The Jefferson Fisher Podcast - Bonus Episode: Chapter 1 from The Next Conversation

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

Alright, let’s do something different today. This is a special bonus episode where you get to hear Chapter 1 of my new book, The Next Conversation. In this first chapter, we’re setting the stage. You’ll get a feel for what’s inside the book, and if it clicks with you, you’re going to love the full audiobook. I recorded it myself, so it’s like we’re sitting down together, walking through these conversations step by step. Take a listen, and if you're ready for more, order my new book, The Next Conversation, or listen to the full audiobook today. Also, come meet me on my book tour!  Audio excerpted courtesy of Penguin Random House Audio from THE NEXT CONVERSATION by Jefferson Fisher, read by Jefferson Fisher. © 2025 Jefferson Fisher, ℗ 2025 Penguin Random House, LLC. All rights reserved. Like what you hear? Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a 5-star review! Suggest a topic or ask a question for me to answer on the show!  Want a FREE communication tip each week? Click here to join my newsletter.  Join My School of Communication Watch my podcast on YouTube  Follow me on Instagram  Follow me on TikTok Follow me on LinkedIn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey y'all, welcome to a special episode of the Jefferson Fisher podcast. Today's episode is a little bit different and I couldn't be more excited about it. My book, The Next Conversation, Argue Less, Talk More is finally here and so is the audiobook. I am currently sitting in my hotel room in North Carolina on the book tour. I did four days in New York, did New Jersey, and now I'm here in North Carolina and going to continue on doing it. I wanted to give you, my listeners, an exclusive treat. I want to give you a full listen to chapter one from the audiobook, read by me. Now this chapter sets the tone for everything the book is about, helping you navigate tough

conversations with confidence, clarity, and of course, connection. If you enjoy what you hear, I'd love for you to check out the rest of the audiobook or grab a copy of my book. You can find it wherever books or audiobooks are sold, and you can head to thenextconversation.com and it'll be down there in the show notes for all the details. Now, let's dive into chapter one of The Next Conversation.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it and reading it. Chapter one, never win an argument. conversation. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it and reading it. Chapter 1 Never Win an Argument I don't trust you as far as I can throw you, he bellowed. In all honesty, it was a compliment. He could have thrown me pretty far. In his tan coveralls with a wide oval patch that had LePray embroidered in black in the upper left pocket, Bobby LePray glared at me with enough heat to burn a hole through my suit jacket. Generally, I don't know what someone looks like before I meet them at their deposition, and whatever I picture Bobby LePray looking like, it wasn't this.

Sitting at the conference room table, waiting for people to arrive, I looked up to see a half-human, half-giant. His outline took up the whole doorway. Naturally, I stood up and walked over to him to shake his hand and introduce myself. Jefferson Fisher, I said with a smile. Hmm, Bobby, he muttered. Now, I'm not a small guy. I'm over six feet tall, but I barely came up to Bobby Lepre's chest. He was an absolute mountain. As we shook hands, the squeeze from his ginormous, callous hands left an imprint in mind like

a scene from a Tom and Jerry cartoon. I'd never been around someone so physically intimidating. The case involved a bar fight and I was representing a bystander who had gotten caught up in the scuffle. As part of the case, I needed to depose Bobby Lepre, a witness to the events. In a deposition, I get the chance to ask people questions under oath, typically to learn what they know before they testify at trial. Clockwise around the antique conference room table sat the court reporter writing everything

down, Bobby Leprey, the opposing attorney, and me. After asking Bobby to raise his right hand and placing him under oath, the court reporter gave me her customary nod for me to begin. I asked Bobby LaPray routine questions about his background and what had led up to the fight. They were easy, open-ended questions like, what time did you arrive? Who did you talk to first? Did you see so-and-so or do this and that? It's common to use such questions to build a chronology of the events from a witness's particular point of view. At all times, I made sure I was kind and polite. 90% because that's my personality, and I'd be lying if it wasn't 10% out of sheer self-preservation.

He was not someone I wanted to upset. But no matter how many softball questions I asked, Bobby Lepre was becoming increasingly agitated. I'd seen it enough times in my experience to know. His eyebrows began furrowing with each answer, a sign of negative emotion. His breathing got heavier as he switched from exhaling through his nose to exhaling through his mouth, a sign of increased stress. He started wringing his massive hands together as he spoke, a sign of anxiety.

