Thank You for Arguing (Revised and Updated)

by Jay Heinrichs

  Many arguments fail simply because of bad timing. A husband wants to talk his wife into buying an Apple Watch but finds her paying bills—not a good moment to talk about spending money. Or he approaches her just as she starts crying over the novel in her hands. Or he tries to talk to someone about the election just when the guy has to leave work to pick up his kid at school. You could have the best argument in the world, but it won’t get anywhere with these audiences. Not at the moment.

  TRY THIS WITH A NEW IDEA

  You’re used to doing outlines. You can research an idea. And (perhaps with the help of this book) you know how to present it. But do you know your way around an occasion? Next time you want to propose something at home or work, consider making an occasion plan, consisting of (1) the specific people who need to be convinced, (2) the best time (of year, week, and day) to convince them, and (3) the perfect circumstances (restaurant, office, gin joint) for persuasion.

  Josef Stalin, on the other hand, was a master of kairos even before he became the Soviet Union’s dictator. According to biographer Alan Bullock, Stalin would sit mute at Politburo meetings until the very end. Finally, if there was any disagreement, he would weigh in on one side or the other and settle the matter. He did this so often that comrades would look at him toward the end of every meeting, waiting for his judgment. In a party of equals, he made himself more equal than anyone else, despite being a coarse, ill-dressed peasant among well-bred colleagues. Stalin was the Eminem of kairos, a man who used his rhetorical skill to persuade an unlikely audience.

  If it worked for the mass-murdering dictator, it can work for you. So let’s find answers to your kairos questions. In your own meetings, when do you speak up, and when do you shut up? When is it a good idea to procrastinate with an email? When are the best times to broach a touchy family subject? And can kairos improve your love life? (Of course it can!)

  When the Commonplace Picks Up and Moves

  If your audience is self-satisfied and unanimous, perfectly content with its current opinion, then you lack a persuasive moment. But few attitudes stay intact forever. As circumstances change, cracks begin to form in your audience’s certainty.

  Argument Tool

  MOMENT SPOTTER: Uncertain moods and beliefs—when minds are already beginning to change—signal a persuadable moment.

  TRY THIS AT A TOWN MEETING

  Why do the last speakers have the persuasive advantage? (Lest you doubt that they do, research confirms it.) One reason: the earlier speakers can cause opinions to begin migrating. Take advantage of this by restating the opinions of the earlier speakers, including opponents. The uncertain audience can be as vulnerable as the half-persuaded one.

  You’ll find a persuasive moment in a time of uncertainty, change, or need, or when a mood shifts. Barack Obama was a relatively popular president toward the end of his second term. The economy was gradually improving, violent crime was at historic lows, and gun owners got to keep every one of their guns. Yet Americans were in a rotten mood. A dysfunctional government seemed unable to make any decisions. So the status quo became very uncool. Half the eligible voters sat out the election, and nearly half of those who bothered to vote chose a man who promised a radical shake-up. Donald Trump had chosen a persuadable moment to run for the White House.

  Some opportunities pop up in the middle of a meeting. Beliefs can migrate when people are simply sick of talking. Look at this scenario: A college considers changing dining services, so it follows academic tradition by holding a series of committee meetings involving every campus constituency. You agree to go to one, because the campus food tastes awful and it costs more than the fare offered by competing bidders. The meeting begins badly, from your point of view.

  TRY THIS WITH A NEW BUSINESS IDEA

  Does your idea require an investment, or does it save money immediately? If it costs money, wait to propose it until the end of a successful fiscal year, when there may be money left in the budget and the forecast looks good for the next year. If your proposal saves money, time it for midyear. That’s when execs get most nervous about making their numbers.

  TENURED PROFESSOR: I think we should stick with what we have. The service went out of its way to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year—soul food, posters in the dining halls…

  YOUNG INSTRUCTOR: I thought that was demeaning. I mean, fried chicken and collard greens!

  TENURED PROFESSOR: That was entirely appropriate…

  YOUNG INSTRUCTOR: Do they serve spaghetti on Columbus Day?

  TENURED PROFESSOR: I reject your analogy. Italian Americans don’t represent a cohesive cultural minority.

  DEAN: And we don’t celebrate Columbus Day. The Native Americans—

  SECRETARY: What do you mean, Italian Americans aren’t cultural?

  People? People! Can we please talk about the food? The temptation to yank the meeting back on track is awful. But you have a notion to practice kairos, and this does not exactly seem like a persuasive moment. Kairos has to do with waiting for the opportunity, not just seizing it. So you do the proper rhetorical thing: look concerned while doodling in your notepad. Eventually the chair does her duty.

  CHAIR: Clearly, diversity will be important in the college’s decision. What other issues do we need to consider?

  BUDGET OFFICER: We have four bids, and one of them is twenty percent lower than—

  TENURED PROFESSOR: Local. We should use local produce.

  SECRETARY: And organic.

  CHAIR: Okay, organic and local…

  BUDGET OFFICER: I really think price ought to be…

  And then the lone student in the room brings up quality.

