How to Set Boundaries in Unwanted Conversations
In this solo episode of the Jefferson Fisher Podcast, host Jefferson Fisher teaches listeners how to handle unwanted or controversial conversations without escalating conflict. He outlines three core tactics: (1) appear disinterested by giving neutral, non‑committal responses such as “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure,” which removes the conversational fuel; (2) acknowledge the other person’s point (“I agree, that’s an issue”) to make them feel heard without agreeing or disagreeing; and (3) use direct boundary language, prefacing statements with “I typically avoid…” or “I prefer not to discuss…” to set clear limits. Fisher explains why some people push contentious topics—often seeking validation, competition, or simply wanting interaction—and advises listeners to look beyond the surface issue. He illustrates the approach with a listener question from “Sammy,” who struggles with a boss that forces political or gossip talk at work. Fisher suggests applying the same techniques, adding personalized redirects (e.g., asking about the boss’s personal life) and emphasizing authenticity. Throughout, he promotes his new book, The Next Conversation, and his weekly newsletter. The episode blends instructional advice, psychological insight, and a real‑world case study to equip listeners with practical boundary‑setting tools for any unwanted conversation.
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You don't like them and you definitely don't want them, but sometimes no matter what you say, you find yourself getting sucked into them anyway. But with what I'm about to show you today, you're going to handle them like a pro. Today's episode is all about how to handle unwanted conversations. Welcome to the Jefferson Fisher Podcast, where I'm on a mission to make your next conversation the one that changes everything. If you enjoy learning tools to improve your communication, I'm going to ask you to follow this podcast and please if you would leave a review, it really makes a difference. I'm excited to share with you that my book, my new book, it's called The Next Conversation, is officially out for preorder. If you'd like to order a copy, I'll put links down in the show notes where you can order it from your favorite retailer. It's a book that is going to teach you how to say things with control, say it with confidence, and say it to connect, and that you can change everything in your world and in your life simply by what you say next. If you want to avoid an unwanted conversation, number 1, don't fight them. Because the more that you do, the more you're going to find yourself in one. Instead, just let it go by. You do that by making yourself sound, well, disinteresting. This is what I mean. When somebody's pushing an opinion onto you, any controversial topic, whether it's religion, politics, whatever, they're trying to push something onto you and you say, "Yeah, I don't know." Simple as that. Yeah, I don't know. Or, you know, I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm not sure about that. You're finding ways to communicate to them of, if you're looking for a fight, you're not going to find one here. Number 2, this one is the easiest, but it's the most critical. You are making them feel heard. It's just simply acknowledging their point, and it's very simple to do. This is what it sounds like. I agree, that's an issue. Period. Somebody's wanting to get all worked up, and they're telling something to you. All you need to respond is, "Yeah, I agree that's an issue. I agree that's an issue." You're not saying whether you agree with it or disagree with it. If anything, they just feel acknowledged and heard, and they say to themselves, "Oh, okay, they understood and heard what I said." And number 3, if you need to be a little bit more direct, you need to tell them that you're not interested in this conversation. If they're not getting the point, here's the way I suggest to do that. You you say, "I typically avoid this topic." The keyword is typically. "Yeah, I typically avoid this topic," or, "I typically try not to talk about X, Y, and Z." The key here is when you say typically, you're communicating, "I've had this conversation before. It's not really stimulating to me anymore, so I just avoid this topic altogether." You're not saying that they're wrong. You're not giving them a fight. You're not giving them anything for them to bare their teeth on. You're just simply saying, "I tend to avoid this. I typically don't do this. And I'm going to give you a disclaimer on this episode, particularly when it comes to political topics. I'm all in favor of educating yourself and making sure that you know about the issues out there. I think you should absolutely exercise your right to vote, no questions asked. That's a different question on whether or not somebody is allowed to force their opinion onto you and say whether they're right or wrong, or If you're supposed to push your opinion back and always have these discussions where, you know, it's just beating your head