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Ask HN: When both colleagues think the other is wrong, how to proceed?

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Re: Ask HN: When both colleagues think the other is wrong, how to proceed?

#11
Aside from other good techniques mentioned here (have a mediator who is empowered to force a "disagree and commit" resolution, use collective or impersonal language), one useful technique is to focus not on where you disagree, but on where you agree.

For instance: in debugging, even if you disagree on what to try, you probably still agree on what's happening, and that you want to fix it. This changes your task from proving who's right to solving the problem together. It also focuses attention on what you know / can observe to be true.

Re: Ask HN: When both colleagues think the other is wrong, how to proceed?

#12

    "He knew that the way to make people do what you wanted was to make them think it was their idea.  If there was one thing that got right up a nome's nose, it was someone saying, 'Here is a really sensible idea.  Why are you too stupid to understand?'  It wasn't that people were stupid.  It was just that people were people."
-- Terry Pratchett (Diggers)
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