This is something I’ve been wanting to write about for a long time. It’s something I’ve kept repeating over the past few years while mentoring early-career engineers who are still ramping up on communication with stakeholders, non-tech folks, and senior people, especially in meetings where they find themselves on the spot. I don’t claim to have mastered this principle, but, if followed intentionally, it does makes conversations far more productive. They become less emotional, less you versus me, and much more goal-centric.
To get there, I need to start with something that might sound contradictory.
Reasoning sucks
I’m not a big fan of reasoning. Reasoning is work. It’s not fun, and it needs some amount of rigor to reason with someone. There’s a quote I once read:
Where there is reasoning, there is failure – Thich Nhat Hanh
I strongly believe this. What he means is that over-reliance on intellectual reasoning, conceptual thinking, and discursive thought often distances us from the direct, lived experience of reality, leading to a kind of failure in truly understanding or living in the present moment. Whenever I’ve had fallouts in friendships, breakups, or when family situations went bad, I’ve tried my level best to reason with the other party. It barely ever works. Explanations. Justifications. Trying to make things make sense.
But guess what, human connections don’t make much sense. Emotional wars cannot be fought with weapons of reason. Reasoning is a great utility, but human relationships are much more than logic. I’m not adding any supernatural or metaphysical meaning to this - it’s just that, as a civilization, we haven’t fully figured out the sciences of intuition, presence, human energy, or whatever you want to call that underlying layer. In personal relationships, you often just get it. You sense when someone wants something, when alignment exists, and when it doesn’t. There isn’t much need for intentional reasoning.
Brotherhood, friendships, even enemies. These are built on values, upbringing, shared experiences, temperament, and a lot more. There’s a shared consciousness involved. Something deeper than cause and effect.
That’s for personal life. But work is different.
But reasoning is great
At work, reasoning is the only utility we have. Work is about causal outcomes. Decisions, trade-offs, consequences. And yet, this is where most people misuse reasoning the most.
Think of the last “heated” meeting you experienced. Whenever someone asks a question in a meeting or challenges an idea, most of us instinctively respond with defence or justification. The conversation immediately shifts. It stops being about the problem and turns into you versus me - “I’ve already done this”, “You’re missing the point”, “You’re missing the context”, your solution versus my solution, your intelligence versus mine. Once that happens, nobody wins. An instant response in disagreement is almost always the wrong answer. It derails into a you-vs-me debate, which is not a great use of time. Not for you, not for them, and not for the rest of the audience (except some popcorn champions lol).
Principle: When in conflict, always reason. Don’t justify or attack.
The core principle is to first understand what the feedback is actually about. It might be wrong, sure, but it’s coming from somewhere. A concern, a constraint, a fear, an insecurity, a different mental model - all of these reasons are completely valid. It makes sense to understand that before reacting and even acknowledge it in some cases. Even if you disagree, it still helps to go deeper by asking more about their question and gather feedback.
Sometimes you get it immediately, sometimes you need time and sometimes the right move is to just slow the conversation down and ask questions.
“Why do you think so?” “Are you saying that because you’re concerned about the redundancy?” “Ok, got it. What scenario are you most worried about?”
If they’ve already explained, you can still go a level deeper. Now you’re reasoning together, not arguing. And if there’s nothing to go deeper into, still, just queue it for processing and say you’ll get back: “Hmm. That might make sense. Let me think and get back to you.” And genuinely think, and genuinely get back once the heat of the moment cools down. It’s a win-win.
That sentence holds your position of ownership. The ball is still in your court. You’re not agreeing. You’re not rejecting. And most of all, you’re not scrambling to justify yourself. You’re keeping the discussion objective and on your terms.
It is always better to reason than to justify or defend. Whether we like it or not, office dynamics involve ownership and leverage. Ownership, relationships, and perception matter. The moment you justify or defend emotionally, you give up leverage. You turn the discussion inward. You make it about yourself. Reasoning keeps it about the goal - about work. It keeps things professional.
That’s really the entire principle. Nothing fancy, just something that, once you start noticing it, shows up everywhere.