An Essential Skill This Holiday Season

You know that feeling when someone completely misrepresents your position and then tears it down in front of you? It's the worst. "Oh, Brad over here thinks we should just have completely open borders and let a bunch of criminals into the country!" No, that's not what you were saying. Not at all. Your point was much more nuanced and complex than that.

There's a name for this: it's called strawmanning someone's position. When someone creates a caricature of a perspective or argument and then tears down that caricature, they're creating a strawman. Turn on cable news at any point during the day and there's a good chance someone on the TV will be strawmanning. People have made entire careers off trafficking in strawmans, thanks to our polarized media ecosystem that prioritizes soundbites and quick-hit virality over true dialogue and debate.

In a country that's more polarized than ever, we need to learn how to do the opposite of strawmanning.

The opposite of a strawman is a steelman. Steelmanning is when you intentionally create the strongest possible representation of someone's perspective or argument. You put yourself in their shoes and try to make their point even better than they can make it. This doesn't mean you agree with their position. It means you're acting in good faith and doing your best to understand where they're coming from.

When you steelman, it completely changes the nature of the dialogue you're having. We're so used to strawmans in our cultural dialogue that steelmanning can actually surprise the other party in a really healthy and constructive way. You're demonstrating that you're playing a different game here. You're trying to find the commonality, the truth, the place where your worldviews actually do overlap. You're showing the other side that you genuinely want to understand where they're coming from.

It also gives the other party the opportunity to point out aspects of their worldview that you might be missing or not seeing. When you give your best possible interpretation of another side's position, they're able to show you where you might actually be missing them. I've been engaged in dialogue with someone I disagreed with, and when I steelmanned their position, they let me know that I was actually missing critical pieces of their worldview. They then helped me fill in what I was missing when I tried to see the world through their lens. I walked away from that conversation not necessarily agreeing with their worldview, but understanding the complexity and fullness of the lens they see the world through. This wouldn't have been possible if I had engaged in strawmans of what they were saying. My strawman would have emotionally triggered them, which would have triggered me, and away we would have went.

Steelmanning is a test of your empathy and your ability to see the world through a filter that isn't your own. It's not always easy. It often takes work. It will sometimes make you uncomfortable. You'll have to hold the paradox that you're making the strongest possible representation of their position without agreeing with their position. That takes a mature psyche that can hold nuance.

I personally like the challenge of steelmanning. It gets me outside of myself. It helps me see the world in more holistic and layered ways. I sincerely feel like I have a deeper understanding of reality as a result of my commitment to steelman differing perspectives.

I also like to take notice of the parts of me that get uncomfortable when I do it. This gives me a lot of information about myself and where I need to give myself more love and reassurance. Where does my ego feel hurt when I steelman an opinion that isn't my own? That information can point me toward a part of me that's looking to be seen, validated, and held with love.

Sometimes you'll be engaging with someone who's a bad-faith actor, and no amount of steelmanning can create a healthy, constructive dialogue. That's okay. What matters is that you gave it a shot, and when you see that there was no constructive dialogue to be had, you set a boundary and moved on.

This holiday season, let's resist the urge to strawman, and earnestly steelman other people's viewpoints. Whether it's someone at work, your uncle during Christmas dinner, or your romantic partner who just can't seem to see eye to eye with you on that one issue, this is a practice that can be transformational. Our collective dialogue is improved one conversation at a time. We all have a responsibility to bring more conscious ways of connecting and speaking with each other.