The Expert Podcast

So, what is the steel man technique and how do you use it in mediation? It's a very powerful technique for resolving communications, and it can come in very handy with mediation. Typically, with a negotiation or an arbitration, you're trying to argue your point to be more persuasive to the other party. By doing that, you are trying to reduce or diminish their argument and prove your case better than theirs by downplaying or weakening their argument and point of view. The steel man technique does the opposite. You're building up their point of view to give your opponent’s perspective the strongest version of itself that it can have.

And why would you want to do that? How’s it going to help you? Well, it seems counterproductive, but in reality, it can achieve the best results for you selfishly and for the other party altruistically in any kind of negotiation or mediation. So, let's take a look at it. Instead of taking the other person's argument or their point of view and diminishing it by finding the faults, cracks, and weak points, what you do is you reinforce it and improve it. You point out the best things they have to offer. By building the best version of the other side's argument, you engage with that. It sounds like you're being charitable, but by patching up the weaknesses in their side of the story, you can bring the best counter-argument to your point of view.

It's hard to do when you're trying to argue your point because arguing the other person's point of view might seem like it's against what you're trying to accomplish. But most of the time, if you go into it trying to be the winner rather than being correct, you're going to fail. There's an old Aesop’s fable where the sun and the wind were both looking from up in the sky down at a man walking with a jacket on. They argued with each other and made a bet: who can get the guy with the jacket to take it off? The wind said, “I can do it by force,” and the wind blew hard and hard—50 miles an hour, 60 miles an hour—and the guy with the coat kept holding his coat even tighter, gripping it as hard as he could to keep it from flying off. The wind kept blowing and failed. The wind had to stop, and the guy didn't take off his jacket. The sun now had his turn, and he just beamed very brightly. The guy got so hot, he took off the coat by himself. This is similar to the idea of the steel man technique for negotiation. If you want somebody to do something or at least accommodate your needs, do it through getting them to see it as their own idea.

So, if you can persuade the other party by showing how the strengths in their argument match yours, it’s a collaborative thing. You're not working against them; whether they're fighting back even harder, you're working with them so that they move in the same direction you are. In fact, many times in an argument, a litigation, a negotiation, the illogical arguments that people make get magnified only because they're trying to fight back against you. Many times, you see the foolishness of the other person's argument, and you ask yourself, “Why are they arguing this stupid idea?” Many times, it’s just a fight back against you because you have an idea they don’t like, and this is their way of fighting back against it, even though they might even believe that what they're saying doesn’t make any sense. It’s on principle that they're fighting back against you.

So, if you build up the value in what is true about their argument, they can abandon the things that are not true. Think about it: even if you're arguing with another party about anything—a court case, divorce case, negotiation of a contract, or just debating a friend—there are some parts of their argument that you agree with, that you know to be true. It doesn’t matter what it is, there's some part you know to be true. Now, it might be hard for you to see those because of the other person's magnifying things that aren’t true. It could also be hard for you to see those because you don’t want to believe anything they say. You want to just be completely against everything they say just on principle. But by looking at the things of their argument that are true and building those up, and by agreeing with them and making them even bigger than they are, the steel man technique works. The other person sees that their thoughts are taken seriously, and you're not brushing them aside at the least, and you're not disputing them at the most. Because if you argue against something that is obviously true, they're not going to take you seriously either. If you show that you understand their arguments—good and bad—and improve them, you might even suggest, "Look, this thing that you're saying is true. You might say it in another way because it's even more true than you think. Don’t sell yourself short. Build this up."

You need to constantly test your own assumptions because you might be presuming that everything about your opponent is incorrect. By doing that, you're going to create your own twisted arguments against them. If you listen to what they're saying, pick out the things that are true or at least that you agree with, and build those up, all the other impossible things will go away, and you might find the solution materializes by itself.

If all you know about an argument is your own side of the case, all you know is your own beliefs and your own perspective. You'll know less about that than you could if you know the other person’s side of the case. Like, what they're arguing against you. You can see it now from a different point of view. It's like the old “forest through the trees.” If you can see your argument and your perspective from outside of yourself, you can see more of the actual shape of it, and you might find there are some parts about it you don't even want to cling to anymore. The combination of you dismissing some of your own arguments—even if it's 10 or 15 percent, a small percentage—that you're realizing, "Yeah, this is ridiculous," and adopting 10 or 15 percent of the other side, you might be able to keep 80 percent of what you believe in and have the other person go along with it because now you're in lockstep. You're going in the same direction as them.

And if they see you taking control of helping move your argument forward, they're going to be less suspicious of you and more likely to throw in with you on the overall solution. So, the steel man technique can be extremely valuable. It's tricky, and it takes a lot of practice. You might want to try it out with more friendly conversations—friends, relatives, people close to you—and see how it works out before you do it where it's a mission-critical opportunity. But with mediation, we use this all the time for both sides to help both sides build up what’s right about their own point of view. We even ask the other side to say, "Look, this is something that would help you, isn’t it?" It's tough because people have their own sense of pride and principles that they don't want to give in, even on something that doesn’t mean anything. So, it's a tricky thing. A mediator can help dissolve some of these hang-ups, but if you have some built-in knowledge of this, it can serve you well in your own endeavors in life or in conflicts with others.