Tamsen Webster argues that speakers should stop trying to convince audiences and instead seek mutual understanding and common ground when positions differ. Work the ground beneath disagreement, not the idea itself.
Your position is or is not going to be the same as the people that you're talking to, and you probably can't know that until you put something out there. That gap, if it exists, is oftentimes, if not always, where a well-defended, comprehensible, and relevant idea can still not land. Does this mean that you are out of luck? Well, no, but it's a really great indicator to stop trying to convince people to stop persuading and start seeking to understand, and even better, establish mutual understanding of where each person is coming from so that we can back up and find where there is common ground so that we can potentially make our idea make sense there.
