I read Jessica Tarlov’s I Disagree this week. Tarlov occupies an unusual seat in American television. She is the liberal co-host on Fox News’ The Five, typically sitting at a table with four more conservative voices.

If you don’t watch cable news, it’s easy to underestimate the size of that platform. The Five is a ratings juggernaut, regularly drawing more than 3 million viewers and ranking as the most-watched program in cable news. More interestingly, its audience isn’t nearly as politically uniform as you might expect. Recent audience data showed roughly 765,000 Democrats and more than 1 million independents watching the show daily.

Tarlov’s job is essentially to disagree for a living, but what I enjoyed about the book wasn’t the politics. It was the political science and practical thinking underneath it. Tarlov has a Ph.D. in political science and previously worked as a pollster. Her approach emphasizes something that should be obvious but increasingly isn’t: do your homework. Bring facts. Understand the other position. Communicate what you know in a way another human being can actually absorb.

A barrage of metrics isn’t necessarily persuasive. Facts need context, and sometimes they need a story. That resonated with me because I’ve spent much of my career trying to influence decisions. I’ve also spent a fair amount of it learning, sometimes slowly, that making a good argument and influencing someone are not the same thing.

Maybe They Understand. They Just Don’t Agree.

Years ago, communication expert Connie Dieken spoke to a large group I was part of. We completed an assessment beforehand based on her communication framework, and I scored among the highest in the room on “Convey.”

I wasn’t particularly surprised. Providing context is central to what I do. Clients pay me to connect dots, explain why something matters and turn a complicated federal landscape into something they can act upon.

Strengths don’t always travel equally well. In a client meeting, “Let me give you some context” may be exactly what people are paying me for. In a personal relationship, it can sound remarkably similar to, “Let me explain why I know more about this than you do.”

When someone doesn’t seem persuaded, my natural instinct is to provide more context: another fact, another example, another way of explaining the issue. That instinct assumes the problem is comprehension when the other person may understand me perfectly well and simply disagree.

Being heard, being understood and
being agreed with are three different things.

I Used to Die on Every Hill

I can see this more clearly looking back at my corporate years. Put an issue on the conference room table that I thought mattered and I could work pretty hard to make sure everyone understood my position. I was prepared, usually had facts behind me and could keep going.

Experience eventually teaches you that being right about an issue doesn’t necessarily mean you’re right to keep fighting about it. Every argument consumes some amount of relationship capital, and not every hill deserves the same expenditure.

The Navy taught me a different version of that lesson. I came to call it my “mention it twice” theory.

Military hierarchy has an unavoidable reality: eventually, deference wins. If I thought a senior officer was headed in the wrong direction, I believed I had an obligation to say so. If it mattered, I would make the point again, perhaps more clearly or from another angle. You don’t tell the senior officer a third time that his or her idea won’t work without consequences.

Absent an ethical, legal or safety issue, there comes a point when your responsibility shifts. You’ve provided your counsel and made sure the concern was heard. The decision belongs to someone else. That’s not weakness. It’s understanding your role.

Go Looking for the No

Capitol Hill taught me something else about disagreement. When we orchestrate an engagement strategy, I’m not necessarily reassured when everybody says yes. In fact, unanimous agreement can make me wonder whether we’ve cast the net widely enough.

I want to know:

• Where is the edge of support?
• Who understands what we’re proposing but still isn’t convinced?
• Where does enthusiasm become indifference, or indifference become resistance?
• What concern haven’t we encountered because we’ve been
  talking to people predisposed to agree with us?

The first credible “no” can be enormously valuable because it tests the argument. Influence can’t be forced, no matter how good the facts are. People who make decisions have to be brought along, which is different from overwhelming them with information until they surrender.

Marketers have wrestled with this problem for decades. You may have heard some version of the rule that a customer needs to hear a message seven times before it sticks. There’s no magic number, but there is real research behind repetition. One large analysis found that advertising recall continued improving through at least eight exposures, while attitudes toward the message peaked around ten. Spacing and context mattered too.

One exposure rarely does all the work, but neither does saying the same thing eleven times in the same meeting.

Influence isn’t forcing the conclusion.
It’s creating the conditions
in which someone is willing to consider it.

Earn The Next 30 Seconds

I frequently carry an iPad into meetings on Capitol Hill. When there’s a visual that can quickly establish what I’m talking about, I’ll sometimes start with a video clip. I’ve developed my own rule: about 30 seconds.

Start a short clip and every eye in the room tends to go to the screen. For those few seconds, everyone is looking at the same thing and we have a common point of reference. Let it run too long and another screen begins competing for their attention—the one in their hand. The video doesn’t make the argument; it earns me the opportunity to make it.

There’s research behind that instinct too. Studies comparing statistical and narrative evidence suggest they accomplish different things. Statistical evidence can be particularly effective at shaping what people believe, while stories can be particularly effective at moving people toward an intention to act. Other research has found that the persuasive effects of narratives can endure after the story itself is over.

Facts and stories aren’t competitors. Used well, they reinforce one another. That’s something Tarlov gets right: do the homework so you have the facts, then make those facts understandable enough that somebody wants to hear them.

A New Laboratory

These days, one of my best laboratories for all of this is serving as president of a local nonprofit council.

Nonprofit boards are interesting leadership environments. Unlike a corporate leadership team, the people around the table haven’t necessarily followed career paths that prepared them for the particular seats they occupy. Some bring deep experience in finance, governance, communications or operations. Others are there because they’re committed to the mission, respected in the community, willing to volunteer their time or simply because somebody asked.

That’s not necessarily a flaw. It’s often the nature of volunteer leadership, but it creates an unusual leadership environment. People who have been enormously successful in completely different walks of life suddenly sit around the same table and make decisions together. Success doesn’t give them a common vocabulary, common experiences or a common way of assessing a problem.

One person may see financial risk while another sees precedent. Someone else sees reputational consequences. Another sees an opportunity and wonders why everyone else is making it so complicated. All may be looking at exactly the same facts.

I often find myself working overtime to be understood and sometimes simply to be heard. My instinct is familiar: provide more context, explain the history, add another fact, connect another dot.

Increasingly, I’m trying to ask myself:

• What if they understood me perfectly well?
• What are they seeing that I’m not?
• Which fact matters more to them than it does to me?
• What experience are they drawing upon that I don’t have?

Those questions change the job. Instead of searching for another way to explain my position, I have to spend more time understanding theirs. Occasionally, after all of that, we’re still going to disagree.

A communication strength can become
a weakness when we don’t recognize
that the moment calls for a different skill.

Influence Begins Where Control Ends

That may be the larger lesson I took from I Disagree. Do your homework. Know the facts. Make them understandable. Use stories and examples to give them meaning. Listen closely enough to understand the other position, then recognize that you don’t control the conclusion.

I’ve spent a career in environments where influence matters: corporate conference rooms, military organizations, Capitol Hill, client boardrooms, personal relationships and volunteer leadership. Each operates differently, but none allows us to force genuine influence. People have to come along.

I’ve gotten better at communicating along the way, but I’m still learning when to stop. Sometimes the best thing we can do after making the argument is resist the temptation to make it again.

Maybe they heard us the first time.