Your opinion is your opinion, your perception is your perception–do not confuse them with ‘facts,’ or ‘truth.’
– John Moore
Unless you’ve been permanently holed up in a SCIF (a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) for the past four to five years, you’ve probably noticed that these days strong opinions are being flung about the world at hyper speed and coming from all directions – cable news, social media, public transportation, backyard barbecues, and coffee-bar chatter at work.
Political leaders, elections, classified documents, national security, the law, the pandemic – you name it, everyone has an opinion about what’s going on these days. Unfortunately, most will skip past the “In my opinion” prefix and tout their perspective as factually true although 20 seconds of online research could prove them either highly questionable or entirely false.
So, what’s a Respectful Leader to do when faced with someone who insists that their opinion is a fact, even though it isn’t?
First, we need to realize that directly contradicting someone’s heartfelt opinion and presenting them with actual, verifiable facts is unlikely to get them to change their mind. If they’re even remotely passionate about their opinion, then they are committed to their point of view, the facts be damned. And, confronting them with the truth – especially if it undermines their opinion – might spin them up even more. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson in the film A Few Good Men, a person with strong opinions without a basis in fact can’t handle the truth, and they sure as heck don’t want to hear it.
This is why many of us avoid getting into arguments with people who are convinced their opinions are factually true even though they aren’t. It’s too hard to do and it could blow up the relationship. So, our tendency is to just shut down or do our best to change the subject.
In the workplace, this is a perfectly reasonable strategy, unless their opinions – masquerading as facts – are negatively impacting others and/or business outcomes. If that’s the case, then the Respectful Leader needs to do more.
But arguing the facts with someone in high dudgeon is pointless. You’ve got to get them to pause and settle down first before you start talking about facts. To do this, you could use some phrases that we, at the Center for Respectful Leadership call “Respectful Remarks.”
Here’s a short list…
- “I think we can agree that there are many opinions on this topic.”
- “I agree that’s one point of view. There are many others. Wouldn’t you agree?”
- “I agree that that’s your opinion, and clearly you feel strongly about it.”
- “We can debate opinions all day long, and (avoid using ‘but’) I think you’ll agree that looking up the facts should only take us a minute.”
- “I’m sure you agree that everyone has a right to their own opinion. And I think you would agree that it would be helpful if they were based on facts.”
You’ll notice that each of these Respectful Remarks contains the phrase “I think you agree,” or “I think you’ll agree.” This is deliberate, because as social beings, when we express our opinions, most of us look for agreement. Most of us are not deliberately trying to spin people up and “poke the bear” as we say at CRL.
By using the magic words “I think you agree,” the opinionator is tricked, in a way, into thinking they are talking with someone who agrees with them. In most cases, this will de-escalate the tension in the conversation.
It’s also helpful to say these Respectful Remarks in a way that is (if you’ll excuse another pun) a matter of fact, a truism that is clear, even obvious, to every reasonable person. Again, as social beings, most of us don’t want to stand out as unreasonable or arrogant. When faced with someone who is being reasonable, who seems to agree with us (even though they don’t necessarily) we’re more likely to be more reasonable ourselves.
From this point, once the opinionator has cooled down a bit, the Respectful Leader has a choice: go forward with looking up and establishing the facts and presenting them or dropping the matter entirely. Again, you should consider if there’s a legitimate business case to be made for ensuring the person is made aware of the facts or if this is just water cooler chat that can be dismissed as pontification.
If you decide that they really must know the facts, then you’d be well advised to educate the opinionator in private so that they can save face or blow up and deny the truth without upsetting others. If denying the truth is their thing, and it’s a business-related issue, then the Respectful Leader has got an even bigger problem on their hands.
