This lesson I learned from Grant Cardone. If you do not know him, look up his books on Audible for an amazing intro into sales. He rubs some people the wrong way, but what I learned from him is invaluable.

One of his key lessons is to always agree.

No this doesn't mean agree with the police that you committed _____ crime. Use your judgement on when you should disagree.

Either way,

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When you disagree

When you disagree with someone, you do three things

1: You force them to dig-in into their position. You will force them to rationalise their point even more, and this will further make them convince themselves of their point.

2: You risk the entire discussion being derailed and stuck on the point. You are not able to move on from what they disagree with

3: You come across as a person who makes them feel bad

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We humans generally do not like it when people argue with our point of view. We do not like to be wrong, and we often will want to rationalize and prove you wrong.

When you disagree with someone, you are blocking their rational thought process and forcing them into a search for reasons for why you are wrong that they are wrong.

In short, you risk blocking progress, and you risk them reinforcing their belief internally.

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When you agree

A shortcut I'll say is that it does the opposite of what is written above.

You do not make them put their guard up. And sometimes you'll even positively shock them. They will be shocked, and perhaps even pleasantly surprised that you agree with them - when they expected you to do the exact opposite.

This opens the door for the next step.

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Guiding, reasoning

Agreeing, and following with reasoning is almost cheap. "Yes it's expensive, because ___".

The smarter move to do is to dig. Ask them why they feel it's expensive. Ask them why they think you're an idiot. Ask them why you offended them.

And dig, understand the root cause, the root argument.

The first thing that you'll do, is with your questions, you might lead them to the conclusion you wanted them to come to in the first place, but if not - you will build your own arsenal of information on why exactly they said what they said, or why they feel the way they do.

When it's time to finally attack the issue head-on, they will be much more open to listen to you, as they understand you actually did listen to them - you didn't just blindly disagree. But of course, you'll attack the core issue itself, after flushing out all the surface thoughts they had hiding it.

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Conclusion

This post isn't that elaborate, for a much better example, listen to Grant Cardone himself.

But hopefully, it might make you think twice before disagreeing on reflex, and can give you an upper-hand.