  STUDENT: The food sucks. It’s, like, unidentifiable defrosted meat with rice maggots in gravy. Or veal parmesan that looks like scabs picked off elephants…

  SECRETARY: Ooh, thanks for sharing.

  STUDENT: Sorry. So I’m, like, just give me anything else. Anything. Hot dog vendors. Pizza Hut. I don’t care.

  That reminds the dean of the time food services served melted Popsicles for dessert at the trustees’ dinner. The secretary wonders why they don’t serve greener salads. The prof begins shuffling papers, and the instructor glances at the clock. Now is your persuasive moment. Cultural considerations are temporarily forgotten and the current service doesn’t look quite so lovely. The only person who hasn’t spoken is you.

  YOU: Here’s what I’m hearing.

  Good start! You can now sum up the consensus in your own terms.

  Argument Tool

  ANOTHER MOMENT SPOTTER: Are the other arguers petering out? Now’s the time to sum up opinions in a way that favors yours.

  YOU: We are what we eat, which, from your descriptions [glance at the student] is not a pretty picture. So let’s start with the lowest bidder. [Budget officer gazes with love in his eyes.] Try out the food. If it’s good, then we negotiate over cultural events and local produce. If it’s not, we move on to the second-lowest bidder.

  The chair writes that down, the meeting adjourns, and many, many months later you eat better food. You performed first-class logos—defined the issue, conceded the others’ points, spoke in the future tense…you even used a commonplace. “You are what you eat” is no mere cliché when the student’s description remains fresh in people’s minds. And you did good kairos, waiting until the opinion in the room began to shift.

  Wait Till You See the Red in Their Eyes

  TRY THIS IN A MEETING

  Wait until late in the meeting; then speak in the tone of the reluctant conclusion (implying that sheer logic, not personal interest, compels you). You will seem like a judge instead of an advocate.

  The pathos side of a persuasive moment is similar to the logos: the time is ripe when the circumstances begin changing your audience’s mood. The husband whose w
ife is crying over a romance novel needs to conduct some serious diagnostics before he pursues a little sexual healing. Do the tears come from the inevitable part of every sappy novel where the hero and heroine seem to be separated forever? Or from the part where the inevitable jerk mistreats the woman in a way that reveals the abusiveness all too common to his gender? Best not to find out. Hang back. Leave her alone, and then subtly check in on her a half hour later. No tears? Now is a good time to sit next to her and say, “Are you all right?”

  SHE: Why?

  HE: You just seemed a little upset a while ago.

  SHE: Oh, it’s this stupid book. The heroine’s lover accidentally kills her brother. [Slight embarrassed smile.] It’s all very sad.

  HE (resisting urge to say, “Wasn’t that a musical?”): That’s what I love about you.

  SHE: …

  HE: You went through labor without any drugs, twice, without shedding a tear. [Fail! Mention of parturition not a good mood setter!] And yet you tear up at a sentimental novel.

  SHE: You don’t love that about me at all. It drives you crazy.

  HE: You cried watching Superman!

  SHE: His parents had to send him to another planet when he was just a baby. And you thought it was funny!

  HE: …

  He shouldn’t have let the discussion lapse into the past tense: You cried watching Superman!—You thought it was funny! When you disagree in the past or present tense, you’re not having an agreeable moment. The future tense is the one you want.

  The man made a decorum mistake also with his highly improbable that’s-what-I-love-about-you line. It caused him to lose credibility. The husband might have tried this approach instead:

  TRY THIS WITH A MAJOR EMAIL

  Most people send out important emails—big announcements, major ideas or proposals—late in the day. But office workers tend to multitask when they read emails at the beginning and end of the day. At lunchtime, Internet use soars as people focus on surfing and their latest mail.

  HE: You know, that crying thing used to drive me crazy.

  SHE: Doesn’t it still?

  HE: No. It doesn’t. You went through natural childbirth. [D’oh! Again with the birthing!] And I’ve seen too many other instances of your bravery to think you’re a softy. You’re not sentimental. You’re an empath. A loving person.

  SHE: Are you trying to tell me something?

  You try doing better. It may not be the argument that fails him, but the moment. If she were in the right part of the book—where the man and woman, having been kept apart for 422 pages, finally get it on—then her husband might have a highly persuadable moment. She might tackle him before he says a thing. In lovemaking, as in comedy, timing is everything.

  Classic Hits

  “TIME FOR BED” IS ANOTHER KAIROS POEM: The biblical Ecclesiastes—“There is a time to,” et cetera—is a kairos poem. The original Hebrew term for Ecclesiastes means “politician” or “orator.” Set in the present tense, it’s a bravura example of demonstrative rhetoric, the language of values.

