<aside> ⚠️ adversarial conversations are not the same as “confrontational“ or “aggressive”. i define adversarial as the opposite of collaborative [most of my conversations i am to be confrontational collaborative]

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the purpose of this article is to illustrate what I mean when I say I don’t like liars or i care about substance or i hate playing information games. it’s also meant to convince you i’m right - and hopefully the volume of adversarial conversations i have

skeleton:

• what are adversarial conversations?
• why are they reinforced…
• why break out of this paradigm?
• how i navigate
• how to work with me

what are adversarial conversations

adversarial conversations are conversations where both parties trying to lie to the other party w/ by extracting information while giving up little of their own. it’s a version of the prisoner’s dilemma… but both parties are choosing defect. example adversarial conversations include:

• salary negotiation (employee wants to get paid more, get offer, present better, employer wants to pay less and identify frauds)
• softare evaluation (sales person wants present better, close deal, and charge more, buyer wants to pay less and identify frauds)
• vc pitch (founder wants to raise more, close deal, create hype, vc wants to pay less, and identify frauds)
• dating (both parties are trying to make themselves desirable, while trying to identify undesirable dealbreakers in counter party)

*the dynamics could be flipped too, maybe the an employer might be pitching a hire, a vc might be pitching a founder, a buyer might be pitching a seller… but there’s an proposer A and perceiver B

adversarial patterns emerge when both parties lack trust - resulting in second guessing. it results in decisions that are suboptimal for both sides, bad blood, and often favor the actor that’s simply a more aggressive communicator.

we’ve all been guilty of it to some degree - we get fired, and when asked “what happened” we lie through our teeth and say “oh i thought it was ready for another thing“. we’re insecure about the job offer we’re giving… so when the prospect asks how much stock… the founder lies and says a share count… or FMV… or a percentage… without telling them what the dilution and pref stack is.

it’s obvious why this sucks. every party spends energy trying to find the truth, instead of starting from the truth and working to find the best path forward

why are they reinforced…

given that the typical proposer A is going to be exaggerating reality, the perceiver b is tuned to discount by some rate in the adversarial conversation. a good faith proposer A is afraid that if they don’t exaggerate in their presentation, the discounting from the perceiver B will result in them being perceived as much worse than they are…

why break out of this paradigm?

it might feel unavoidable, but if you frame it correctly the true incentives should be aligned. adversarial interactions start w/ two parties trying to create a larger pie - and then disagreeing with how to split the pie.

<aside> 🚧 this is really bad - spending mental cycles on the adversity favors no one overall and reduces the size of the pie. the cost is in damaged trust and waste time

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