It didn't matter what I did. It seemed as if just my entire existence in the room offended him. I could sense the tension around the table heightening the more displeased Bobby Lepre looked, like I was blowing up a balloon and it was about to pop. Finally, I asked him, Mr. Lepre, would you like a break? The room went silent. No, Bobby Lepre said, clearing his throat, but I got something to say. His words rang out louder than necessary, so much so that the court reporter jumped.

I quickly glanced at the other attorney who couldn't have been younger than 65. He looked more nervous than I was. When we locked eyes, he gave me a wide-eyed look and slowly shook his head as if to say, If this goes south, you're on your own. I turned back to look at my witness. Yes, sir? I inquired. Bobby Lepre took a big breath in and said, You can cut all this buddy-buddy stuff.

Except he didn't say stuff. You lawyers, you're the worst thing that happened to America, he continued. All you do is lie. He slammed his hand down on the table, then drew it upward with a pointed finger at me, saying, so go on and ask me your stupid questions. Just know, I don't trust you as far as I can throw you. I'm telling you, lawyers, you're the worst thing to happen to this country," he repeated. The court reporter gave an anxious look.

At that moment, a hundred thoughts raced through my mind. First, I'm well accustomed to the derogatory stereotype of attorneys, especially personal injury attorneys. I try very hard to work against it, though it's a reputation that some attorneys, frankly, rightly deserve. So, a put-down joke or a snide remark about my profession is nothing new. I understood. Second, I didn't blame him for not trusting me.

Not because I was trying to mislead him, but because to his mind I represented all the bad things he ever thought he knew or had heard of about the law, lawyers, or the system. Of course he had no reason to trust me. I understood. It was the stupid questions that got me. Now I know good and well that I do many, many stupid things every day. But what I don't do is ask stupid questions. In that instant, a wave of anger surged through me.

I felt my whole body go tense. My ears got hot as I shifted my weight in my seat. I could sense that I was becoming defensive. My questions up to that point had barely scratched the surface. Nothing about them had been difficult or even uncomfortable. Stupid? I'll show him stupid, I thought. I felt myself wanting to come back with quips about his size in relation to his intelligence.

Just a few well-placed cutting words and I'd best him. I tried to tell myself that his reaction was all I needed to know about who he truly was. But I'd been wrong before. When I was in third grade, my school started a reading buddy program, pairing strong readers with those who hadn't learned yet. That's how I got paired with Evan. Twice a week, we'd sit on beanbags during our library period. I'd listen as he would struggle to read aloud books like Brown Bear,

Brown Bear, What Do You See? By Bill Martin Jr. Evan was physically much bigger than I was. Back then, I had a hard time understanding how he was so big but couldn't read. When he'd come across a word that he didn't know, my job was to help him sound it out. But he still struggled. So I figured out ways to explain things to him differently, like associating words with memorable phrases or creating metaphors on the fly with whatever

was near us in the room. I got really good at crafting little tricks that engaged Evan's interests, making harder ideas more memorable. Sometimes we'd do our reading sessions during our lunch period. While I'd pull out my lunch in a brown bag with a handwritten smiley face on it that my mama had made me that day, I'd watch as a teacher would bring him a tray from the cafeteria. Evan's mama didn't make his lunch. I began to notice that his clothes never seemed to fit him, like they were three sizes too

big. Once when we were going over throw, through, and through, T-H-R-O-U-G-H, I tried to help by relating it to how he'd throw a baseball to his dad. Evan flatly replied, I don't know who my dad is. I vividly remember feeling as though I couldn't move my mouth. I was speechless. My heart broke for him. I'd later learn that Evan had been living with his grandparents. His dad had left shortly after he was born.

His mom was in jail. But in third grade, I had no grasp of his reality, no clue about the true struggles he was facing. With two loving parents who would read and tell me stories at night, I knew then that he was living in a world I knew nothing about. As we continued over that fall semester and into the next year, Evan's reading level improved with each session until he was reading all on his own. I couldn't have been prouder. Exposure to Evan's inner struggles was another defining moment in my life at a very early

age, and it was a lesson I've never forgotten. Zinging a put-down at ten-foot-tall Bobby LePray wouldn't help anything. It would only hurt, if not the deposition, then most definitely my face. And besides, my client's case needed this information. Put it down, Jefferson," I said to myself. I let out a long, silent breath through my nose. As I dropped the tension in my shoulders, my thoughts of retaliation faded. What I became more curious about, however, was the disproportionality of Bobby's reaction. Anytime someone takes a level one conversation and jumps it up to a level ten, it's telling.

