Speaking with wisdom

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, October 1st.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: how to communicate better.

MONTAGE: How to talk to someone who doesn’t like you. How to stay calm in a heated conversation. How to handle bad apologies. How to stop saying “like” so much.

These are just some of the questions Jefferson Fisher tackles in his short-form videos on social media.

MONTAGE: So try that, try that, try that, and follow me, follow me, follow me.

He’s become something of a communication guru, and he’s grown quite a following. 6 million on Instagram, 3 million on Facebook ,a million on TikTok.

And earlier this year he published a book. It’s a New York Times bestseller and it’s called The Next Conversation: Argue Less, Talk More.

MAST: But Fisher’s day job is as a small-town attorney. He never meant to be a national social-media influencer. We recently talked with him about his story, how he teaches others, and why he thinks winning an argument often loses something more important.

Here’s that conversation.

EICHER: Jefferson, I happen to know the story of the products Flickr and Slack—if you’re familiar with that particular business tool. Both of these began as attempts to build video games. Now, the games ended up going nowhere, but the tools the developers built to collaborate on the game projects are what took off. I thought of that when I saw your videos on Instagram: initially, they were meant to promote your law firm, but then your videos had taken on a life of their own. At what point did you realize the promotion had become the product?

JEFFERSON FISHER: The part where the purpose changed was what God had in store was something very different. I want to help people. Okay, well, if that's what you really want to do, you want to help people, then what does that mean to you? And I could help so many more people talking about communication than I could have with “Hey, have you been in an accident?” or you have this legal question, and let me help you with this legal need. Because my thought was, how could I help people communicate at home, at the dinner table, in their own meetings and lives and stresses, and so that's where, yes, the purpose you set out for was not the journey that you ended up taking.

MAST: Jefferson, since reading the book there are times I wish I had it under my arm as a handbook. Did you have a thought to that end of “I'm writing a book about communication and relationship theory, or was it more about being a toolkit?

FISHER: Yeah, definitely a toolkit. I probably am a little bit averse to a lot of communication theory. You can look on plenty of blogs, how to handle a difficult conversation. You know what you're gonna get? You're gonna get “You need to speak with empathy. You need to be an active listener.” And you're like, okay, that sounds great, but what does that mean? I think that's one of the things that sets a lot of my stuff apart when it comes to communications, that what I teach is very practical. You don't have to think on it. All you have to do is what I say at the end: Just try it.

EICHER: Well, you know the Bible is filled with wisdom on how we're to speak. I was struck in reading your book ... about the part where you say your parents prayed every night that God would give you wisdom. Would you talk a little bit about how that formation shapes you today?

FISHER: Yeah, every night my dad would pray, “Give Jefferson wisdom and always be his friend.” And it was something that just got instilled in me of what to seek. And there's plenty of verses about seeking wisdom. There are so many different aspects in the Bible that relate to asking for wisdom and also just the power of the tongue. And so there's so much that's in there of these principles, and it is my prayer that what I teach aligns with those for people in a very practical way.

MAST: I'm curious about some of those principles. You say winning an argument is a losing game. How do you live that out yourself when, say, you're paid to win, or maybe just even feel the urge to go for it and get a win?

FISHER: Yeah. I teach that when you set out to win an argument, you will often lose a relationship. I also teach that when you set out to win an argument, what you've typically won is to be the first to apologize. It's typically what it is that means you're the one up to now have to be the first one to say, I'm sorry. So you won the argument. Congrats, you've won awkward silence now when you pass each other around the kitchen table, because, you know, there's been some repair that has to be made because of the words that we chose to use. And yeah, in my world, I get hired to, they would say, win arguments, but that's not really how it works. I don't get to choose my client's facts, and I can't change the law that applies to the case. You don't necessarily win the argument. It's just whose side has a better legal principle to stand on, and that's why we have appellate courts and Supreme Courts and everything else. And so it's not who's necessarily the most persuasive, and it definitely doesn't matter who wins.

EICHER: How do you guide people who find themselves dealing with an abuser, someone they simply cannot trust? I know you don't want to recommend connecting with people like that. But how do you draw those lines?

FISHER: Right. There's some people you have no need to connect with. The mindset there is to first protect yourself in the way you use your words to form boundaries and stick to the boundaries. If you continually pour out of your cup, giving more and more of yourself to this person, you're going to eventually look at your own cup and see that you're empty. And why is that? Because I'm not connecting myself. That's something greater than myself, and it's knowing that, yeah, there are times when you're going to be talking to somebody, and it's more of a negative force of being able to control yourself rather than trying to control them.

MAST: Do you ever see that it's a cop out to set a boundary? Do you think it's possible to have too many boundaries, or to be too rigid with them out of avoidance rather than out of true danger.

FISHER: Absolutely. Yeah, they're definitely people who use boundaries as an excuse to own their problems, to own their behavior, people who say, Well, that's, sorry, that's my boundary. You're stepping over my boundary, and you're like, I'm just, I'm asking for an apology here. If a boundary is meant to protect, there's nothing that you're going to have to do. It's all going to be only what I need to do. In other words, if I know that I value my family, I'm going to put up a boundary that I'm not going to go to that networking event at 6pm. I need to be at the house putting my kids to bed because I value that. Nobody else has to do anything. It's just me.

EICHER: Jefferson Fisher. The book is The Next Conversation. Enjoyed it. Good to meet you.

FISHER: Yeah, y’all as well. Thank you so much. I’m honored and honored by your listeners. 

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