The Next Conversation

Chapter 1

Never Win an Argument

I don't trust you as far as I can throw you!" he bellowed. In all honesty, it was a compliment. He could've thrown me pretty far.

In his tan coveralls with a white oval patch that had "LaPray" embroidered in black on the upper left pocket, Bobby LaPray glared at me with enough heat to burn a hole through my suit jacket.

I generally don't know what someone looks like before I meet them at their deposition. Whatever I pictured Bobby LaPray looking like, it wasn't this. Sitting at the conference room table waiting for people to arrive, I looked up to see a half human, half giant. His outline took up the whole doorway. Naturally, I stood up and walked over to him to shake his hand and introduce myself.

"Jefferson Fisher," I said with a smile.

"Hmph. Bobby," he muttered.

Now, I'm not a small guy. I'm over six feet tall. But I barely came up to Bobby LaPray's chest. He was an absolute mountain. As we shook hands, the squeeze from his ginormous callused hands left an imprint on mine like a scene from a Tom and Jerry cartoon. I'd never been around someone so physically intimidating.

The case involved a bar fight, and I was representing a bystander who had gotten caught up in the scuffle. As part of the case, I needed to depose Bobby LaPray, a witness to the events. In a deposition, I get the chance to ask people questions under oath, typically to learn what they know before they testify at trial.

Clockwise around the antique conference room table sat the court reporter writing everything down, Bobby LaPray, the opposing attorney, and me. After asking Bobby to raise his right hand and placing him under oath, the court reporter gave her customary nod for me to begin.

I asked Bobby LaPray routine questions about his background and what had led up to the fight. They were easy, open-ended questions: What time did you arrive? Who did you talk to first? Did you see so-and-so or do this-and-that? It's common to use such questions to build a chronology of the events from a witness's particular point of view. At all times, I made sure I was kind and polite-90 percent because that's my personality and 10 percent out of sheer self-preservation. He was not someone I wanted upset.

But no matter how many softball questions I asked, Bobby LaPray was becoming increasingly agitated. I had seen it enough times in my experience to know. His eyebrows began furrowing with each answer. A sign of negative emotion. His breathing got heavier as he switched from exhaling through his nose to exhaling through his mouth. A sign of increased stress. He started wringing his massive hands together as he spoke. A sign of anxiety.

It didn't matter what I did. It seemed as if just my existence in the room offended him. I could sense the tension around the table heightening the more displeased Bobby LaPray looked. Like I was blowing up a balloon and it was about to pop.

Finally, I asked him, "Mr. LaPray, would you like a break?"

The room went silent.

"No," Bobby LaPray said, clearing his throat. "But I got something to say."

His words rang out louder than necessary. So much so that the court reporter jumped. I quickly glanced at the other attorney, who couldn't have been younger than sixty-five. He looked more nervous than I was. When we locked eyes, he gave me a wide-eyed look and slowly shook his head as if to say, "If this goes south, you're on your own." I turned back to look at my witness.

"Yessir?" I inquired.

Bobby LaPray took a big breath in. "You can cut all this buddy-buddy stuff."

Except he didn't say "stuff."

"You lawyers are the worst thing to happen to America," he continued. "All you do is lie."

He slammed his hand on the table, then drew it upward with a pointed finger at me, saying, "So go on and ask me your stupid questions. Just know, I don't trust you as far as I can throw you! I'm tellin' you, lawyers are the worst thing to happen to this country," he repeated.

The court reporter gave an anxious look.

At that moment, a hundred thoughts raced through my mind.

First, I'm well accustomed to this derogatory stereotype of attorneys, especially personal injury attorneys. I try very hard to work against it, though it's a reputation that some attorneys, frankly, rightly deserve. So a put-down joke or snide remark about my profession is nothing new. I understood.

Second, I didn't blame him for not trusting me. Not because I was trying to mislead him, but because to his mind, I represented all the bad things he ever thought he knew or had heard of about the law, lawyers, and "the system." Of course he had no reason to trust me. I understood.

It was the "stupid questions" that got me.

I know good and well that I do many, many stupid things every day. But what I don't do is ask stupid questions.

In that instant, a wave of anger surged through me. I felt my whole body go tense. My ears got hot as I shifted my weight in my seat. I could sense that I was becoming defensive. My questions up to that point had barely scratched the surface. Nothing about them had been difficult or even uncomfortable. Stupid? I'll show him stupid, I thought. I felt myself wanting to come back with quips about his size in relation to his intelligence. Just a few well-placed cutting words and I'd best him. I tried to tell myself that his reaction was all I needed to know about who he truly was.

But I'd been wrong before.

When I was in third grade, my school started a reading buddy program, pairing strong readers with those who hadn’t learned yet. That’s how I got paired with Evan. Twice a week, we’d sit on beanbags during our library period. I’d listen as he would struggle to read aloud books like Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr.

Evan was physically much bigger than I was. Back then, I had a hard time understanding how he was so big but couldn't read. When he'd come across a word he didn't know, my job was to help him sound it out. But he still struggled. So I figured out ways to explain things to him differently, like associating words with memorable phrases or creating metaphors on the fly with whatever was near us in the room. I got good at crafting little tricks that engaged Evan's interests, making harder ideas more memorable.

Sometimes we'd do our reading sessions during our lunch period. While I'd pull out my lunch in a brown bag with a handwritten smiley face on it that my momma had made me that day, I'd watch as a teacher would bring him a tray from the cafeteria.

Evan's momma didn't make his lunch. I began to notice that his clothes never seemed to fit him, like they were three sizes too big.

Once, when we were going over throw, threw, and through, I tried to help by relating it to how he'd throw a ball to his dad.