And what it tells you is that there's another conversation happening inside that person's head that you weren't invited to. Something hidden that has taken over their filter and is now driving their reactions. You're only seeing the tip of the iceberg. What else is at play? Who am I really talking to? I intended to find out. Having let about ten seconds pass from his last words,

lawyers are the worst thing to happen to America. I gave a soft smile and said slowly, well, maybe you're right. I waited another ten seconds as I sat back in my chair and moved my gaze around the room. When I was ready, I leaned forward, put my forearms on the table. Tell me, please, what's been your biggest struggle this year? I asked. Bobby Lepre's eyes looked up to meet mine.

Say what? He scoffed. I repeated, what's been your biggest struggle, personal struggle this year? a struggle, personal struggle, this year. At that question, Bobby LePray slowly dropped all emotion from his face. He got very still. I stayed quiet while his eyes seemed to search for the words. And after a while, he finally spoke. His words stumbled out choppy and hesitant, like he was embarrassed to even mention it.

I had to put my mother in an assisted living facility last month. My dad is long past and my brother moves around a lot as a roughneck, so I'm the only one here to really help her. It's a lot of paperwork and legal stuff I don't understand. Unlike the Bobby LePray who had angrily run me up one side and down the other not two minutes ago, this Bobby LePre was different. When he talked, he looked defeated. He looked scared. And somehow, he looked small. Letting his words sink in, a few seconds later, I responded gently,

I'm sorry. I can't imagine what that's like. He nodded slightly with pressed lips. But what I can tell you is, making sure to catch his eye, you're a good son. Immediately, Bobby Lepre threw his face down to keep me from seeing it. His huge shoulders shook, and like ice melting off a rock, big, bad Bobby LaPray began to cry. I quickly told the court reporter to go off the record for a break.

It's okay, I reassured him. I'm just going to sit here with you. And through tears, Bobby LaPray poured out all his fears over his mother's health. He told me about the intimidating letters threatening to foreclose his mother's house that he had been receiving from none other than lawyers. He shared how the banks and the government were asking him for things he didn't understand. He felt helpless. He wished his father was still alive. And my heart broke for him.

He was living in a world I knew nothing about. I thought of Evan. Bobby Leprey had been holding the weight of it all by himself. For nearly twenty minutes, we sat there as he let it all out. With his attorney's permission, I asked for Bobby LaPray's email address. And sitting there, I cc'd him on an email from my phone to a local colleague who handled elder law and estate planning. She replied minutes later, happily agreeing to set up a meeting with Bobby LaPray the

next Monday. Thank you, he told me. Absolutely, I said. You good? I asked. He took a big sniff, wiped his nose with his sleeve, and sat up. Yeah, he answered with a weak grin. I'm ready.

And for the rest of the deposition, I spoke to the real Bobby LePray. His answers were direct and forthcoming. His words were more lighthearted. He became more animated, even cracked a few jokes. He no longer looked like he was ready to launch me into oblivion. All done, I said finally. That's all the questions I have. Thank you for your time.

As we stood up, I walked toward the door and stuck out my hand. I braced for another painful death grip. Instead, at the last second, Bobby Lepre opened up his arms and bear hugged me. All I could do was smile and say, be good. I didn't look, but I'm fairly sure my feet weren't touching the ground. The Person You See I've had countless interactions like that one throughout my whole life. Sometimes the other person is the Bobby LePray.

Other times, I'm the Bobby LePray. But why does it happen? How is it that by dropping the idea of winning an argument, you actually get more of what you want? What is it about connecting to the other person that gives you the high ground? And how can you tap into that strength in your own communication? It's easy to believe that communication should be cut and dried. A world where you say, you're wrong, and the other person immediately replies, why yes, yes I most certainly am. A place where when someone says, I'm fine, the only possible interpretation of the phrase

is that they're totally and unequivocally fine. Where what you see on the outside is all there is to someone on the inside, and the boot always fits. That's how you think it should be. That's what you want it to be, but that's not the way it is. When you tell someone that they're wrong, they become more convinced that they're right. When someone says they're fine, they're often anything but. It's never as simple as matching stereotypes.

