Acknowledge their fear. Acknowledge that something they think is very important is at stake in your discussion.
Step 1 is simply to acknowledge the fear. The following steps depend on your own beliefs.
You might say “I too am afraid of R”, but:
Important to highlight that “acknowledge” here doesn’t just mean “yeah I get it” before moving on to the “but”. It will probably take quite a bit of validating their fear before they’ll feel heard and calm down enough to listen to you: be prepared to spend a reasonable amount of time doing it. And make sure that you’ll actually listen to them rather than just treating the acknowledgement as a token gesture that you need to do before you can present your point—if you’re not actually taking people’s concerns seriously, they will tend to notice it.
Sadly, this doesn’t mean that the converse is true—sometimes they will feel that you’re just setting up strawmen of their fears when you are just honestly trying to understand and making a genuine effort to verbalize your best guess of their fears. You’ll need to be patient, while also being prepared for the possibility that this will fail despite your best efforts.
Sadly, this doesn’t mean that the converse is true—sometimes they will feel that you’re just setting up strawmen of their fears when you are just honestly trying to understand and making a genuine effort to verbalize your best guess of their fears.
Important to highlight that “acknowledge” here doesn’t just mean “yeah I get it” before moving on to the “but”. It will probably take quite a bit of validating their fear before they’ll feel heard and calm down enough to listen to you: be prepared to spend a reasonable amount of time doing it. And make sure that you’ll actually listen to them rather than just treating the acknowledgement as a token gesture that you need to do before you can present your point—if you’re not actually taking people’s concerns seriously, they will tend to notice it.
Sadly, this doesn’t mean that the converse is true—sometimes they will feel that you’re just setting up strawmen of their fears when you are just honestly trying to understand and making a genuine effort to verbalize your best guess of their fears. You’ll need to be patient, while also being prepared for the possibility that this will fail despite your best efforts.
Yes, definitely this. ^
Sadly, I’ve had that happen.