 Have you ever met a person who has strong opinions and convictions, unquestionable, and unproven things? But no matter how much you try to make sense talking to them, nothing works? Such conversations can be extremely irritating, yet becoming frustrated and yelling at them that they are wrong never works. This is where Peter Burgosian comes in. Peter these days is known as one of the best critical thinking experts in the world. Recently, him and his colleague James Lindsay wrote a book called How to Have Impossible Conversations, a very practical guide where they introduce scientifically proven methods of effective communication with people who have opposing views. In this video, I will introduce eight practical techniques that you can use when having conversations with people you can't stand. Sounds good? Then let's get started. Technique number one, what's your purpose? Often in the heat of a difficult conversation, we lose track of what we are really talking about to begin with. As Peter suggests, it is important to first identify your your conversational goal. Ask yourself, why am I having this discussion? What are my goals? What do I want to get out of this? Do you want to better understand whether the other person believes what he or she believes in? Do you want to prove them wrong? Will this goal help you in any way? Knowing your goal will already make the conversation much easier, since you will better understand what you're looking to get out of it. To say it in a different way, how will you get somewhere when you don't even know where you're going? Technique number two, partnership. During the 1970s, Peter's mentor, Portland State University psychology professor Dr. Frank Wesley, investigated why some U.S. prisoners of war, POVs, deflected to North Korea during the Korean War. His research showed that virtually all of the defectors came from a single U.S. training camp. As part of their training, they had been taught that the North Koreans were cruel, heartless barbarians, who would despise the United States and single-mindedly sought its destruction. But when those POVs were shown kindness by their captors, their initial indoctrination unraveled, they became far more likely to defect than those POVs who either hadn't been told anything about the North Koreans or had been given more neutral accounts of them. The way to change minds, influence people, build relationships, and maintain friendships is through kindness, compassion, empathy, treating individuals with dignity and respect. It comes naturally to all of us to respond favorably to someone who listens, shows kindness, treats us well, and appears respectful. Meanwhile, a sure way to entrench people in their existing beliefs is through adversarial relationships and threatening environments. It is easy to dislike someone who is mean-spirited, treats you poorly, doesn't listen, or disrespect you. The best way to create this partnership is to view yourself as a conversation partner. That is, treat others as if you're working together to have a fruitful conversation, because you are. Seeing your conversations as partnerships is the single biggest step you can take to ensuring conversations stay civil and to building relationships instead of damaging them. Technique number three, from winning to understanding. How do you switch from viewing people as opponents, moral degenerates, or even enemies to valued partners and collaborators? Answer, shift your goal from winning to understanding. Make understanding your conversation partner's reasoning your initial goal. Treating an individual as a partner in civil dialogue does not mean accepting their conclusions or buying into their reasoning. It means thinking along with someone so that you understand not just what they believe but also why they believe it. In that process, maybe you'll come to understand your reasoning or see that their reasoning is an error or maybe you'll even discover that you're harboring a false belief yourself. Technique number four, report. When you build rapport with your conversation partner, you experience a closeness where you both feel comfortable, get along, and mutually empathize. The more individuals diverge in their stances, the more important it is to build and maintain rapport. As this connection grows, the person with whom you're speaking is less likely to be defensive and more open to suggestion. Some tips on building rapport. Build rapport immediately. Do not start the conversation with a substantive issue, especially if it is controversial. Find common ground. Do not parallel talk, explanation of parallel talking. It is taking something someone says and using that to reference yourself or your experiences. For example, if someone tells you they just got back from Japan, don't start talking about the time you went to Japan. Ask them about their experience instead. Don't make their stories about your life. Parallel talk damages rapport. Engage in substantive conversation only if you're willing to make time. Be courteous. To build rapport, ask sincere questions, that is, for which you like to find answers, as opposed to asking questions as a tactic. Technique number five, listen. If you do not listen, you cannot understand. And if you cannot understand, there is no conversation. Listening is more difficult than it seems, so it requires practice. Do what you can to make listening the center of your approach to