Given these problems, I wanna go ahead and acknowledge a central theme of this book, and I hope you let this coin drop from your head to your heart. The person you see isn't the person you're talking to. Think of a river in its undercurrent. On the surface, your eyes and ears can pick up a person's physical cues that shape your perception and judgments about them. But what's happening below the surface, that's where the real truth runs. For instance, the coworker you see is agitated and impatient.

The coworker you're talking to didn't sleep well last night because he's worried about convincing his brother to go to rehab. The cashier you see is scattered and inattentive. The cashier you're talking to is worried about affording her kids back to school supplies. The spouse you see is tense and short-fused. The spouse you're talking to had a horrible day at work starting with an email from a rude client. Or in my case, the mountain of a man I saw was aggressive and defensive.

The Bobby LePray I was talking to, on the other hand, felt alone and worried about his mother. It's this other person you're talking to, the person you don't know who you need to reach for when conflict starts to tear you apart. Understanding that there's more beneath the surface is one thing, but figuring out how to connect with their deeper self is another. How exactly are you supposed to reach them?

The struggle you hear. When Bobby called my question stupid, everything inside me wanted to prove him wrong. In that instant, the needs of the case took a backseat to my needs. My desire to be seen as right blinded me to any other options. I wanted to win. It's what I'm expected to do. Oh, you're an attorney? You must win a lot of arguments.

I hear it all the time. It's also not true. Thanks to the countless books out there claiming to teach you how to win every argument, that's all anyone thinks you're supposed to do. Win. So let me tell you now. If that's why you're listening to this, go ahead and return it. The sales pitch of winning an argument is overused and overpromised.

That's not this book, and I'll tell you why. For one, you can win an argument and still be wrong. And second, even if you win, you still come up empty-handed. Winning an argument is a losing game. Winning means that you've likely lost something far more valuable. Their trust, their respect, or worse, the connection. The only reward you've won is their contempt. And for what?

The argument ends, the conversation is over, you won, congratulations. Now what do you got? The same unresolved issue at the cost of hurt feelings and awkward silence. Most likely, you still have to find a way to communicate with this person. You still have to live with them, to work with them. Depending on what you said, you may now be the one who owes an apology.

Any feeling of pride is short-lived compared to the lasting damage to the relationship. Trial attorneys don't even win arguments. They don't get to choose their clients' facts. They don't get to choose their clients' facts. They don't get to choose which law to follow. Everything has to pass through a filter of admissibility. Then it's up to the judge or the jury to apply the law to the evidence. What we do is more about giving facts a voice than it is about winning an argument.

Competition and communication has convinced society that the world is divided into right and wrong, winners and losers. After a political debate, the first question someone asks the next morning is always, who won? But if we go back in time to the ancient Greeks, discourse had nothing to do with winning. A debate over opposing issues was a vehicle for pursuing truth. Exposing the weakness in another person's argument was to strengthen and refine it, not dismiss it.

Debates were known to last for days, even weeks, to give each other time to obtain perspective and explore divisive issues. Today, the tendency is to do just the opposite. Rather than allowing disagreement to open you up to learning from another person's perspective, you shut it down. Instead of refining your own understanding, you treat it as a threat. We run to social media like it's our personal megaphone to voice just how much we disagree. social media, like it's our personal megaphone, the voice, just how much we disagree. Now be honest with me.

How many times has a social media post disparaging your point of view ever change your mind? And how many times has something you posted that criticized someone else's opinion ever change theirs? Never. The world turns, the news cycle moves on, and the next day, no one cares. So, what then? What did you prove? The fastest way to lose your peace of mind is to give someone a piece of yours.

Beating out someone in an argument may feed your ego, but it'll still leave you hungry. Rarely, if ever, does winning in communication lead to better things in your life. That's why I care enough about you to tell you the truth. Never win an argument. Whether it's an argument, a heated discussion, or a slight friction in conversation, your goal isn't to win. It's to unravel. Start at the loose ends until you understand the heart of it.

There you'll find the knot. This is a book of knots. The hard stuff and social relationships that, admit it, you'd rather skip over. Untying cross-wires takes time, takes emotion, takes effort. That's what conflict and communication represents. A struggle. An argument is a window into another person's struggle. In every difficult conversation, there's a moment when

someone, whether it's you or the other person, hits a snag. Maybe you don't understand what they're trying to say. Maybe you're in a bad mood. Maybe you just disagree. It's not the clash of opinions. It's the clash of worlds, of the very way you see things. Behind every harsh and uncut word, there's a backstory, a why. And if you can find the discipline to get to that, if you can peel back the layers of the argument to discern the struggle, the fear, or the hope hiding underneath, that's where real communication begins. Because at the end of the day, it's where real communication begins. Because at the end of the day, it's not about the argument.

