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Comment by seer | Hacker News Reader

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An angry neighbor rings on our “apartment turned office” door - we were an early stage startup.

The guy is red faced, shouting profusely how someone had parked at his designated spot AGAIN. This goes on a while, until I understand what’s going on - I parked at his place, as I thought we were entitled to it from the apartment, apparently in error.

Well the guy was expecting to meet resistance I guess, he was all geared up for a confrontation.

I immediately apologized said that I didn’t know (which was true) and will not happen again.

The guy relaxed like magic, just calmed down immediately. And then started apologizing to me, and telling how “its alright from time to time” etc.

It was really bizarre transformation to witness. I attributed it to balkan culture generally being confrontational, so that when I just apologized, the situation the guy ended up at was not one he expected and he had to actually rethink his position. Or something like that.

And this is a pattern I’ve used in other almost violent confrontations to dissolve them. If you’re able to convince the other party that they are actually understood, then communication can happen.

An intersection in some real tight and twisty part of an old city backed up with cars in both directions.

Two cars had come in and neither was willing to move to the side to let the other pass. Plenty of shouting and honking was going nowhere fast.

After twenty minutes a fellow from way down the jam got out of his car and whispered to one of the drivers. "It looks like the other guy is being a jerk, and I feel for you. But, I need to get to my kid's birthday party, and it is really important to her. Could you do me a favor and move over to let us through."

A few minutes later and everyone was on their way.

Reminds me of this bit:

---

So I thought about the pictures in his head. I thought about what he does every day. Finally it hit me how I could value him. "You know," I said conspiratorially, "between you and this other car, you are the only professional driver here."

He backed up.

-- Diamond, Stuart. Getting More (2010)

That's not cultural. He was angry because he thought someone was deliberately stealing his parking spot. His anger went away when he found out that it was an accident and that he would now be able to access his parking as much as he wanted.

He apologized because it turned out that his anger was not actually warranted by anything.

In tech support circles there's a bunch of methodologies, but a common one is PAIR. Probe, Analyze, Isolate, Resolve. The first step is probing and gaining agreement - asking meaningful questions to get to the bottom line and then making sure the person understands you have understood and have the right problem in mind.

Many people spend a significant amount of their communication time failing to gain agreement on the actual problem, who was at fault, and how its going to be resolved - this is basic communication skills but many people are not given a framework to think about it and have to go through life getting screamed at, so they adopt a similar policy.

For programming, and other technicl troubleshooying, I think I'd add a step at the end of "Probe, Analyze, Isolate, Resolve"... Verify - verify that the actual problem was solved, or confirm the Resolve step if someone else is involved.

Mistakes and misunderstanding can happen throughout the process. A quick email or conversation regarding the resolution can work wonders.

This is how I try to handle a political argument with someone I already know I disagree with.

> If you’re able to convince the other party that they are actually understood, then communication can happen.

This is spot on, I think. Usually people are angry because they feel that their routine has been disrupted/they're frustrated/etc, and are ready to fight. If you show that you understand them, sympathize, and will try to help them without a fight, they relax.

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