9 LAW 9: WIN THROUGH YOUR ACTIONS, NEVER THROUGH ARGUMENT
JUDGMENT
Any momentary triumph you think you have gained through argument is really a Pyrrhic victory: The resentment and ill will you stir up is stronger and lasts longer
than any momentary change of opinion. It is much morepowerful to get others to agree with you through your actions, without saying a word. Demonstrate, do not explicate.
TRANSGRESSION OF THE LAW
In 131 B.C., the Roman consul Publius Crassus Dives Mucianus, laying
siege to the Greek town of Pergamus, found himself in need of a battering ram to force through the town's walls. He had seen a couple of hefty ship's masts in a shipyard in Athens a few days before, and he ordered that the larger of these be sent to hirn immediately. The military engineer in Athens
who received the order feit certain that the consul really wanted the smaller of the masts. He argued endlessly with the soldiers who delivered the request: The smaller mast, he told them, was much better suited to the
task. And indeed it would be easier to transport. The soldiers warned the engineer that their master was not a man to argue with, but he insisted that the smaller mast would be the only one that would work with a machine that he was constructing to go with it. He drew
diagram after diagram, and went so far as to say that he was the expert and
they had no clue what they were talking about. The soldiers knew their
leader and at last convinced the engineer that it would be better to swallow
his expertise and obey.
After they left, though, the engineer thought about it some more. What
was the point, he asked hirnself, in obeying an order that would lead to failure? And so he sent the smaller mast, confident that the consul would see
how much more effective it was and reward hirn justly.
When the smaller mast arrived, Mucianus asked his soldiers for an explanation. They described to hirn how the engineer had argued endlessly
for the smaller mast, but had finally promised to send the larger one. Mucianus went into a rage. He could not concentrate on the siege, or consider
the importance of breaching the walls before the town received reinforcements. All he could think about was the impudent engineer, whom he ordered to be brought to hirn immediately.
Arriving a few days later, the engineer gladly explained to the consul,
one more time, the reasons for the smaller mast. He went on and on, using
the same arguments he had made with the soldiers. He said it was wise to
listen to experts in these matters, and if the attack was only tried with the
battering ram he had sent, the consul would not regret it. Mucianus let hirn
finish, then had him stripped naked before the soldiers and flogged and
scourged with rods until he died.
Interpretation
The engineer, whose name has not been recorded by history, had spent his
life designing masts and pillars, and was respected as the finest engineer in
a city that had excelled in the science. He knew that he was right. A smaller
ram would allow more speed and carry more force. Larger is not necessarily better. Of course the consul would see his logic, and would eventually
understand that science is neutral and reason superior. How could the consul possibly persist in his ignorance if the engineer showed him detailed diagrams and explained the theories behind his advice?
The military engineer was the quintessence of the Arguer, a type found everywhere among use The Arguer does not understand that words
are never neutral, and that by arguing with a superior he impugns the intelligenee of one more powerful than he. He also has no awareness of the person he is dealing with. Sinee each man believes that he is right, and words
will rarely eonvinee hirn otherwise, the arguer's reasoning falls on deaf
ears. When eornered, he only argues more, digging his own grave. Onee
he has made the other person feel inseeure and inferior in his beliefs, the
eloquenee of Socrates could not save the situation.
It is not simply a question of avoiding an argument with those who
stand above you. We all believe we are masters in the realm of opinions
and reasoning. You must be careful, then: Learn to demonstrate the correctness of your ideas indirectly.