  But enough about lovemaking. I want an Apple Watch. (My mentioning one earlier was no accident.) My wife earns the steady income, and I find it wise to get her consent. But when I go to talk to her about it, there she is on the living room floor, sorting through the bills. Clearly, the mood isn’t right. So instead of waiting for a persuadable moment, I try to make one. Heading to the kitchen, I whip up some grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, her favorite lunch. (She’s a midwesterner, all right?) I wait until the aroma attracts her, and then turn the heat down. She stands, salivating, for a good five minutes until I finally slide the spatula under the sandwiches. Then I make my Apple Watch pitch. My wife’s mood will be on the move, from frustrated frugality to hunger. Research will back me on this. Studies of consumer buying habits show that people spend a lot more money when they’re hungry—not just on food but on other necessities, such as electronics. At any rate, she may have forgotten about the bills temporarily.

  TRY THIS WITH YOUR CREATIVE WORK

  As you saw in earlier chapters, belief and expectation create or enhance moods. Cooks invented the appetizer as a kairos enhancer, getting the juices flowing like Pavlov’s dog and creating the perfect moment to eat. You can do the same thing with your work: preview your idea with coworkers, taking care to reveal just a bit of what’s to come. I used similar appetizers with my website, gradually putting up more of my book in a kind of reverse striptease. Internet sales data show that large doses of appetizers sell more books, and long movie trailers attract more filmgoers than short ones.

  ME (offhandedly): Apple Watches are an amazing deal. Really cheap for the value.

  DOROTHY (paying half attention): Mmm.

  ME: So I was thinking. We could each get one so we can stay in closer touch.

  DOROTHY SR.: We’re already in close touch. We have phones.

  ME: But phones don’t track your heartbeat and tell you how many miles you ran!

  DOROTHY SR.: I don’t run.

  I had let that one lapse into my own advantage, not my wife’s. Kairos alone won’t hack it without the advantageous. So I try again:

  ME: You know what they’ve got on Apple Watches?

  DOROTHY SR.: Mmm?

  ME: The Weather Channel. Twenty-four/seven. Right on your wrist.

  Now we’re talking! Being from the Midwest, Dorothy finds the weather infinitely fascinating. Her parents—educated, accomplished people—would sit and watch the Weather Channel for an hour or more during prime time. They would pass up Friends and Seinfeld and even PBS specials in favor of stalled weather fronts and a drought in south Florida. The idea of getting the Weather Channel in the kitchen would be irresistible to Dorothy.

  DOROTHY SR.: So you want an Apple Watch.

  ME: No, I…I was thinking we both…

  DOROTHY SR.: And is that why you made lunch?

  Well, sure. But after thirty-five years of marriage, Dorothy is totally on to me. When it comes to any kind of cool gear, I lack the disinterest essential to the trustworthy persuader. No kairos can get past that. I am getting an Apple Watch, by the way, using the unrhetorical method long favored by the male sex: I’m giving us a pair of them for Christmas.

  Let Kairos Fix Your Ethos

  True geniuses at kairos, and I’m certainly not one, can turn their ethos liabilities into assets. When Martin Luther King Jr. went to prison, jail was a scandal, not the honor it can seem today. But he had a marvelous instinct for kairos, and he knew that white America—at least a sizable portion of it—was ready to consider a black man in prison something of a martyr. Cassius Clay used a similar kairos sleight of hand when he recognized before most people that white kids were beginning to listen to black musicians, that the generations were growing apart, and that the decorous world defined by Emily Post and John Wayne was about to change. The time was ripe for a Muhammad Ali, an overtly sexual, self-referential boaster, the original trash-talker, a fighter turned peace activist, the world’s first (and maybe only) ironic pugilist. Muhammad Ali was masterful in violating just about every element of middle-class, early-1960s decorum. He succeeded because he had a fighter’s timing and an entertainer’s decorum. He started out as a poorly educated black man from Kentucky and became the coolest man on the planet, occupying the very heart of the new decorum.

  TRY THIS IN POLITICS

  In an unscientific study, I looked at every presidential campaign from 1960 through 2016 to see if there was a correlation between the national mood and the degree of smiling optimism each party’s nominee seemed to show. I found that when voters think the country is headed in the wrong direction, Democrats tend to nominate sunny candidates (Humphrey, Bill Clinton), while Republicans choose relatively gloomy ones (Nixon, Dole, Trump). The opposite holds tr
ue when voters like the country’s direction: the Dems nominate frowners (Mondale, Kerry) and the GOP picks optimists (Bush and Bush). Same thing held true in 2008, when voters in a terrible mood chose hopeful Obama and grim, heroic McCain to run against each other. (The 2012 election, when the country had recovered a bit, saw a less-smiling Obama up against a neutral-browed Romney.)

  On a less profound level, when Bill Clinton was president, I saw him speak in the White House to a group of Democrats from New Hampshire. He treated them as his greatest political allies, and he spoke fondly of the state’s first-in-the-nation primary in 1992. But he had lost that primary! New Hampshire Democrats spurned Clinton and chose a little-known Massachusetts senator named Paul Tsongas. Undeterred, Clinton had clawed his way back up in opinion polls and began to win the primaries that followed. He called himself the “Comeback Kid.” And he looked back on New Hampshire as the little state that started it all. Talk about a positive attitude—positive to the point of delusion. But a kairos lesson lies at the end of that story: if the decision isn’t going your way, you can choose another persuasive moment.