Ultimate Influence Via the Parry
Use this tactic of deflection to avoid needless conflicts and turn your adversaries into allies.
Today’s post is by Bob Burg, author of Adversaries into Allies: Win People Over Without Manipulation or Coercion (CLICK HERE to get your copy).
“Who is mighty? That person who can control their own emotions and make, of an enemy, a friend.” – Talmud
Our 16th U.S. President, Abraham Lincoln, was one of the best when it came to turning adversaries into allies.
“…{On one occasion}, when another official sharply criticized Lincoln’s judgment, the president responded to a reporter’s interrogation by saying he had great respect for the other man, and if this official had concerns about him, there must be some truth to it. Such discretion disarmed divisiveness that was intended to draw Lincoln into side-skirmishes, it won the hearts of his friends and foes and it allowed Lincoln to maintain focus on more important issues.”
What Lincoln did was to utilize the tactic of “deflection.” This means to softly “parry” a challenge or accusation, deflecting it into another direction where it misses entirely.
This is actually a common boxing move. When one fighter throws a jab, the intended target will, very coolly, simply wait until the punch almost reaches him. He’ll then just parry it away with a very slight flick of the wrist. Harmless.
Lincoln did it. You can too.
Use the Other Person’s Force…To Your Advantage
When someone says something to you, or about you, don’t fight it, battle it, or try and stop it. It won’t work. In fact, it typically will have only the opposite effect of drawing you more heavily into the confrontation and providing fodder for the conflict. Instead, do what Lincoln did. Compliment the offender and leave him and his comment without power to harm you. You can do this one of two ways:
1. If you’re told what someone said about you, then, like Lincoln, express your admiration for that person and suggest that, “If Pat said it, it’s something I should at least look into.”
This will totally disarm the person who just related Pat’s words. He or she cannot argue with you because you did not argue with them. They can’t debate the point because you’ve politely refused to debate. And (perhaps most importantly), they cannot quote your “defensive” response to anyone else, including Pat, because you did not respond defensively.
Your kind and complimentary words will probably also make their way back to Pat, who will now have a newly-found respect for you.
2. If something is being told to you that is meant to be offensive or disruptive, directly acknowledge to the person that he/she may just have a point and it’s something you need to consider.
If that’s not appropriate, simply thank the person for bringing it up.
Don’t Confuse This With Being a Doormat
Please understand: I’m not saying not to answer and/or stick up for yourself. Taking a definite position might be very necessary. What the deflection does, however, is keep it impersonal. It allows for positive detachment so that the answer can be of best service to everyone and not indicative of negative personal feelings.
Here are two practice exercises you can do over the next week to strengthen yourself in this area:
1. Work on deflection via parrying every time you are confronted, regardless of the lightness or seriousness of the confrontation.
2. Watch other people during their conflicts and observe how they handle a “left jab.” Do they deflect it with a classy parry or do they get caught up in trying to “stop” the verbal punch? How does the option they took work out for them? Note the ones who are most effective and use them as a model.
Perhaps this exercise is most powerful!
Mentally rehearse a situation in which someone verbally attacks or criticizes you or passes along a similar remark from someone else as in the example with President Lincoln.
See yourself, in your mind’s eye, responding with calmness and serenity, completely in control of your own emotions. Your response is a perfect parry, a smooth deflection that leaves everyone feeling good about themselves and the situation. Imagine how terrific you feel afterwards.
If you can do it in your mind, you can do it in a real-life situation.
Just as an astronaut training for a mission goes through numerous simulated missions before ever actually going into space, you’ll find rehearsing in your mind before the event ever takes place puts you nine steps ahead of the game…in a ten-step game.
Once you quickly become really proficient at this, you’ll find it to be one of the most self-empowering (not to mention, fun!) aspects of your interpersonal communications.
And, you’ll be the one that others see as a master of people skills and persuasion, and a person of ultimate influence.
Bob Burg is the author of Adversaries into Allies: Win People Over Without Manipulation or Coercion (CLICK HERE to get your copy).
Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a couple of emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog delivered to your inbox every week!
Let’s strike one up for good ole USA White Privilege by anointing Lincoln as the best when it comes to turning adversaries into allies. He certainly did not practice deflection when it came to dealing with the first citizens of this country.
Even the President who freed the slaves could not see fit to view American Indians in the category of people who are created equal.
Dee Brown in his book, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, talks about how Lincoln was responsible for the largest mass execution in US History. In 1862, Lincoln commissioned the hanging of 38 Dakota Sioux prisoners in Makato, MN. Charged with crimes with little proof, many of these captives were non-violent cultural or religious leaders of their Tribe. The unflappable Lincoln should have been tried as a war criminal for this genocide.
Lincoln also had the audacity in 1863 to say to a group of American Indian Chiefs who were visiting him in Washington, DC, “We are not as a race so much disposed to fight and kill one another as our Red Brethren.” These American Indians must have been puzzled by such a statement since by that time, 300,000 white people had died during the Civil War on Lincoln’s watch.
Lincoln signed the Homestead Act and the Pacific Railway Act of 1862 which guaranteed the loss of land, natural resources, culture and language for American Indians.
Lincoln’s Indian Office to be later called the Bureau of Indian Affairs never took their government to government relationship seriously with Tribes which led to corruption among Indian agents who often stole provisions and other resources earmarked for American Indians.
The 1863 Lincoln administration was responsible for the removal of Navajos and Mescalero Apaches from the New Mexico Territory. By the time a treaty had been signed, nearly 2,000 Navajos died as a result of this relocation. Some folks call this Lincoln’s “Trail of Tears.”
W. Dale Mason describes Lincoln’s policy toward American Indians as one of “wards of the government.” He never viewed the civil rights of American Indians in the same way he viewed civil rights for African Americans. For American Indians, there was no Emancipation Proclamation under Lincoln.
In order to preserve a more perfect Union after the Civil War, Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving a national holiday that ignored the pain of Indigenous communities whose stolen land these observances occur on and continues the invisibility of millions of Native people whose ancestors extended the right hand of fellow to white people, only to have that generosity met with racism, colonialism, mass genocide, ethnic cleansing, almost complete assimilation and displacement from their culture.
Lincoln’s misappropriation of Black soldiers in the segregated Union Army became the launching pad of the “Buffalo Soldiers.”
What a brilliant idea, instead of incorporating them into a segregated Union Army, let’s commissioned them to deal with the “Indian Problem” out West after the Civil War ended and keep the Northern Army segregated. So much for freeing the slaves. Just turn them loose on another group of human beings that White people wanted exterminated.
Until we sit in our own discomfort and with the discomfort of people whose differences were never embraced by the racist war criminal, President Lincoln, we will never truly understand their pain and acknowledge it alongside our own.
Until that time, Indigenous people will have to get used to being a doormat.