When I started Infinify I felt I found my true life mission – helping founders, product leaders, and their companies grow. 6 years later, I still see many things in my past that made me ready and well-equipped to do this exceptionally well. I’m not talking just about specific work experience, but also about much softer skills that were always there but now come to fruition.

For example, did you know that I always wrote well? I wrote a long and rhymed birthday poem for my little sister when I was 13, and since then my family always asked me to be responsible for greeting cards for birthdays, weddings, and other special occasions. I hated it and saw it as a chore, but when I grew up I found myself writing a personal blog anonymously.

If you read this, you obviously see the connection between my ability to write and what I do today right?

But that’s not the only thing. I see so many things in my past that made me who I am today, many of them are rooted in my childhood.

I grew up with a dominant mother (love you mom!), and arguing with her was no fun. I tried to avoid it as much as I could and took upon myself the role of the peacemaker – the one who always sees things from multiple perspectives and tries to balance them.

If you see the connection between that skill and product leadership you are 100% right. As product leaders, we live in the heart of many conflicts, and we often see our job as getting people to agree so that we can move on and get things done.

When you view it that way, whenever someone argues with you it’s a problem. It’s a barrier between you and achieving your goal. But product leadership isn’t only about getting things done. It’s getting the right things done, and a major part of it is creating alignment between multiple stakeholders so that they can get the things done. 

When you view your role this way, arguments are actually an important tool you want to master. Here are some guidelines on how to overcome the inconvenience and do it right. Try them and you’ll see that you actually like arguing!

They Didn’t Agree With You Anyway

When people argue with us we often feel uncomfortable because it means they disagree with us and we have to deal with it. But the truth is that in most cases they disagreed with you anyway, whether they said it or not. That’s why when they argue with you it’s actually a step forward and not backward – you now know that you are not aligned and can discuss it openly.

The fact that someone didn’t approach you to say they disagreed with you doesn’t mean that they do agree. It could mean that they disagree but didn’t go through the hustle of saying it out loud. I’m sure there are cases where you feel the same – you disagree and remain silent because you don’t feel like fighting with anyone. 

In other cases, they don’t even know that they disagree with you, because you both heard the same thing (for example a definition of a goal the company is trying to achieve) and each of you understood it differently. But the human nature is to assume that others see the world just like we do, so both you and them assumed that you understood the same thing although you didn’t, and no one opened up the discussion.

The thing is that if they disagree with you – whether they know it or not – it will come up at some point, usually after everyone has already invested a lot in what they thought was the right thing to do, and everyone’s efforts are wasted. In other cases, you discover it only when you fail, and it could be too late to change anything so the failure is here to stay. 

Give Them a Baseline to Argue With

So if arguing is a good thing, how can you make it happen? If you think about it from their perspective, and let’s think about it with UX principles, starting an argument with you involves a lot of friction. They need first and foremost to get that they disagree with you, understand what they want exactly, remember to bring it up at some point, and like arguments as much as you do.

If arguments are good for you, and others would avoid them just as much as you do, it’s your job to provoke arguments. Yes, read it again, you want to encourage people to argue with you and be proactive about it.

The best way to do so is to give them something to argue about since they don’t always know they disagree with you. You want to put your view clearly in front of them, and let them agree or disagree with that. 

ChatGPT is so powerful since it prevents us from having to start thinking about things ourselves. It gives us ideas and a baseline, and editing is much easier than writing something new. That’s the same principle you want to apply to the people you work with. Make it your job to come up with a theory, claim, or worldview, and get them to edit it with you (more on that in the next section).

To be effective, make sure that your theory is detailed enough, and is also logical and makes sense.

Detailed, since the devil is in the details. For example, it’s easy to agree that our goal is to get to a certain ARR next year. It’s only when you break it down that it gets interesting. Where do we expect this revenue to come from? Existing customers? What about churn? Are we targeting the same ICP for new revenue or are we actually developing a new market segment? If we do, what does it take to succeed? When you start asking these questions people have their own answers, that are most likely not unanimous. Congratulations! You uncovered a misalignment that would otherwise go unnoticed!

When you give your view of the world, make sure you are able to explain why this is the right view. It forces you to go deep into the matter and keep all the dots connected. You want to lead your audience from one point to another until you are able to make your claim. If you can’t explain why you see it a certain way, maybe it’s not the right way to see it. Think it through and consult with others.

Compromise Is the Worst Outcome

Remember that you are not arm wrestling with your peers. You don’t have to win them over, and there needn’t be winners and losers when you argue. The key to achieving that is understanding that their perspective is a valid one. Assume they want the company to succeed just like you do, but they have their own view of what is the best way to get there.

It’s only when you apply this view that you can truly listen to what they can contribute to the discussion. Remember that their job gives them a perspective that you don’t necessarily have, and vice versa. For example, marketing, finance, sales, customer success, and the CEO each have their own worldview based on what they see and what they can’t see from where they stand. Much like you – there are many things that you see and they don’t, but there are also things you can’t see without their help.

Remember ChatGPT and the editing exercise? That’s what you are trying to do here. You start with your own view of the world, but you don’t want to make decisions based solely on that. If others see things that you don’t, they won’t go away just because you ignore them. Deciding based on a partial understanding of the already-complex reality won’t give you better results, the contrary. 

When people argue with you, they are revealing other parts of the world that you might have missed. You should thank them, and extend your view to include theirs. It doesn’t mean that you need to blindly accept their bottom line or suggestion (in most cases you shouldn’t!), but you want to strive to see why they think this is the right thing to do and add their context to yours.

Only after you see the world the same way, you can debate the best way forward. In most cases, the solution wouldn’t be what any of you thought initially, nor a compromise where you each give up on something.

When you agree about how you see the world, it is much easier to create a new and improved solution, that takes into account everyone’s concerns and points of view. In such a setting, no one should feel defeated or that they are giving up on anything. When you do it right, arguing is a great form of collaboration and creation, and you have a critical role in making it happen.