Debate and Dialogue

Differences in Structure, Practice and Goals

Remember those presidential debates? You know the ones, where Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were asked questions that they didn’t answer and instead talked about each other?  Yeah, I tried to block those out of my mind, too. But, they happened and had at least some influence in deciding the next president of the United States of America. Think about that: three televised debates of limited duration, scope and depth influenced our election. Again. Since Kennedy vs. Nixon, televised debates have garnered more salience in deciding who holds public office.  As if debate by itself was not bad enough.As conflict management specialists, we see debate as, shall we say, not the best method to resolving disputes or finding solutions to problems. This isn’t to say that debate is always bad. It does have some merits. It forces debating parties to hone their message, strengthen their argument and probe for weak spots in their opponent’s arguments. Those watching can consider points, counterpoints or the lack thereof. They could glean new information or perspective. In the end, debate could enhance knowledge of debated issues and shed inconsistencies. Except in today's world, it usually doesn't. Debate has several definitions, most of which describe it as a "discussion of opposing views" or "opposing arguments". That is, the focus is on the nature of opposition to determine which side is the stronger. And this seems to be widely accepted practice of debate. In most cases debate focuses on probing others’ statements for weak spots. It follows Sun Tzu: don't attack the strong points, attack the weak points. The aim is to win the battle, not to understand why there is a battle.We saw this in the presidential debates where the chief weak spots were the candidates themselves. The hierarchy of priorities went, from the top down: Attack opponent, attack opponent’s past, attack opponent’s message, attack opponent’s associates, attack opponent’s experience, promote own message, promote themselves, promote something else that sounds good, address the question, address the issue. That does not set up a clear, or even murky, road to solutions. In fact, there is no road. Consequently, important issues are not only ignored, they seem to be relegated to trivial nuances. And by example, this influences the public spheres of interaction: citizens engage in similar debates, thus getting everybody nowhere and increasing tension. In the end, Americans focus on probing for weak spots, attacking messengers and their message, and reshaping priorities instead of understanding issues and developing solutions. Winning the debate becomes the goal, improving and strengthening ourselves, each other and the country be damned.Dialogue is quite different, and more difficult. Within a debate, a strong, well-articulated argument with no weaknesses is avoided by the opponent, who then engages another tactic (e.g. attack the messenger). Within a dialogue, that same argument is greeted with “excellent point. How do we engage that?” Ideas are recognized and analyzed, not to solely find weaknesses, but to improve on them. Dialogue engages brainstorming, creative thinking, critical analysis and application.Because the goals of debate and dialogue are different, so, too are their procedures, expectations and outcomes. The goal of a debate is for participants to convince the audience to accept their argument over their opponent’s, usually by any means necessary. An argument in debate need not be complete, truthful, accurate, fair, relevant or logical. It just has to persuade. The topic of debate serves only as a launching pad from which the audience is launched far away.Dialogue aims for participants to discuss issues critically, openly and honestly with respect, civility and patience. If they are not actively looking for new viewpoints and ideas, then they are open to doing so. This means that contentious topics are not avoided, and polarized positions are not taken for granted. “That’s your opinion” becomes, “please help me understand why you think/believe that.” While participants should not aim to persuade others, they should be flexible in their stances, positions, and opinions. Understanding an issue and the various perspectives of that issue is paramount in dialogue. Differences do not equate to division. Disagreement offers opportunity. Dialogue participants understand that the best solutions can come from various viewpoints effectively engaged.The difficulty resides in the openness of participants. Disagreements tend to make people defensive and emotional. Animosity can creep in bringing resentment and  distrust. Critical analysis can erode into cynical opposition, leading to debate. In many situations an impartial or neutral facilitator is needed to manage the dialogue. They are not there to direct conversation, but to keep it on track, civil and engaging. A facilitator will keep track of points of view, ideas, points of contention, areas of commonality and side issues that can affect the current topic. This takes practice and a good facilitator goes unnoticed during a dialogue or meeting, until afterwards.In dialogue, agreement is not necessarily the goal. Good conversation, challenged opinions and increased communication are the primary motives for engaging in dialogue. From there, participants can discover, create, improve and implement solutions. The biggest difference between debate in dialogue is that debate focuses on opinions, viewpoints, and arguments. Dialogue focuses on the challenges, problems, and issues that underscore those opinions, viewpoints and arguments.  Debate seeks to win/persuade; Dialogue seeks to inform and solve. 

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Top 7 Mistakes in Communication

We all make communication mistakes. Some are so small that we don't even realize we're making them. Yet, small mistakes can add up and start to wreak havoc on conversations and relationships. Here are the top 7 mistakes:

1. Ignoring what the other person is saying/Dismissing their concerns. If you do it to them, then you’re permitting them to do it to you. Nothing is gained and three things are lost: time, energy and your integrity. Listen to for their concerns. If you don’t understand, then tell them so.

2. Focusing on faulty argument. This mostly applies to online comments, but happens in face-to-face discussions as well. The issue at hand disappears and energy is refocused to discrediting the other person, their stance and/or their argument.  The structure of an argument becomes more important than the subject. The core issue or problem remains.