It's about seeing through the keyhole into another person's world and realizing that maybe, just maybe, the win you thought you wanted isn't what you needed after all. The Challenge to Accept. Now most people understand that success comes from seeing failure not as a setback, but as a stepping stone. Embracing failure is part of the process. You learn from your mistakes to grow stronger. Failures to communicate, as in disagreements and arguments, they do the same thing.

They lead to success because they reveal areas of improvement, offering insights into how you can enrich your interactions. The bigger the conversation, the bigger the need to handle the conflict effectively. And when done right, conflict isn't a fight. It's an opportunity. It's a catalyst for real, meaningful connection if, and that's if, you're willing to see it. What life experiences have shaped how you see conflict? When you were a kid, defiantly shouting, no, or bombarding adults with, why?

Was your way of figuring things out cause and effect? As a teenager, those simple childhood reactions turned into more complicated questions about finding your place and your identity apart from your family. The clothes you wore, the music you listened to, even the click you hung around were all statements of who you wanted to be.

Stepping into adulthood, disagreements became less about asserting individuality and more about coexisting with other people. Your conversations turned to topics like children, career paths, and mortgages. Or in my case, what vacuum to buy and whether that piece of furniture I found in my parents' garage still had good bones. As an adult, the stakes change. Your responsibilities grow as you have to think collectively, now responsible for people other than yourself, such as aging parents or your own children.

You take interest in broader issues like politics, news, and global affairs. Despite your age, things may feel even more uncertain. When that happens, you tend to fall back to what you know, your lived experiences, and the behaviors modeled for you growing up. I want you to ask yourself right now, how did watching arguments in my childhood influence the way that I argue now? If yelling and aggression were the go-to method for conflict in your home growing up, you might find yourself thinking that's just how things are done, even if you know it's not

the best way to get your point across. On the flip side, if you came from a place where everyone tiptoed around disagreements to say face or avoided conversations out of fear of what the neighbors might think, diving headfirst into an argument might make you feel uncomfortable, to say the least. Take this one time I stayed over at a friend's house during the summer as a kid. His parents got into a massive shouting match right in front of us, door slamming the works. I remember being absolutely mortified. I grew up with parents who kept their arguments pretty private, either hashing things out in their room or waiting until we were asleep.

So seeing his parents go at it, I was positive that a divorce was unfolding before my eyes. But my friend? He didn't even blink. To him, it was just a typical Tuesday night. Looking back, maybe you're not thrilled with how conflict was handled around you. Maybe you even have bad memories of seeing arguments bring out the worst in the people you loved. Maybe you've caught yourself echoing their words or mirroring their actions, even in the little things. Like how you move your hand or the tone of your voice. You've gotten to a point in your life where you're beginning to realize that what you observed wasn't that healthy.

And you can't help but wonder would things have gone easier for you in your own life if you'd seen better ways to deal with conflict. If that's you, then I'm asking you now to take on the challenge and break the cycle. Stop seeing arguments as something to win, but as an opportunity to understand the person behind the words. Stop hearing only what's said and start hearing what's felt. Build the discipline to connect to the person in front of you. Embrace the failures to communicate and learn from them.

Reach success by using each misstep as a stepping stone and make room for more positive and real in your life, like a bear hug from a man who until recently wanted to shot put you. Now, it's highly likely that the themes and the lessons ahead won't be anything new to you. You know you should speak with confidence and control your emotions. You know you should avoid getting defensive and stand up for yourself. The question you have is, yes, but what does that look like?

Well, it starts with what you say next. Chapter Summary The person you see isn't the person you're talking to. Every person has a surface and a depth. Often the emotions you hear in someone's voice are not bids for disagreement, but bids for connection. Don't buy into the lie that you need to win an argument. When you seek to win, you tend to lose much more, like their trust or respect. Instead, view arguments as a window into another person's struggle.

Conflict can be a catalyst for positive changes in your life. To harness it, you have to be willing to connect with the person opposite you. Turning your conflicts into connections paves the way for a more fulfilling, meaningful life. All you need is in what you say next.