OBSERVAN CE OF THE LAW
In 1502, in Florenee, Italy, an enormous block of marble stood in the
works department of the church of Santa Maria deI Fiore. It had once been
a magnificent piece of raw stone, but an unskillful sculptor had mistakenly
bored a hole through it where there should have been a figure's legs, generally mutilating it. Piero Soderini, Florence's mayor, had contemplated trying to save the block by eommissioning Leonardo da Vinci to work on it, or some other master, but had given up, since everyone agreed that the stone had been ruined. So, despite the money that had been wasted on it, it gathered dust in the dark halls of the church. This was where things stood until some Florentine friends of the great Michelangelo decided to write to the artist, then living in Rome. He alone, they said, could do something with the marble, which was still magnificent raw material. Michelangelo traveled to Florence, examined the stone, and aime to the conclusion that he could in fact carve a fine figure from it, by adapting the pose to the way the rock had been mutilated. Soderini argued that this was a waste of time-nobody could salvage such a disaster-but he finally agreed to let the artist work on it. Michelangelo decided he would depict a young David, sling in hand. Weeks later, as Michelangelo was putting the final touch es on the statue, Soderini entered the studio. Fancying hirnself a bit of a connoisseur, he studied the huge work, and told Michelangelo that while he thought it was magnificent, the nose, he judged, was too big. Michelangelo realized that Soderini was standing in a place right under the giant figure and did not have the proper perspeetive. Without a word, he gestured for Soderini to follow hirn up the scaffolding. Reaching the nose, he picked up his ehisel, as well as a bit of marble dust that lay on the planks. With Soderini just a few feet below hirn on the scaffolding, Michelangelo started to tap lightly with the ehisel, letting the bits of dust he had gathered in his hand to fall little by little. He actually did nothing to change the nose, but gave every appearance of working on it. Mter a few minutes of this charade he stood aside: "Look at it now." "I like it better," replied Soderini, "you've made it come alive."
Interpretation
Michelangelo knew that by changing the shape of the nose he might ruin
the entire sculpture. Yet Soderini was a patron who prided hirnself on his
aesthetic judgment. To offend such a man by arguing would not only gain
Michelangelo nothing, it would put future commissions in jeopardy.
Michelangelo was too clever to argue. His solution was to change
Soderini's perspective (literally bringing hirn closer to the no se) without
making him realise that this was the cause of bis misperception.
Fortunately for posterity, Michelangelo found a way to keep the perfection of the statue intact while at the same time making Soderini believe he had improved it. Such is the double power of winning through actions
rather than argument: No one is offended, and your point is proven.
KEYS TO POWER
In the realm of power you must leam to judge your moves by their longterm effects on other people. The problem in trying to prove a point or gain a victory through argument is that in the end you can never be certain
how it affects the people you're arguing with: They may appear to agree
with you politely, but inside they may resent you. Or perhaps something
you said inadvertently even offended them-words have that insidious
ability to be interpreted according to the other person's mood and insecurities. Even the best argument has no solid foundation, for we have all come to distrust the slippery nature of words. And days after agreeing with someone, we often revert to our old opinion out of sheer habit. Understand this: Words are a dime a dozen. Everyone knows that in
the heat of an argument, we will all say anything to support our cause. We
will quote the Bible, refer to unverifiable statistics. Who can be persuaded
by bags of air like that? Action and demonstration are much more powerful and meaningful. They are there, before our eyes, for us to see "Yes, now the statue's no se does look just right." There are no offensive words, no possibility of misinterpretation. No one can argue with a demonstrated
proof. As Baltasar Graciän remarks, "The truth is generally seen, rarely heard."
Sir Christopher Wren was England's version of the Renaissance man. He had mastered the sciences of mathematics, astronomy, physics, and physiology. Yet during bis extremely long career as England's most celebrated architect he was often told by his patrons to make impractical changes in his designs. Never once did he argue or offend. He had other ways of proving his point.
In 1688 Wren designed a magnificent town hall for the city of Westminster. The mayor, however, was not satisfied; in fact he was nervous. He told Wren he was afraid the second floor was not seeure, and that it could
all come crashing down on his office on the first floor. He demanded that When add two stone columns for extra support. Wren, the consummate engineer, knew that these columns would serve no purpose, and that the
mayor's fears were baseless. But build them he did, and the mayor was
grateful. It was only years later that workmen on a high scaffold saw that
the columns stopped just short of the ceiling.
They were dummies. But both men got what they wanted: The mayor could relax, and Wren knew posterity would understand that his original design worked and the columns were unnecessary. The power of demonstrating your idea is that your opponents do not
get defensive, and are therefore more open to persuasion. Making them literally and physically feel your meaning is infinitely more powerful than argument.
A heckler once interrupted Nikita Khrushchev in the middle of a
speech in which he was denouncing the crimes of Stalin. "You were a colleague of Stalin's," the heckler yelled, "why didn't you stop hirn then?"
