5 Mistakes You're Probably Making When You Argue

Some people relish a good verbal battle, while others (like me) go to some lengths to avoid confrontation. But love them or loathe them, substantive arguments are part of business and polishing up your skills when it comes to making your case is probably a good idea for anyone who wants to advance in their career. Handily, the Harvard Business Review is ready to help out.

A recent slide show by Sarah Green points out nine common mistakes people often make while arguing as well as tips to avoid them. The slide show is well worth a read in full, but to get a flavor of the errors you might be making, here are five of Green's argument pitfalls:

• We fall into a combat mentality. When difficult conversations turn toxic, it's often because we've made a key mistake: we've fallen into a combat mentality. This allows the conversation to become a zero-sum game, with a winner and a loser. But the reality is, when we let conversations take on this tenor -â€" especially at the office -â€" everyone looks bad, and everyone loses. The real enemy is not your conversational counterpart, but the combat mentality itself.
• We try to oversimplify the problem. If the subject of your argument were straightforward, chances are you wouldn't be arguing about it. Because it's daunting to try and tackle several issues at once, we may try to roll these problems up into a less-complex Ãœber-Problem. But the existence of such a beast is often an illusion. To avoid oversimplifying, remind yourself that if the issue weren't complicated, it probably wouldn't be so hard to talk about.
• We react to thwarting ploys. Lying, threatening, stonewalling, crying, sarcasm, shouting, silence, accusing, taking offense: tough talks can present an arsenal of thwarting ploys. (Just because you're trying to move beyond the combat mentality doesn't mean your counterpart is.) But you also have an array of potential responses, ranging from passive to aggressive. Again, the most effective is to move to the middle: disarm the ploy by addressing it. For instance, if your counterpart has stopped responding to you, you can simply say, "I don't know how to interpret your silence."
• We get "hooked." Everyone has a weak spot. And when someone finds ours -â€" whether inadvertently, with a stray arrow, or because he is hoping to hurt us â€" it becomes even harder to stay out of the combat mentality. Maybe yours is tied to your job â€"- you feel like your department doesn't get the respect it deserves. Or maybe it's more personal. But whatever it is, take the time to learn what hooks you. Just knowing where you're vulnerable will help you stay in control when someone pokes you there.
• We make assumptions about our counterpart's intentions. Optimists tend to assume that every disagreement is just a misunderstanding between two well-intentioned people; pessimists may feel that differences of opinion are actually ill-intentioned attacks. In the fog of a hard talk, we tend to forget that we don't have access to anyone's intentions but our own. Remember that you and your counterpart are both dealing with this ambiguity. If you get stuck, a handy phrase to remember is, "I'm realizing as we talk that I don't fully understand how you see this problem." Admitting what you don't know can be a powerful way to get a conversation back on track.

Read More on BNET:

• How to Prepare for a Difficult Conversation
• How to Be Direct Without Being a Jerk
• The Nice Girl's Guide to Negotiation