Welcome to One Thing Better. Each week, the editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine (that’s me) shares one way to achieve a breakthrough at work — and build a career or company you love.
Today’s edition is sponsored by Kick, which is how I track my finances (for real!). See details at the end of the newsletter.
Someone is upset or acting strange, and you have no idea why.
Maybe it’s a colleague who’s suddenly short with you. A client who’s fixated on some random detail. A partner who snaps at you.
Now you’re confused, frustrated, and unsure how to respond.
Today, I’ll show you a simple but powerful technique that defuses difficult conversations — and helps you solve problems before they get worse.
But before I share it, I’ll show you a version of it in action… at a recent sales meeting that went sideways.
A mysterious obsession
As the editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine, I often join our sales team for big client meetings. Just recently, we had one with about 10 people from an international brand.
The meeting started normally: Our head of sales kicked it off, and showed a boilerplate slide with stats about Entrepreneur’s audience.
A woman from the brand interrupted, asking a question about one of our numbers. Our head of sales answered. She asked for clarification. It went back and forth a few times.
Eventually, at a loss, the head of sales looked at me and said: “Jason, do you have anything to add here?”
That’s when I tried something different.
What do people really want?
Let’s hit pause on the sales meeting for a second, and just think about human communication.
Here’s a very human problem: We think deep, but we often talk shallow.
Anyone who’s ever been in a fight with a partner understands this. You might argue about who should clean the sink, but it’s not really about the sink — it’s about something deeper, like feeling unappreciated or overwhelmed. But because big things are hard to talk about, we often articulate ourselves through little things.
But there’s a problem: Shallowness begets shallowness. If you fight about the sink, you’ll never address the deeper issue — and nothing meaningful will get resolved.
The same thing happens in professional settings, just in different ways.
If someone fixates on a detail in a meeting, they are likely not actually interested in that detail. They’re interested in something deeper. Something more complex. Your job is to figure that out — because that’s the only way to really solve the issue.
And how do you do that?
Ask these 10 magic words
Here’s what you should say, whenever someone is upset or being confusing:
“It seems like you’ve got a reason for saying that.”
That phrase comes from Chris Voss, the former FBI hostage negotiator and master negotiator. His book, Never Split the Difference, has become required reading across corporate America. I recently spent some time with him, and this lesson from him really hit me.
Just imagine it…
Your spouse yells at you about cleaning the sink. You reply: It seems like you’ve got a reason for saying that.
A client is fixated on a random detail. You reply: It seems like you’ve got a reason for saying that.
A coworker is pissed and says something mean. You reply: It seems like you’ve got a reason for saying that.
“It’s disarming,” Voss explains. “The more you encourage the other side to talk, the more likely it is that you’ll get to the moment of collaboration quicker.”
Because once you know “the reason they’re saying that,” you can engage with that deeper truth — which is much clearer and easier to understand than whatever proxy they had fixated on.
That’s what I did in the meeting
I love Chris’s advice — and I often take it a step further: I add a hypothesis on top of it.
Here’s how I did it in that meeting with Entrepreneur…
I turned to the client and said: “You’re asking about this audience statistic, but I want to make sure I understand what you’re really asking about. Are you asking us about how we segment our audience, and therefore how you can reach the part of our audience that matters to you?”
That did the trick. The client said yes, that’s basically what she’s asking about — and the conversation became much more fruitful from there.
I wouldn’t always recommend adding a hypothesis; if someone’s pissed at you, for example, it’s best not to guess why. (Getting it wrong could only anger them more.) But on professional topics, I think a hypothesis is great — because it shows that you’re thinking about someone else’s needs, and truly trying to serve them.
Remember, people aren’t random
People tend to speak only a fraction of what they’re thinking. And when we don’t understand them, we often chalk it up to nonsense.
We think: They don’t know what they’re saying. They’re idiots. They’re too emotional.
No. People aren’t random. People are reasoned. That’s not to say everyone always has a good reason. But people always have a reason — and you can’t connect with someone until you understand what theirs is.
So dig for it. Never hesitate to seek clarity. People may not always be understandable, after all, but they all want to be understood.
That’s how to do one thing better.
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