Nobody Wins In Argumentation

September 21, 2021 AURELIS Syllabus, Communication No Comments

So make sure you have a common goal with the necessary depth.

In deep dialogue, everyone wins.

In this case, the most important thing is to have a common goal.

So make sure you have a common goal. A goal is like a mountain. When the other person is on another mountain, and you pull him off his mountain, he will drag you along and make sure that you fall too.

Falling from a mountain is like being changed.

On the other hand, when you are standing together on a mountain and then walk down together to climb another mountain, you will experience something like… a nice walk in a beautiful environment.

So make sure you have a common goal.

This is, of course, of the utmost importance in any coaching.

It is also important that this goal is not just any goal. It’s certainly not just the goal with which the coachee comes to you in the first place. On the contrary, if you would assume that, you’ll often end up in a maze of opposing goals that are alive in the coachee. If you choose one goal, the coachee will almost automatically choose another one. Before you know it, you’re on different mountains shooting at each other.

Is that the desired communication?

It sounds more like average politics.

This almost automatic opposition is a sign of superficiality.

That’s OK in itself. Humans are beings with depth, and they can also be superficial. That’s just the way it is. However, if you as a coach are getting caught in the dragnets of a superficial objective of the coachee, you also risk superficial argumentation and superficial coaching.

That is common: those who allow themselves to be ‘caught’ in superficiality lose most of themselves and others.

That can sometimes be very efficient in achieving the wrong goal.

So make sure that your common goal has the necessary depth.

For example, the coachee’s goal might be, verbatim:

• I don’t want to go on holiday by plane. I prefer to drive the car. My wife needs to understand this and drive along with the car.

• I don’t want to experience that fear I have on a plane again.

• I want to get rid of my fear of flying.

• I want to get rid of my fear of flying in a way that makes me ‘better’ as a person at the same time.

• I want to give my wife the gift of traveling by plane with a more ‘suitable’ man with whom she might fall in love again…

From 1 to 5… there is clearly more depth.

However, in the case of coaching, the common goal is even more important than the depth.

First, make sure you are standing together on the same mountain.

Then you can look at other mountains together.

Perhaps you describe the view from another mountain top so beautifully that the other person (the coachee) asks you when you will finally venture out together:

“Yes, that’s what I would really like. If only this were possible.”

You will take on the challenge together.

‘Communicating’ sometimes seems to be just a game of pulling and pushing. Each one from his side. Everyone wants to say his own piece. Each one wants to achieve his own goal: talking to the other and listening to themselves.

If the other is already being listened to, it is often to hear how the other can be better convinced of one’s own right

Egos like to argue.

It makes them important. It even makes them indispensable.

They forget that the argument itself becomes expendable when there is a better alternative.

Real communication serves to come together

To form a ‘communion’ together, to stand on the same mountain, and to evolve from there.

If you’re not on the same mountain, take a hard look at why and talk about it. You see, it’s quite different to talk about both of your points of view than from your point of view.

“I think depth is very important.”

“Me too, I think… but I don’t really know what it means…”

“ For me, in this case, it means that you can find more pleasure in life.”

“?… I hadn’t thought of it that way before.”

“Shall we look at it together then?”

“Of course!”

Real communication happens from closely together

Not from afar.

From afar, you can only yell and scream, and the other does not hear it anyway, does not even want to hear it.

No one wins in an argument.

Everyone wins in deep dialogue.

Dialogue starts with a common goal. This is a goal that you stand behind as fully as possible together. Rule No. 1 of each communication: look for this goal.

How?.

Start from the purpose of the other.
Find overlap in more abstract goals.

For example, a very abstract goal: to grow. Always good.

Attach great importance to importance, not to positions or points of view.
See things from the other person’s perspective.
Request information.
Listen with your ears. Listen with your eyes. Listen with your hands and with your whole body.
Do I dare? Oh yeah, I do. Listen with your soul.
Admit when you are wrong and look at it as a release.
Share with the other the fact of being right, in a generous way.

Thanks for your patience in deeply thinking about this again.