id="u2c589ee8-2687-5781-b366-116a44591a0a">
Thorsons
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
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London SE1 9GF
First Published by Thorsons 1996
Copyright © Robert Allen 1996
Robert Allen asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780722531594
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2016 ISBN: 9780008226954
Version: 2016-10-14
Contents
INTRODUCTION – Heated Exchanges
CHAPTER 1 Things You Should Know
‘Every question has two sides.’
CHAPTER 2 Things You Can Do to Win
CHAPTER 3 Levelling the Playing Field
References and Further Reading
How good are you at getting your own way? Do you usually persuade people to do what you want or do you sometimes feel that you get put upon by others who have greater powers of persuasion? The subject is, of course, a delicate one. In theory ‘getting your own way’ is rather frowned upon and our parents and teachers always discouraged us from being too pushy. However, there will always be ruthlessly ambitious people who have no qualms about pushing others around to get what they want out of life. Unless we live a life of total seclusion, we are bound to come up against such people, and must be prepared to deal with them if we don’t want to be pushed around ourselves. We may try to live a quiet life away from the fighting, but those of us with goals and ambitions are unlikely to achieve them without stepping into the ring. The rules of the playground, though uncivilized, dominate our lives to the grave.
As humans we live, work and play together in social groups such as families, firms, institutions and nations, all in social cooperation with each other. However, we are, each of us, autonomous: we have free will. And like other animals, even social animals, we are competitive. How does the autonomous individual seek to influence the behaviour of the social group? By argument. We seek to persuade others to our point of view. However, as we all know, that is a bland description of a process that is, in practice, decidedly colourful. For human nature dictates that the process of persuasion is invested with such importance that when we are thwarted the result might be anything from mild frustration to anger, violence or even, in extreme cases, outright war. This makes argument, and how we can get our own way, a subject of compelling interest to us all.
The truth, unattractive as it may be, is that we all argue constantly. Much of this argument occurs at a fairly innocuous level and we therefore tend not to notice what we are doing. In any case, because we have been cautioned from our earliest years that loud, public disagreement is in bad taste, we often try to pretend it is not happening. We say things
