and minds.

When you have a stalemate like this it’s necessary to look at the big picture. Start to find out what both parties really want at a much more general and higher level, so ask the following question.

What do we both really want from this situation?

It’s doubtful asking that question alone will get you to a situation where you hug each, declare undying love and drive off into the sunset with the roof down on your shiny new car. However, by utilizing the word ‘both’ you immediately shift the emphasis of the discussion. Up until that point it’s likely that both parties were only really concentrating on what they wanted and thinking the other person was being an unreasonable half-wit.

If you were looking to remove overwhelming feelings associated with thinking of a big goal or important task, you do so by breaking it down into bite sized portions. Here we’re going to do the complete opposite and make each chunk more general and less specific. The more we do that, the more we are likely to gain agreement. Arguments are often conducted around the detail and if you can remove that, you reduce the likelihood of confrontation.

Let’s take a look at some possible answers and see what we difference chunking up can make:

Him: I want a BMW convertible
Her: I want to save some money

Chunk Up:

Him I want a sports car
Her: I want financial security

Chunk Up:

Him: I want to feel young again
Her: I don’t want to worry about the kid’s future

Chunk Up

Him: I just want to be happy
Her: I just want to be happy

You can see at each stage we are taking the argument to a higher level. Nobody wants a sports car because it’s the best method to get them from A to B and nobody saves money because they like looking at it. We want to find out what the end game is, what the person thinks they will achieve by reaching their goal.

If you keep going at some stage you will always meet in the middle. Hostage negotiators may have to chunk up to something as basic as “We all want to get out of this alive” to find common ground.

The moment you come to an agreement of what it is you really want, life becomes a lot easier. At that stage a lot of the emotion and confrontation of the event will evaporate because you have established common ground.

In our example we can see that both sides just want to be happy, so it’s imperative that both parties keep that in mind as we start to chunk back down with an occasional sideways chunk thrown in for good measure.

Him: Having that new car will make me happy
Her: Having money in the bank will make me happy

Chunk Down

Him: I suppose I’d be happy with an almost new car if that made you less concerned
Her: I guess if we could spend a little less and as long as we promise to re-pay it back into the bank that would be ok

Chunk Down (and a bit sideways)

Him: I suppose I could lease a car and that way we don’t need to actually spend so much cash up front
Her: I could stretch to that as long as you drop your subscriptions to a gym you never visit, a sports channel you never watch and sell the jet ski you never ride

Chunk Down

Him: I’ll go for the cheaper model if I can keep my gym membership because I’ll need 6 pack abs to go with this baby!
Her: Ok you’ve got a deal and anyway that Pilate’s teacher is gorgeous and he’ll love my, er I mean our, new convertible.

Chunking is a skill and as such need to be practiced if you want to get good at it. Imagine looking at an online map. You put in the address of your favorite pizza company in a town you don’t know and a map pops up as if my magic. You have no idea where it is, because it’s too localized, so you zoom out (chunk up). Then when you get your bearings and understand where abouts in the town it is, you can zoom in (chunking down) until you see the actual street you want. Now for some reason best known to you and for the sake of this rather contrived and badly thought out example, you realize that you want to know what the 2 streets to the north are called. What do you do? You click the arrow that moves the map north and end up chunking sideways.

Jeez that was hard work and wont win me any metaphor of the month competitions, but I hope you see why chunking can be incredible useful and it’s not the one trick pony I may have inadvertently made it out to be.

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4 Comments So Far.

Comment by Mags | Woo-Woo Wisdom on 14 May 2008:

I love your terminology: “chunking up” sounds sooo much better than, say, “getting the bigger picture”! It also makes the step by step nature of the process clear, and stops any sense of feeling overwhelmed at how to go from “I want a Z4″ to “I want to be happy” in one fell swoop :)

Ultimately, there’s always a deeper reason behind any material wants, isn’t there? And most boil down to all those cool things like happiness, joy, peace, love… What’s even more cool is that you can access these states of being now, even before you get the Z4 or whatever else it is you want (I’m partial to the Audi TT myself ;) ).
Comment by Tim Brownson on 14 May 2008:

I’d like to say I invented it Mags, but it’s actually an NLP term. I agree 100% with your assessment that there are always deeper and more meaningful reasons why we want stuff, it’s just that most people become experts at hiding them away.
Comment by Robert A. Henru on 14 May 2008:

Hi Tim, great article. It reminds me of a message that I have ever heard before. Started from our arguments, and digging down through our hate and fear, our concern and eventually our love for one another.
That will be really helpful in arguments.

Cheers,
Robert
Comment by Tim Brownson on 15 May 2008:

@ Robert - Thanks for the feedback and you’re absolutely spot on!