Thinking About the Audience
Honest yet pleasant
I. Give it to me straight, Doc.
Here is how I believe I present myself when asked (or not, I’m not afraid to offer) my opinion on something for which I have very meaningful grounding.
I think this strongly; can’t easily conceive of being wrong, but might be wrong nonetheless—i.e., conviction with humility.
Sadly many perceive this as weakness, and they discount the message and messenger as a result. This has implications for belief. As Arnold Kling says, “We decide what to believe by deciding who to believe.”
What I say and how I say it has big implications for persuasion as well as credibility. This is all the more important when the opposition has no chance for rebuttal or comment.
When I have regrets about an exchange, it usually goes like this: When I am agreeing, I regret what I said (the content or context). When I am disagreeing, I regret how I said it (the style or delivery). There are several tensions at work here.
For one, I am a very open and direct person. Not only do I not shy away from debate or controversy, I embrace it. Often this is perceived as being aggressive, which is not my intention, but I cannot control how others perceive it. I can only hope to influence through style. Most people are not like me in this regard. This puts how much I soften my delivery and the content delivered into tension.
For another, my very willingness (audacity) to disagree or present what I know to be a generally unorthodox point of view puts into tension my desire for honesty and my desire to be seen as a constructive ally while creating its own tension in the moment.
Resolving these tensions is an ever-evolving art not a science.
I have come to believe that honest delivery demands caveat when lecturing and frankness when in debate. This is easier said than done, and it cuts against the grain for most people’s desired communication.
II. Why don’t you just say what you mean?
Straussian speaking is all about self preservation (I would link and describe, but that wouldn’t be Straussian!). It is sometimes necessary, but it is often weak sauce for those who cannot read between the (intentionally blurred) lines. This is why people dismiss presentations given with humility mistaking it for insincerity or unreliability. So too for the cousin techniques of “on-the-other-hand” or “it depends . . .” when answering a seemingly direct question.
Brian Albrecht has made this point in answering the question “Why do populists hate economists?”
As he says,
Populists want solutions. Economists offer trade-offs. I'm not the first to point this out but its a huge distinction.
. . .
As Sowell put it: "The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics."
I think, not surprising, the economists are right.
It's more than just two different approaches. Thinking in trade-offs forces you to trace each step: who actually bears the cost of a tariff, what happens to housing supply when you cap rents, how a carbon tax changes behavior at every margin.
You can't skip ahead to the answer. You have to follow the chain. This is why economists spend careers doing exactly this and still argue about the answers. That's what it looks like when you take the problems seriously.
The populist skips all of this based on some intuition pump. Think of the person on a group project who's so confident in the answer that they never bother learning the material. That's populist economic reasoning from inside the discipline. The confidence comes from not having looked at the trade-offs closely enough to see how hard they are.
In my work as a financial money manager who works with a very large variety of clients, often I have to balance what I think, which I assume with appropriate caution to be true, against what I expect my audience wants to hear. Sometimes this is relatively easy like when I’m in a meeting with a single client or just a husband and wife. This gets harder when I’m presenting to an investment committee.1
Harder still are the occasions when I am presenting to a large audience (~100 people at an event for colleagues, existing clients, prospects, and who knows who else including competitors). In these settings I really have to carefully dance.
Recently I had just such an experience where I was the first half of an hour-long presentation. My role was discussing macroeconomics and the current economic environment. As I talked, I looked out to the audience seeing specific people who I know hold very specific points of view regarding politics and Trump in particular. The range was across both sides of the proverbial people at the barricades—strong Trump supporters and strong Trump opponents—as well as many throughout the middle.
The balancing act is done by very careful wording and knowing (guessing) how far to go. Preservation of truth in presenting my professional opinions is non-negotiable—I am paid by clients and dutybound otherwise to be truthful including not to deceive. In a professional setting, if you ask me for my professional position (my firm’s or investment team’s view or even my personal view) on a topic germane to the job I’m doing, you will get an honest reply. I might couch it a bit but only in the interest of staying constructive. I will not necessarily tell you what you want to hear—only if it matches my (our) actual point of view.
Further still in a professional setting, if you ask me for my personal opinion on a contentious matter not directly related to the professional capacity in which I’m serving, you will likely get me to demur. If pressed, however, I will deliver despite how I might expect or even know it will conflict with your point of view. My hope is that choosing pleasant honesty over a pleasant lie or an ugly (as presented) truth will win the day. If it doesn’t, come what may. As Alan Charles Kors once told me, there is dignity in disagreement. False acquiescence is insulting and worse than the fact that my disagreement might make you uncomfortable.
So how did I draw the line(s) in that recent large presentation? By applying a rule that works like this: Truthfully say what needs to be said to convey the relevant information including my firm’s interpretation and implications for investors and leave it at that.
What didn’t and always doesn’t get said is what fails a simple test of being helpful. This has two prongs. The first is the realm of arguable opinion including professional, educated opinion that nevertheless doesn’t matter. In the given subject area or at this level of detail I might very well be right. In the recent presentation I likely was in the top percentile of expertise on the topic discussed. Still, at the extreme this could be an area where reasonable minds disagree. To delve into these waters going past what needs to be conveyed is not constructive. While it is not pure opinion, in this setting I consider it akin to me arguing in favor of my favorite football team. Who cares even if I’m right?
The second prong is in the realm of uncomfortable opinion. Again, this opinion might well be the correct one. At the extreme these would amount to me saying that your sister is ugly. She may be hideous on any objective measure, but even if true, this isn’t constructive.
So I avoided a sermon on, for example, the evils of current immigration policies, the economic and constitutional nonsense of current tariff/trade actions, and the destructive implications of wealth taxes being proposed. I didn’t avoid mentioning that these are headwinds for the economy and, hence, the investment market outlook. I just presented what needed to be said and moved on.
Was I too vague? Perhaps, but my job wasn’t to make anyone in the audience become an expert on the specifics much less a zealot in my crusades. My job was to present the current landscape and what it implies about how I am investing (their) money.
III. If you didn’t want the answer, why did you ask?
This example of a large lecture is where I strive for honest delivery with caveat knowing the more caveat I express risks diminishing the perception of my expertise. Yet, I think this is important erring on the side of more reservation because of the simple fact that they, the audience, doesn’t really get a chance to respond. I want them to have off ramps of disagreement without dismissing me out of hand. Plus, this is respectful.
In a conversation, even it if is largely me leading the discussion, there are more degrees of freedom since the audience can respond. In these circumstances I feel I have more room to choose openness and completeness knowing every additional point presented raises the risk of disagreement. The key, which I often fail at, is making sure the listener feels welcomed to offer that disagreement—either simply to express it or to challenge. Unfortunately, my the directness of my personality tends to shut many people down with them mistakenly assuming I will dismiss them.
Surprisingly to many, I am open to changing my mind or being wrong. Few believe this about me. Some of it is how I present and some is what others assume. Perhaps this says something about how willing they are to change their own minds or how little they value updating. All I can control is my style in delivery as well as the amount of my view I offer up. As with all of this, I’m still working on it.
Substacks referenced above:
Someday I will carefully write a post that will be VERY STRAUSSIAN relating all the interesting dynamics of presenting to investment committees and boards. Have I got stories!