F3 Most people argue to win, to get the other person to throw up their hands and admit they were completely right. F3’s field manual says that goal is exactly why they so often fail, and that the real target is much smaller.
What is the actual goal of persuasion?
Movement, not surrender. F3 says the thing holding a person in place is inertia, the plain human tendency to keep doing nothing. To persuade someone, you do not have to overwhelm them. You only have to be a slightly stronger nudge than the inertia holding them still, just enough to get one small step of movement started. Most people, F3 says, set the bar far too high. They count it a failure if the other person does not immediately leap up and shout “you’re right, how could I have been so blind?” That almost never happens, and expecting it sets you up to lose. Aiming that high does more than disappoint; it actively works against you.
Why does aiming for total agreement backfire?
The author learned it the hard way as a young lawyer. Certain his client was right, he wanted juries to agree completely and instantly, to the same degree he did. It was, he says, an impossible goal. A jury is objective in a way an invested advocate never is, and there is usually another skilled person in the room arguing just as hard the other way. When a witness said something he knew was false, he would try to prove the witness an outright liar, a huge leap for jurors who want to believe people under oath tell the truth. He admits he does not think he ever once succeeded at it. If total agreement was the wrong target, the right one is a good deal smaller.
So what should you aim for instead?
The smallest step in the right direction. F3’s lesson is to stop chasing full agreement and start chasing a little movement. You do not need someone to abandon their whole position today. You need them to shift slightly, to take one step, and then another later. Persuasion is not a single knockout blow. It is a nudge, repeated, in the direction you want them to go. The man who accepts small movement gets further than the man who demands total surrender and walks away with nothing.
F3 calls this Persuasion, part of leading right in the F3 Nation Q-Source, the field manual for virtuous leadership that F3 is built on. Read the full teaching: f3nation.com/persuasion. F3 Denver is where men practice it. Find a workout.