conversation. Many times when we talk with people we don't agree with, while they speak, instead of listening, we focus on our own internal explanations of why they are wrong, where we are preparing a counter argument to shoot as soon as the other person stops speaking or we interrupt them. Yet this way we not only hurt the rapport, which is essential in finding some sort of an agreement, but we may also miss important information that would help better understand the other person's viewpoint. Listen, and sometimes you will be surprised by what you will hear and learn yourself. Technique number six, shoot the messenger. Nobody likes to be lectured. The research literature on effective conversations shows that delivering messages does not work. Conversations are exchanges. Messages are information conveyed in one way transactions. Messengers espouse beliefs and assume their audience will listen and ultimately embrace their conclusions. Even when messages are not delivered across any sort of political or moral divide, they tend to be poorly received. In order to avoid throwing out messages at other people, Peter Bogosian offers these suggestions. Distinguish between delivering a message and authentic conversation. Approach every conversation with an awareness that your partner understands problems in a way that you don't currently comprehend. You'll be less likely to deliver messages if you're more focused on figuring out how someone knows what they know than if you presume to understand the reasoning behind someone's conclusions. Don't meet their message delivery with your message delivery. When you realize your partner is being a messenger, do not shoot the messenger. If you shoot the messenger in your partner, you will destroy your poor and made derail the conversation. Shooting the messenger applies only to yourselves. If your partner enters messenger mode, begin a listening and learning mode, centering on asking questions. Questions can be an effective way to nudge the conversation back on track. And last, deliver your message only upon your partner's explicit request. Socrates once said that people do not knowingly desire bad things. Individuals act, believe, and desire based upon the information they have. If they had different information, they'd derive different conclusions. We all have an impulse for goodness. However, lacking a comprehensive picture contributes to the failure of arriving at correct conclusions. When you encounter a person with radically different beliefs, you might think they are ignorant, crazy, or malicious. This in turn may lead you to feel frustrated, resist the synchronization and instead consider that they view issues from a different perspective or that they are acting upon what they think is the best available information. Chances are far better that they mean to help but aren't great at communicating than that they're actually ignorant, crazy, or malicious. Assuming your partner has malicious intentions, stifles your conversation. It holds cooperation and undermines the possibility of using the conversation to arrive at truth. If you must make an assumption about your partner's intentions, make only one. Their intentions are better than you think. Technique number eight, walk away. Know when to walk away, even when the conversation is going well. Your open listening, authentic, and curious questions may naturally lead your conversation partner to start doubting their opinion. As this doubt starts to build, the person may feel uncomfortable. Feeling this doubt, you may feel the urge to keep pressing your viewpoint but here you should restrain yourself. Putting pressure on your partner to continue a discussion beyond their comfort level shuts down listening, encourages defensiveness, and turns the conversation into a frustrated rehearsal of why one of you is correct and the other is not. People need time to wrestle with doubt, incorporate new information, mull over challenges and different perspectives, and rethink their positions. And so do you. Changing one's mind happens slowly and in a way that suits one's individual psychology and habits. Over time, new beliefs and attitudes integrate with, or entirely replace, existing ones. Even the smallest doubts in your conversation partner may grow into greater realizations with time. Forcing a conversation beyond someone's comfort zone denies you and your partner an opportunity to reflect while placing a strain on the relationship. Politely leaving a conversation when all parties are getting along can be an opportunity for those involved to reflect on issues. Always try to end a discussion on a positive note. Talking with a person who holds different beliefs from you may be a very frustrating experience, yet it doesn't have to be. As Einstein once said, no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. If you want to experience a different relationship with people you can't normally stand, waiting for them to change or trying to force them to change will not work. First, we need to change how we approach the conversation ourselves, and if we do, the results may surprise us. If you want to learn more about these techniques or discover advanced techniques, make sure to read How to Have Impossible Conversations. For more practical thinking tips and videos, subscribe to the Practical Thinkers YouTube channel now. This was Rokas, and I wish you to keep thinking practically and critically.