Concept
The and-stance
The and-stance holds your view and theirs, and your feelings and theirs, as both valid at once. You can be right that the report went out wrong, and your colleague can be right that a late data feed made it hard to get right. The word 'but' destroys this stance; 'and' preserves it.
Difficult conversations tend to collapse into either-or: either I am right or you are, either my feelings count or yours. Stone, Patton and Heen argue that this framing is usually false and rarely productive, because the moment one person's view is declared invalid they stop contributing. The and-stance is not compromise and not agreement; it is the refusal to make the other person's reality disappear so that yours can stand. In practice it is a matter of conjunctions and of order: 'I understand the data feed changed, and the summary still went out wrong' keeps both facts alive. This connects to Carnegie's warning, in 1936, that you cannot win an argument: the loser goes away unconvinced and now also resentful.
A real-life example
A marketing lead and a sales lead disagree about a failed product launch. She is right that the sales team never followed up the leads; he is right that half the leads had no phone number. The and-stance holds both, so the meeting ends with a new lead form instead of a winner and a loser.
How to use it
- 1Replace every 'but' in your notes with 'and' and read what it does to your position.
- 2Say the other person's true thing before your own, joined by 'and'.
- 3Treat both sets of feelings as data, not as a contest.