Thank You for Arguing
Jay Heinrichs, 2007
A teenage son has finished the toothpaste, and instead of a row, his father gets a new tube and a happy child. Jay Heinrichs uses scenes from his own family to show that an argument does not have to be a fight. You will learn how to choose the goal of a conversation, which tense to speak in, how to make the listener see you as one of their own, and how to spot false logic, so that people want what you need on their own.
Who it is for
For people tired of home squabbles that never go anywhere, who want to talk things through so that nobody feels like the loser afterwards.
You fight to win, but you argue to reach agreement.
Who Finished the Toothpaste
Early morning in Jay Heinrichs's house in New Hampshire. The father walks into the bathroom, sees an empty tube of toothpaste and calls out to his teenage son, George, asking who squeezed out the whole thing. Every family knows this question. Usually it is followed by a squabble: I didn't take it, you used the last of it yesterday, why is it always me.
But George answers differently. He suggests thinking not about who is to blame, but about how to make sure it doesn't happen again. The father recognises his own trick: he has told his children about this very turn of conversation himself. Heinrichs agrees with his son and asks him to bring a new tube. George goes for it at once. Later the father realises he won the argument by letting his son feel like the winner.
Heinrichs spent years working for magazines, and then turned to rhetoric, the ancient art of persuading with words. His book, Thank You for Arguing, came out in 2007 and has been reprinted many times since. The main idea is simple: an argument does not have to be a fight. If you conduct it skilfully, the other person will in the end want to do what you need and stay your ally.
Ahead are scenes from the Heinrichs family: shorts in the middle of winter, choosing a restaurant in London, canned peaches at Christmas. Each one shows a single tool. You will see how to choose the goal of a conversation, which tense to speak in, how to make the listener see you as one of their own, and how to notice when someone is throwing you off course with false logic.
A Ticket You Can Avoid by Conceding
Heinrichs asks you to imagine a police officer pulling you over: you were doing fifty-five miles an hour where the limit is fifty. The first impulse is one everyone knows: make a snide remark or invent an excuse. The author works through both routes. The sarcasm will almost certainly end in a ticket. A made-up story that your wife is about to give birth is unlikely to save you either: the officer will probably write the ticket anyway.
To choose the right move, Heinrichs advises you first to ask yourself what you want. Not to prove you are right or to put the officer in his place, but to drive away without a ticket. And you need to persuade only one person, the one standing at your window. So the whole conversation is built around him.
Then the best move looks unexpected. You admit that you broke the limit and, without any irony, ask for advice on how to stay within it on this road. The officer feels like an expert who has won the conversation, and you have a real chance of getting off with a warning. In the author's view, giving ground on a small point does not mean losing the argument. You give up one point to get the main thing.
This is where the book's key distinction comes in. In a quarrel the goal is one: to defeat the opponent. In an argument the goal is different: to reach agreement, so that the other person wants the same thing you do. Heinrichs cites research by psychologists from the 1980s: couples with stable marriages argued just as often as couples whose marriages were falling apart. The difference lay in how they argued. The stable couples did not attack each other's character, and they looked for a solution that suited both.
Imagine Sasha, who after a meeting proves to a colleague that his plan is no good. She may win on points, and the colleague will fall silent. But if she really needs a sensible plan, she needs not a defeated opponent but a person who wants to change the plan himself. So before any argument, it is worth asking yourself one question: what do I want from this person by the end of the conversation?
About the author
Jay Heinrichs spent twenty-six years as a journalist, editor and manager at a magazine publisher, and then devoted himself entirely to rhetoric. He writes books about it, speaks in public and teaches people to persuade.
All books by this author: Jay Heinrichs
Terms from the book
- Yale
- Aristotle
- New Hampshire
- Cicero
- Rhetoric
- ethos
- pathos
- logos
- George
- John
- Simpson
- Free Bird: A 1973 song by the American rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, known for its long guitar ending.
- Dorothy: The name of both the author's wife and his daughter, Dorothy Jr. Both appear in the family scenes of the book.
- South Beach: “The South Beach Diet”, a 2003 book about eating to lose weight by the cardiologist Arthur Agatston. Named after the Miami Beach district.
- Decorum: A Latin word meaning “appropriate”. In Heinrichs's book it names the skill of meeting the listener's expectations while staying yourself.
- Eminem: American rapper. In the 2002 film 8 Mile he played the lead role, an aspiring rapper from Detroit.
All terms
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