Chapter 5. Reason
When a decision matters to the people in the room, they judge your reasons more than your delivery. Give one strong reason, and answer the obvious objection before someone else raises it.
When people care, reasons win
In a classic 1981 experiment, Richard Petty, John Cacioppo and Rachel Goldman gave students a proposal to require a comprehensive exam before graduation. Some heard strong arguments and some heard weak ones; some heard them from an expert source and some from a non-expert. The twist was relevance: some students were told the exam would start next year (it would affect them), others that it would start in ten years. When the issue was personally relevant, attitudes were driven mainly by the quality of the arguments. When it wasn't, the source's expertise mattered more. A (Petty, Cacioppo & Goldman 1981)
What made the strong arguments strong? The authors noted that they contained evidence in the form of statistics and data, while the weak ones relied on quotations, personal opinions and examples. Bthe definition of "strong" has been debated (ISSA review)
Why this is good news for second-language speakers. Decisions in your team's meetings are personally relevant to the people in the room — it's their system, their deadline, their on-call rotation. That is exactly the condition in which listeners focus on the quality of your reasons. A clear reason, said plainly, carries more weight than polished delivery.
One strong reason beats three mixed ones
It's tempting to stack every reason you can think of. But a 1996 study found that, for highly involved listeners, adding weaker arguments to strong ones reduced persuasion — the weak ones diluted the strong. B (abstract)
So lead with your best reason. Add a second only if it is just as strong. This also fits the working-memory limit from Chapter 3.
Answer the objection before it's raised
Daniel O'Keefe combined 107 studies with 20,111 participants on "message sidedness." Messages that raised the other side's argument and refuted it were more persuasive and more credible than one-sided messages. Messages that raised the other side but didn't answer it were the least persuasive of all. A (summary, abstract)
Two details matter for meetings:
- The advantage held even for audiences that already agreed. There was no evidence that "preaching to the converted" works better one-sided.
- Mentioning a concern without answering it backfires. If you bring up the risk, bring the response with it.
"You might worry this slows down the launch. It adds two days, but it removes the rollback risk we hit last quarter."
The shape of a reasoned opinion
Philosopher Stephen Toulmin described arguments with six parts: claim, data, warrant, qualifier, backing and rebuttal. In a meeting you rarely need all six. Claim + one reason, plus a rebuttal when there's an obvious objection, covers most situations. C
| Part | Example |
|---|---|
| Claim | "I'd recommend Postgres over DynamoDB here," |
| Reason | "because our access patterns are mostly relational joins." |
| Rebuttal | "Dynamo would scale further, but we're nowhere near that limit." |
Reasons for non-engineers: frame the tradeoff
When the listener is a PM or executive, the most useful reason is the tradeoff itself. Name the decision, the options in plain terms, and your recommendation with its cost. C
"We need to pick between speed and cost. Option A ships in two weeks but doubles our cloud bill. Option B takes five weeks and keeps costs flat. I recommend B unless the launch date is fixed."
A warning about "because"
A famous 1978 photocopier study (Langer and colleagues) is often cited as proof that any reason works if you say "because." In the original study, the effect was strong for small requests; for larger ones, the quality of the reason mattered. (Original paper should be checked before citing details.) Don't build on the popular version: in real decisions, the reason has to be real.
Phrases
- "I'd go with X, because…"
- "The data shows…" / "In last week's logs, …"
- "For example, last sprint…"
- "You might worry that… The answer is…"
Practice
Because-chain. State an opinion about your current project out loud. Then ask yourself "why?" once and answer in one sentence with a fact, not a feeling. Then name the strongest objection and answer it in one sentence. Three sentences, done.
Chapter 4. Enter
In meetings, the floor changes hands in a fraction of a second, and people silently calculate the social cost of speaking. Win the timing with a prepared first line; lower the cost with phrases that make half-formed ideas safe.
Chapter 6. Own
Listeners judge your competence partly from how sure you sound. Stacked hedges and hesitations cost credibility — but stating clearly what you're unsure about can build it. Own your view, your ideas and your results.