How to Have Impossible Conversations

🏛️

A Very Practical Guide

by Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay

Publisher: Balance

 
From politics and religion to workplace negotiations, ace the high-stakes conversations in your life with this indispensable guide from a persuasion expert.

In our current political climate, it seems impossible to have a reasonable conversation with anyone who has a different opinion. Whether you’re online, in a classroom, an office, a town hall—or just hoping to get through a family dinner with a stubborn relative—dialogue shuts down when perspectives clash. Heated debates often lead to insults and shaming, blocking any possibility of productive discourse. Everyone seems to be on a hair trigger.

In How to Have Impossible Conversations, Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay guide you through the straightforward, practical, conversational techniques necessary for every successful conversation—whether the issue is climate change, religious faith, gender identity, race, poverty, immigration, or gun control. Boghossian and Lindsay teach the subtle art of instilling doubts and opening minds. They cover everything from learning the fundamentals for good conversations to achieving expert-level techniques to deal with hardliners and extremists. This book is the manual everyone needs to foster a climate of civility, connection, and empathy.

“This is a self-help book on how to argue effectively, conciliate, and gently persuade. The authors admit to getting it wrong in their own past conversations. One by one, I recognize the same mistakes in me. The world would be a better place if everyone read this book.”  —Richard Dawkins, author of Science in the Soul and Outgrowing God
 

Buy 🏛️

A Summary of the Key Points

Seven Fundamentals of Good Conversations

  • Goals – Why are you engaged in this conversation?
  • Partnerships – Be partners, not advocates
  • Rapport – Develop and maintain a good connection
  • Listen – Listen more, talk less
  • Shoot the Messenger – Delivering “messages” doesn’t work, have a “conversation,” an exchange instead
  • Intentions – People have better intentions than you may think
  • Walk Away – Don’t push your conversational partner beyond their conflict zone

Beginner Level: Nine Ways to Start Changing Minds

  • Modeling – Model the behavior you want to see in others
  • Words – Define terms up front
  • Ask Questions – Focus on a specific question with genuine curiosity; avoid generalities, broad conclusions
  • Acknowledge Extremists – Point out and acknowledge unhelpful things people on your side have done
  • Navigating Social Media – Do not vent on social media
  • Don’t Blame, Do Discuss Contributions – Shift from “blaming” terms to “contribution” language,
    acknowledging things that got us to this unhappy place and emphasizing how to move forward
  • Focus on Epistemology – Figure out how people “know” what they claim to know, what’s the evidence
  • Learn – Learn what makes someone close-minded, what personal experiences have led them to a position
  • What NOT to Do (Reverse Applications) – A list of fundamental and basic conversational mistakes

Intermediate Level: Seven Ways to Improve Your Interventions

  • Let Friends Be Wrong – It’s okay if someone disagrees with you, even about a cherished conclusion
  • Build Golden Bridges – Find ways for your conversation partner to avoid social embarrassment if they
    change their mind
  • Language – Avoid “you,” switch to third person or collaborative language like “we” and “us”
  • Stuck? Reframe – Shift the conversation to keep it going smoothly or to get it back on track, use metaphors
  • Change Your Mind – Change your mind on the spot or be willing to reconsider
  • Introduce Scales – Use scales to gauge effective interventions, figure out how confident someone is in a
    belief, seeking places where they might be willing to reconsider, and put issues into perspective
  • Outsourcing – Turn to outside information to answer the question, “How do you know that?”

Five Advanced Skills for Contentious Conversations

  • Keep Rapoport’s Rules – Re-express, list points of agreement, mention what you learned, only then rebut
  • Avoid Facts – Bringing facts into a conversation requires considering timing and what counts as evidence
  • Seek Disconfirmation – How could that belief be incorrect?
  • Yes, and … — Eliminate the word “but” from your spoken vocabulary; affirm first, then add
  • Dealing with Anger – Know thyself; don’t escalate, monitor your emotions and take a pause if necessary

Six Expert Skills to Engage the Close-Minded

  • Synthesis – Recruit your partner to help refine and synthesize your positions
  • Help Vent Steam – Talk through emotional roadblocks
  • Altercasting – Cast your partner in a role that helps her think and behave differently
  • Hostage Negotiations – Use research-based ideas from hostage negotiations: mini-encouragers, mirroring, etc
  • Probe the Limits – Engage someone who professes a belief that can’t be lived, unmask disingenuous stmts.
  • Counter-Intervention Strategies – If someone is trying to intervene in your cognitive processes, go with it…

Master Level: Two Keys to Conversing

  • How to Converse with an Ideologue – Switch to moral epistemology, talk about values
  • Moral Reframing – Learn to speak moral dialects, study Jonathan Haidt 🏛️’s moral foundations