against a wall. If this person is open-minded and it's a discussion that you enjoy having, and people have political discussions all the time and there's no issues, but other people, it's not so much about change. They don't care about the change. They care about the competition. It's like a sport to them. It's like arguing over their favorite sports team. Who's going to win? Who's going to lose? Day to day, the ultimate consequence of the discussion, who wins, makes no bearing, no change on their life. It's just something that they feel like a team on, so they want to have this discussion of intellect to intellect or just issue to issue, and they just want to talk it out. All kinds of different reasons why these kind of topics should or may come up in your life. The key is how do you balance them? The reason why I have number 1 be to pass it by is because It's that idea of don't attend every argument you're invited to. Just because somebody pushes their opinion onto you to talk about any controversial topic does not mean that it's an invitation for you to mandatorily give your opinion right back. Whenever you decide, you know what, I want to push against you, actually I don't agree with that, you can disagree all you want. Just know you're walking right into the conversation. It's no longer an unwanted conversation, it is a desired conversation now that you're giving your opinion. If you want to avoid these, then you need to just let them pass by. I say disinterested or be disinteresting because in many ways you're taking all the oxygen out of the room and their fire can't burn. They have nothing to get upset about because you're not giving them anything to jump onto. You're finding ways to say, "You know what? I don't know about that." "You know what? That's a good question. I'm really not sure." I'm not sure. It's not that you're— that you don't have your own opinion. It's not that you're uneducated. It's just you're not in a mood to say, I don't want to get in this conversation right now. And there's nothing wrong with that. When it comes to agreeing with them, understand nobody can make you agree to something you don't want to agree to. Nobody can force you to say something you don't want to say. But it's critical that These kind of people, when they're pushing these unwanted conversations, just feel heard. Often if they just feel acknowledged in some way, they're going to go away. Not only have you made yourself disinteresting, they know they're not going to get anywhere with this. They know that you're not going to give them that fight and that excitement that they're looking for. They just want to feel acknowledged. So when you can say things like we mentioned in number 2 of, I agree, that's an issue. I hear you. Simple as that. I hear you. I agree that's an issue. I agree. That's all you have to say. Even if you disagree with them, you're just making them feel heard. But if they continue to push and press on you to make you feel uncomfortable in some certain way, don't hesitate for one second to say, I prefer, or I typically— you're talking about what you do in the past— I prefer not to talk about X, Y, and Z. I typically try to avoid topics about blah blah blah. You can make it even situational. I typically avoid topic X at dinner or at home or at work. You make it situational where you are in your environment. Simple as that. And if they continue to press the button, it's absolutely okay to say, I'm not going there, period. I'm not going there. You're saying, I'm not going into this conversation. I've given you plenty of lead-ups. I've given you signs that I'm not interested in this. That, that means I have to be explicit with you. I'm not interested in this conversation. I typically don't enjoy talking about topics of X, Y, and Z. This subject matter isn't for me. That subject isn't for me. You find ways to— if they're not going to be taking the signs, be very direct with them to say, I have a boundary here. I'm not going to be goaded into this. I'm not going to be led into this conversation. I'm not going there. Now we're at the part that's one of my favorite parts, and that is I'm going to answer a question from a follower. If you're not already part of my weekly newsletter, I send one email once a week right to your inbox on a communication tip, and those that are on the newsletter can email me questions and I'm able to answer it here on the podcast. So I have my, my other phone here, and this one that I picked is from Sammy. Sammy is in Florida. He says, hey Jefferson, love your tips. I have an issue with work. There is a boss that I have who always likes to talk about whether it's gossip or politics, whatever it is, he's always wanting my input on it and I'd rather not give it. It's not that I don't have opinions, I'm just not that much of a social person and it makes me uncomfortable. Love to hear your thoughts on this. Sammy, I feel you, man. So anytime— let me give you an example of what's making me think of in my own mind, my own, my own world, is I'd have these conversations with my grandfather. I'd go up every