11. Debating

This chapter focuses on situations when we disagree with the other(s) and we need to convince them to abandon their point of view and to adopt ours. In our professional lives, we often need to discuss things with people who do not share our point of view: a supplier who interprets a provision of the contract in their favor, a client who has unreasonable expectations, a colleague who did a poor job, or even the boss who thinks that things need to be done his way. We need to persuade them into understanding and adopting our point of view. This kind of informal debate is the topic of this unit. Preparing for a debate is quite similar to preparing to persuade verbally or in writing, the principles are similar. Some aspects should be emphasized, though: in a debate, you must take extra care to think of all possible counterarguments, of clever ways to bring them up yourself, and of smart ways to rebut them.