3. Debating. This is the chain reaction of #2. Debate is about winning an argument to influence others to support your claim, regardless of accuracy and truth. The topic of a debate is rarely analyzed, making improvements difficult if not impossible. Debate is zero-sum, win-lose enterprise that accomplishes nothing else. Parties become fixated on arguments rather than subjects.

4. Using “you” statements. The subject of conversation switches to the person, usually laying blame at their feet. It is very easy to engage the “you” statement or to become entangled in its web. When someone uses it on us, we feel obligated to defend and retaliate. And the original subject vanishes from discussion. Example: “How did you break your leg?” is accusatory and focuses on the person, not the injured leg. It announces that you broke your leg on purpose. “What happened to your leg” shifts the focus on the method of breaking.

5. Emotions can run high. This does not have to be a bad thing, though. It’s important to recognize emotions (yours and theirs), and not try to stifle them or let them run wild. Understanding what you’re feeling, and acknowledging what others feel, can go a long way.  Sometimes yelling is just venting frustrations with little to no animosity towards anyone. Yet, yelling is rarely received as such. Many people don’t respond well to yelling. They either yell back or start ignoring. When you notice your voice starting to get louder, pause and try to understand what’s persuading you to yell. “I’m feeling a bit frustrated by…” is better than yelling.

6. Sticking to your guns. It’s ok to be wrong and uninformed. How we deal with each affects communication. If it’s more important to you to win an argument than solving a problem, then people will start to ignore you and your concerns.

7. Assume motives of others. Try as you might, you do not know what’s going on inside someone else’s head. It may seem that someone is acting out of revenge, animosity, civility, love or indifference, but you really don’t know. A wrong assumption often leads to bigger mistakes and conflict. Example: Your spouse didn’t respond to your text. S/he is ignoring you. OR, they are driving. OR, they didn’t hear the notification.

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Craft Brewing Business - A Delicate Balance

There is no doubt that Craft Brewing Business is growing as an industry. For beer lovers, this is a great time to love beer. For brewers, this is a great time to brew beer. For investors, this is a great time to fund breweries.  It seems there is a lot of "win" to go around.Unfortunately, tension grows between all three. Craft beer lovers (or geeks, like myself) embrace the ethos, as it were, of the craft beer industry while enjoying the suds. This ethos is difficult to define, but its salience remains strong among this group.  Brewers now have the option, opportunity and a willing audience to try new recipes or tweak old ones. Creativity remains a strong factor in brewers' motivation. Investors see flocks of people rushing to local breweries' taprooms to fork over money for beer. The demand is super high, so the supply must increase.Here is the dilemma: Precision, time, money, supply, demand, quality, quantity and profit do not play well together as separate factors. They are not parts of the same pie; they are the pie. A baker does not dump flour, sugar, water, eggs and butter into a pan and place that pan in an oven and expect a cake to appear. Ingredients must be blended together correctly to achieve success.Same with craft beer. There must be a careful blend of brewing, investment and patronage to produce and sustain a healthy industry. This means that each aspect ought to understand the others, communicate openly and regularly, and give and receive feedback with civility and encouragement.  Of course, this is not as easy as baking a cake...or a pie...but to be sustainable, difficult tasks need successful undertaking to lead to optimal completion.This blending is not easy. People are unique and have unique life experiences that may affect this blending process, which involves disagreement, dispute, communication, perceptions and learning. We do not look forward to such aspects of this blending.We all felt anxiety with that first phone call to a potential date, or before meeting that date's parents. A salesperson's first cold call ripples with anxiety. So, too, does public speaking for most people. Why? After all we are just talking to fellow humans. Yet, humans are a funny lot, which makes the above communication and interaction fragile, complicated and tense.This is a delicate balance of brewer, investor and consumer must be maintained, or at least pursued, to keep a craft brewery a profitable, creative and enjoyable business. Tipping the scale one way will see the other aspects reeling off the other end. A brewery without investment certainly faces tough times.  An investor without product most likely faces taking a loss. A beer geek without beer just might dry up and blow away. To be sure, this brewing business is chock full of relationships that must be maintained. In this respect, people (and their interconnections) are a core ingredient in brewing.There is no shame in asking for assistance with important and complex issues. The shame is not asking.

Six Factors That Can Make Matters Worse

We all face some form of conflict every day. From navigating traffic to deciding what to watch on TV after a long day. Most of these are "flash-pan" conflicts that are usually forgotten in minutes and ostensibly have no bearing on our lives.  Unfortunately, conflicts do not exist in a vacuum; many factors can affect our conflicts thereby increasing their affects on us and others. Like a snowball rolling down a mountain gathering more snow, increasing its size and momentum, a conflict can grow with the addition of several small influences until it demands attention.When conflicts arrive to this point, management, resolution, or reconciliation should be sought to prevent further damage. These efforts are reactionary, and as such (ironically) require a conflict for their application.  But what about addressing conflict situations before they gather momentum? What are those small influences that engorge a conflict?  Let's take a look at six factors that can make matters worse and what their influences can be. In doing so, we can shed some light on how you can take steps to nip conflict escalation in the bud.