summer to see him, and it never failed. And this happened definitely in the last 5, 10 years or so. Where I'd start to come talk to him, and every time he'd turn the conversation to politics or some issue that I did not want to talk about. It's not that he— he and I agreed on some things. We also disagreed on some things, but that's all he ever wanted to talk about. It just kind of consumed his mindset. This is what I'm going to encourage you to do, Sammy. Often the issue that you hear is not the real issue. All right, it's not the political issue that they want to talk about, or that, let's say, maybe he's oversharing, or there's gossip, there's something else. It's not that. It's an underlying layer. I'm going to continue on with my grandfather example. My grandfather was the type— is the type that, you know, he doesn't see a whole lot of people day to day. And so whenever I'm coming around and I'm giving him my full attention, I might be the first person he's really been able to talk to that day, and he wants to get out everything that's on his mind. There's also that element of He kind of wants to— there's people out there who want to feel impressive with their knowledge, regardless of what side of the fence anything is on. And doesn't mean it's political, not political, or religious, or any other controversial topic. They just want to share that they're knowledgeable about a given topic. So I'm going to encourage you to look behind the issue. Why does he continue to come to you with this, this boss or manager, Sammy? Why does he continue to come to you with this? Is it that he's just looking for other conversation with you? Maybe it's he just wants to have some kind of interaction with somebody, especially if it varies. If it's always the same issue every single time, that's a little bit different. But if he always comes to you with something different, that might be a suggestion that, well, he just wanted to interact with somebody. Like we talked about at the beginning of this episode, some people, it's not about who's right, who's wrong. It's just the competition. It's like a— it's a hobby for some people to find out, hey, can we just kind of feel alive for a second if we get up and angry about things, even though nothing in our world is going to change? So when that happens and you feel like you need to set some boundaries in this discussion, I would— number one, I'd encourage you to continue to indicate to him that you're not going to give him any kind of fight. You're not going to be on his side or against his side. You're just going to be disinterested. You're going to be disinteresting by saying things I don't know. You know, I'm not sure about that. Or, man, if I had an opinion, I'd give one. Simple as that. I don't know enough about it. Or it's, hey, I agree this is an issue. Yeah, I agree. That's definitely an issue. You're simply just acknowledging something that they said. Or if you need to be really, really clear that this is not something you're interested in and you don't like this, It's okay to say, "I'd prefer not to discuss this kind of stuff at work." Simple as that. You have to do things that sound authentic and genuine to you. What you can't do is start to engage. If you start to engage or you begin to just agree and be a yes man to everything and go, "Yep, you're exactly right, you're exactly right," then he's going to continue to come to you with things. But if you continually show that you're not going to be that much fun, you're not going to be his person, or you just find that these aren't the kind of topics that he's going to get with somewhere. If you were able to say, you know, I'd rather talk about you— that was the key of how I kind of had to fix my grandfather in our conversations. I had to tell him anytime he got into this rut, this continuous repeat of a hamster wheel conversation, I'd say, you know, I'd I'd much rather hear about you. That was it. I'd rather hear about how you're doing. Nobody gets mad. Say me. Nobody gets upset if you want to move the conversation about them. Nobody's like, oh no, I don't want to talk about that. Everybody likes to talk about themselves. So when you just kindly say, genuinely say, I'd rather hear about you. How's everything going? We're good. How's everything? It shifts the mindset, and they're not gonna be like, oh, you changed the topic. Everybody likes talking about themselves, especially if it's genuine, this social connection that you're creating. So that's the way I'd handle that, Sammy. Best of luck. Thank you for watching the Jefferson Fisher Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, I'm going to ask you to please follow this podcast, and if you would, leave a review. I am in a suit today because I'm at a hearing. Earlier, earlier this morning. So I'd make sure that I spent a moment and said hi to you and said thank you for listening to this podcast. It really means the world to me. Also, my new book, The Next Conversation, is out for pre-order. Very excited about that. I wish you all the best, and as always, you can try that and follow me.