Khrushschev apparently could not see the heckler and barked out, "Who
said that?" No hand went up. No one moved a muscle. After a few seconds
of tense silen ce, Khrushchev finally said in a quiet voice, "Now you know
why I didn't stop hirn." Instead of just arguing that anyone facing Stalin
was afraid, knowing that the slightest sign of rebellion would mean certain
death, he had made them feel what it was like to face Stalin-had made
them feel the paranoia, the fear of speaking up, the terror of confronting
the leader, in this case Khrushchev. The demonstration was visceral and no
more argument was necessary.
The most powerful persuasion goes beyond action into symbol. The
power of a symbol-a flag, a mythic story, a monument to some emotional
event-is that everyone understands you without anything being said. In
1975, when Henry Kissinger was engaged in some frustrating negotiations
with the Israelis over the return of part of the Sinai desert that they had
seized in the 1967 war, he suddenly broke off a tense meeting and decided
to do some sight-seeing. He paid a visit to the ruins of the ancient fortress
of Masada, known to all Israelis as the place where seven hundred J ewish
warriors committed mass suicide in A.D. 73 rather than give in to the
Roman troops besieging them. The Israelis instantly understood the message of Kissinger's visit: He was indirectly accusing them of courting mass
suicide. Although the visit did not by itself change their minds, it made
them think far more seriously than any direct warning would have. Symbols like this one carry great emotional significance.
When aiming for power, or trying to conserve it, always look for the
indirect route. And also choose your battles carefully. If it does not matter
in the long run whether the other person agrees with you-or if time and
their own experience will make them understand what you mean-then it
is best not even to bother with a demonstration. Save your energy and
Image : The See saw. Up and down
and up and down go the arguers, getting nowhere fast. Get off the see saw and show them your meaning without kicking or pushing. Leave them at the top and let gravity bring them gently
to the ground.
REVERSAL
Verbal argument has one vital use in the realm of power: To distract and
cover your tracks when you are practicing deception or are caught in a He. In such cases it is to your advantage to argue with all the conviction you can muster.
Draw the other person into an argument to distract them from your deceptive move. When caught in a He, the more emotional and certain you appear, the less Hkely it seems that you are lying.
This technique has saved the hide of many a con artist. Once Count Victor Lustig, swindler par excellence, had sold dozens of suckers around the country a phony box with which he claimed to be able to copy money.
Discovering their mistake, the suckers generally chose not to go the police,
rather than risk the embarrassment of publicity. But one Sheriff Richards, of Remsen County, Oklahoma, was not the kind of man to accept being
conned out of $ 10,000, and one moming he tracked Lustig down to a hotel
in Chicago.
Lustig heard a knock on the door. When he opened it he was looking
down the barrel of a gun. "What seems to be the problem?" he calmly
asked. "You son of a bitch," yelled the sheriff, "1'm going to kill you. You
conned me with that damn box of yours!" Lustig feigned confusion. "You mean it's not working?" he asked.
"You know it's not working," replied the
sheriff. "But that's impossible," said Lustig. "There's no way it couldn't be
working. Did you operate it properly?"
"I did exactly what you told me to
do," said the sheriff. "No, you must have done something wrong," said
Lustig. The argument went in circles. The barrel of the gun was gently lowered.
Lustig next went to phase two in the argument tactic: He poured out a
whole bunch of technical gobbledygook about the box's operation, completely beguiling the sheriff, who now appeared less sure of himself and argued less forcefully. "Look," said Lustig, "1'11 give you your money back
right now. 1'11 also give you written instructions on how to work the machine and 1'11 come out to Oklahoma to make sure it's working properly.
There's no way you can lose on that." The sheriff reluctantly agreed. To
satisfy him tota1ly, Lustig took out a hundred one-hundred-dollar bills and
gave them to him, telling him to relax and have a fun weekend in Chicago.
Calmer and a little confused, the sheriff finally left. Over the next few days
Lustig checked the paper every moming. He finally found what he was
looking for: A short article reporting Sheriff Richards's arrest, trial, and
conviction for passing counterfeit notes. Lustig had won the argument; the
sheriff never bothered hirn again.