Evan flatly replied, "I don't know who my dad is."

I vividly remember feeling as though I couldn't move my mouth. I was speechless. My heart broke for him. I'd later learn that Evan had been living with his grandparents. His dad had left shortly after he was born. His mom was in jail. But in third grade, I had no grasp of his reality. No clue about the true struggles he was facing. With two loving parents who read and told stories to me at night, I knew then that he was living in a world I knew nothing about.

As we continued over that fall semester and into the next year, Evan's reading level improved with each session until he was reading all on his own. I couldn't have been prouder. Exposure to Evan's inner struggles was another defining moment in my life at an early age. And it was a lesson I've never forgotten.

Zinging a put-down at ten-foot-tall Bobby wouldn’t help anything. It would only hurt-if not the deposition, then most definitely my face. And besides, my client’s case needed this information. Put it down, Jefferson, I said to myself. I let out a long, silent breath through my nose. As I dropped the tension in my shoulders, my thoughts of retaliation faded.

What I became more curious about, however, was the disproportionality of his reaction. Anytime someone takes a level one conversation and jumps it up to level ten, it's telling. And what it tells you is that there's another conversation happening inside that person's head that you weren't invited to. Something hidden has taken over their filter and is now driving their reactions. You're only seeing the tip of the iceberg.

What else is at play? Who am I really talking to? I intended to find out.

Having let about ten seconds pass from his last words—"lawyers are the worst thing to happen to this country"—I gave a soft smile and said slowly, "Well, maybe you're right." I waited another ten seconds as I sat back in my chair and moved my gaze around the room. When I was ready, I leaned forward and put my forearms on the table. "Tell me, please. What's been your biggest struggle this year?" I asked.

Bobby LaPray's eyes looked up to meet mine. "Say what?" he scoffed.

I repeated, "What's been your biggest struggle-personal struggle-this year?"

At that question, Bobby LaPray slowly dropped all emotion from his face. He got very still. I stayed quiet while his eyes seemed to search for the words. After a while, he finally spoke. His words stumbled out, choppy and hesitant, like he was embarrassed to mention it.

"I, uh, I had to put my mother in an assisted living facility last month. My-my dad has long passed, and my brother moves around a lot as a roughneck. So I'm the only one. The only one here to really help her. It's a lot of paperwork and legal stuff I don't understand."

Unlike the Bobby LaPray who had angrily run me up one side and down the other not two minutes ago, this Bobby LaPray was different. When he talked, he looked defeated. He looked scared. And somehow, he looked small.

Letting his words sink in, a few seconds later I responded gently, "I'm sorry. I can't imagine what that's like." He nodded slightly with pressed lips.

"But what I can tell you is"-I made sure to catch his eye-"you're a good son."Immediately, Bobby LaPray threw his face down to keep me from seeing it. His huge shoulders shook. And like ice melting off a rock, big Bobby LaPray began to cry.

I quickly told the court reporter to go off the record for a break. "It's okay," I reassured him. "I'm just going to sit here with you."

Through tears, Bobby LaPray poured out all his fears over his mother's health. He told me about the intimidating letters threatening to foreclose his mother's house that he'd been receiving from none other than... lawyers. He shared how the banks and government were asking him for things he didn't understand. He felt helpless. He wished his father was still alive. My heart broke for him. He was living in a world I knew nothing about. I thought of Evan.

Bobby LaPray had been holding the weight of it all by himself. For twenty minutes, we sat there as he let it all out. With his attorney's permission, I asked for Bobby LaPray's email address. Sitting there, I cc'd him on an email from my phone to a local colleague who handled elder law and estate planning. She replied minutes later, happily agreeing to set up a meeting with Bobby LaPray the next Monday.

"Thank you," he told me.

"Absolutely," I said. "You good?" I asked.

He took a big sniff, wiped his nose with his sleeve, and sat up.

"Yeah," he answered with a weak grin. "I'm ready."

And for the rest of the deposition, I spoke to the real Bobby LaPray. His answers were direct and forthcoming. His words were more lighthearted. He became more animated, even cracked a few jokes. He no longer looked like he was ready to launch me into oblivion.

"All done," I said finally. "That's all the questions I have. Thank you for your time."

As we all stood up, I walked toward the door and stuck out my hand. I braced for another painful death grip. Instead, at the last second, Bobby LaPray opened up his arms and bear-hugged me. All I could do was smile and say, "Be good."

I didn't look, but I'm fairly sure my feet weren't touching the ground.

The Person You See

I've had countless interactions like that one throughout my life. Sometimes the other person is the Bobby LaPray. Other times, I'm the Bobby LaPray. But why does it happen? How is it that by dropping the idea of winning an argument, you get more of what you want? What is it about connecting to the other person that gives you the high ground? And how can you tap into that strength in your own communication?

It's easy to believe that communication should be cut-and-dried. A world where you say, "You're wrong," and the other person immediately replies, "Why yes, yes, I most certainly am." A place where, when someone says, "I'm fine," the only possible interpretation of the phrase is that they're totally and unequivocally fine. Where what you see on the outside is all there is to someone on the inside, and the boot always fits. That's how you think it should be. That's what you want it to be.

But that's not the way it is.

When you tell someone that they're wrong, they become more convinced that they're right. When someone says they're fine, they're often anything but. It's never as simple as matching stereotypes. Given these problems, I want to go ahead and acknowledge a central theme of this book, and I hope you let this coin drop from your head to your heart:

The person you see isn't the person you're talking to.

Think of a river and its undercurrent. On the surface, your eyes and ears can pick up a person's physical cues that shape your perception and judgments about them. But what's happening below the surface is where their real truth runs.