Comment by adverbly
5 days ago
> What if their position represents their values
One of my best professors often asked me:
"what are you trying to achieve here?"
Every time they asked this, it always put me into a deep thinking mode. In some cases it did trigger defensive mindsets, but I think having to actually engage by taking a step back and think deeply is for the best if you want to have any hope of changing your mind on something.
In some cases it's worth arguing even if you know you can't win in order to provide pushback against really dumb ideas. This doesn't happen nearly enough in standardisation work, where a small number of professional meeting-goers can railroad through unbelievably bad, broken standards because no-one pushes back.
Anyone who's ever worked on a standards body will be getting flashbacks at this point.
“What can I do to resolve this?”
“Hmmm. I cannot go back in time, but if you’d like I can sit quietly with a contrite look while you spew abuse at me for 10 minutes. Does that work?”