1. Communication
2. Trust
3. Emotion
4. Relationship
5. Context
6. Anticipation

First up: Communication ------------------------------------

Six Factors That Can Make Matters Worse: Communication

First and foremost is Communication. This may seem obvious, but the devil lay in the details.  Communication is more than a relay of information. Many things impact communication:

• Choice of words
•  Volume
• Proximity
• Sarcasm
• Language, culture, nationality, etc
• Medium (letter, email, in person, etc)
• External noises
• Social media (facebook, twitter, reddit, etc)
• Body language
• Relationship with other party
• and Listening (more specifically, Active Listening)

Active Listening signals that the listener is actually listening.  Rephrasing is a method of active listening and is much more effective than saying, "I'm listening".   Most, if not all, conflicts can be attributed to some degree of communication issues.  The basic problem is that we automatically assume we understand what the other is saying, why they are saying it, and what it all means. With the speed of communication these days we spend less time listening and, therefore, do not fully understand the information relayed…but we think we do.Communication has its own importance, but it also extends to the next influence on conflicts: Trust

Six Factors That Can Make Matters Worse: Trust

Trust is easy to lose and difficult to gain.  Regaining trust is even more difficult. Mistakes in communication can chip away at trust and trust building. Once trust is tarnished, conflicts see barren terrain through which to run wild. Escalation soars with mistrust. Some say there are many levels of trust: you trust the banker to actually deposit your check, and you trust the babysitter with your child.  Without trust, openness, communication and patience have difficulty gaining purchase, and problems can grow quickly.  Politics is a great venue for us to witness how the lack of trust affects communication and problem solving.  Political ad campaigns, online opinion blogs, television "news" and even Congress exemplify the obstacles that mistrust erects and the tensions it increases.Next: Emotion -------------------

Six Factors That Can Make Matters Worse: Emotion

Emotion is the known-unknown influence. We know emotions are always involved in conflict. Just which emotions, and how strong they are, is difficult to actually calculate.  This is where communication and trust can help. When emotions are involved, they can override the controls that gauge communication and trust. Open communication and strong trust help manage emotions and understand where they originate, as well as not letting them escalate the conflict further.Emotions can be confusing.  Actions are different from emotions, but they can look the same. Venting, a valuable human technique, can be conflated with focused anger. Silence is sometimes seen as acceptance or indifference.  And so on.  The only way to understand which actions are emotional, and which emotions are present is to talk about them, which requires trust and communication.Next up: Relationship -----------------

Six Factors That Can Make Matters Worse: Relationship

If someone in traffic yells a barrage of obscenities at you, you may get angry, chalk it up to that person being a so-and-so, and go on with your day.  But if your spouse yells at you, then you may feel differently. The difference is the Relationship you have with the stranger (none) and your spouse (intimate).  The more intimate a relationship, the more personal a conflict become is to you. Those close to you can cause greater harm, and you can harm them just as much.Conflicts with those who are close can be volatile and complex, and cause long term damage.  The relationship itself can persuade people not to address problems fearing that they may hurt each other.  This is a common and understandable approach, but can ultimately be damaging.  It is important to note that all of the factors listed here intertwine, and relationships require first and foremost trust and communication.Up Next: Context  --------------

Six Factors That Can Make Matters Worse: Context

Even when you can recognize and manage these influences effectively, there is still the issue of Context.  We are all connected to a complex world.  Situations are rarely, if ever, independent.  Influences on situations can be large, small, obvious or covert. A customer yelling at a waiter for dropping a drink may not realize that the waiter just burned his hand on the hot plate in back. Meanwhile, the waiter may not know that the customer just received bad news about their sick grandparent. The context plays a big role in their behaviors, and the reception of the other's behavior.Sometimes there is a wrong time and place to address a conflict and no amount of communication or trust can improve it. Timing is the least tangible influence on conflict, because it's more of a feeling or intuition rather than an external signal, while place is a bit more straightforward.  A simple example would be a manager instructing an employee in front of customers. Probably not the best time or place to do that, but other situations are less obvious and more delicate.Lastly: Anticipation  -------------------

Six Factors That Can Make Matters Worse: Anticipation

Sometimes you have to wait for the appropriate opportunity to tackle a problem, and this brings up another factor that can make conflicts worse: Anticipation. That same manager knows s/he has to address the employee sometime and with each passing hour the anticipation grows. Give the mind time to imagine what can go wrong and tensions can grow.  Many times, anticipation for something is more intense than what comes to pass. Having difficult discussions is never easy, but they do not have to be paralyzing and escalating.Often we delay having such conversations out of shear dread, and this allows the problem to fester and linger.  Waiting for the appropriate time is necessary, but waiting too long can add fuel to the fire.  While there are intricacies during the conversation, the hardest part is getting the discussion started. There are other factors that can make matters worse, and they build off the six outlined here.  These may seem rather obvious and simple to keep in mind, but in the middle of an interaction they remain difficult, even for seasoned professionals.  Fortunately, this is where OvalOptions comes into play. We offer assistance with situations where the complexities seem to have the upper hand. For a free consultation, please contact us. -------------