What to do when someone is being pushy

We’ve all been there.

In a discussion where an agreement has to be reached, with someone who does everything they can to steamroll you into agreeing to what they want—while refusing to consider your opinions.

Maybe it's a colleague trying to make you feel like you don't know what you're talking about. A friend who always thinks they know best. Or a salesperson who just won't take no for an answer.

(More on that salesperson later…)

If you're like a lot of people, those interactions can leave you feeling exhausted, frustrated, or upset. And sometimes you might actually give in just because you don’t have the energy to deal with it anymore.

Well, here’s the good news: 

There are a few simple principles that can help you handle these kinds of people. And once you master them, others will quickly start to realize that they can no longer steamroll you into giving up—they’ll have to actually listen and discuss.

Let’s start with the one that can be the hardest. Not because it’s complicated, but because it goes against most people’s natural reactions.

First Principle: Stay calm.

Pushy people’s most powerful weapon is your emotional reactions.

If they can make you feel frustrated, flustered, or stressed, while they’re not—they have the upper hand. They’ll be able to think more clearly and argue more efficiently, and they’ll have more energy to invest in the conversation.

But if you manage to stay calm—or at least externally non-reactive—you take that weapon away from them. 

You’ll have the same mental resources and energy available, and in some cases, this alone is enough to make a would-be steamroller give up, or at least calm down considerably.

Second Principle: Keep the conversation focused.

Another favorite tactic of pushy people is controlling the focus.

They try to focus the discussion on the parts of the issue where their points are the strongest by actively steering the conversation. A very common way to do this is to ignore or deflect anything they don’t feel they have a strong argument against.

If you notice that someone isn’t actually answering your questions or responding to your statements, or that whatever they say tends to lead back to the same one or two points, there’s a good chance that they’re trying to do this.

When that happens, your job is to slow the conversation down and make sure all the relevant areas of the issue get equal attention. 

There are many ways to do this, and no universal answer, so do what feels most fitting for the situation. But a couple of strategies that are often applicable are:

• List all the core points of the discussion (in writing if you can) and ask them to agree to go through them one by one. Then hold them to that agreement.
• Don’t answer what they say to ignore or deflect. Instead, let them finish talking, and then calmly and plainly state that you didn’t feel you got an answer to what you said or asked, and ask them for it.
  (And if they say they did answer, let them save face by saying you must’ve missed it, and ask them to succinctly summarize it for you. It’ll encourage collaboration and force them to be clear.)

Keep in mind that the goal isn’t to win every individual point, but to evaluate everything relevant to the discussion.

Third Principle: Be a broken record.

Lastly, if the other person keeps ignoring your arguments, interrupting you, or changing the subject to keep you distracted despite you applying the strategies above, repeat yourself.

Then repeat yourself again.

And again, and again, and again, if you have to.

The point is to keep saying the same thing until it becomes too awkward for them to either not respond to it or point out that you’ve already said that. If they do the latter, tell them that you’re aware and that it’s because you’d really like to hear their thoughts about it.

(And if they say they already told you, let them save face by saying you must’ve missed it, and ask them to succinctly summarize it for you. It’ll encourage collaboration and force them to be clear.)

Yes, this might annoy them, even when you do it in a friendly and respectful way. But that’s ok. They are the ones bringing that on by trying to avoid a mutually respectful discussion.

A real-life example.

Our AC had broken down, and a salesperson for the AC company came over to walk us through the options: repair the old unit or replace it with a new one.

The replacement would make the HVAC company about six times as much money. So naturally, when my wife and I decided we wanted the repair, the salesperson tried to convince me otherwise.

He started by asking me technical questions about the inner workings of our AC to convince me that it was outdated. He used lots of technical jargon and BSWs (big-scary-words), likely either to make himself look like an expert, to make me doubt my own judgment, or both.

I smiled, told him those things didn't factor into our decision, and restated our decision.

He then tried to establish himself as the authority in the situation by telling me about his many years of experience working with ACs, and how a more powerful AC would give us the best “bang for our buck”.

This was also irrelevant since we were perfectly happy with the bang we had, and getting a more powerful unit wasn’t even on our list of priorities.

I told him that, in as many words, and restated our decision.

Then he argued that what we should base our decision on was the risk of the AC breaking down again and costing us another repair or replacement. Which was, undeniably, a greater risk with the repair than with the replacement. But it was also something we had considered, and a risk we were comfortable with.

So… I told him that and restated our decision.

In short, I stayed calm, kept focusing on the most important issues (our priorities) instead of engaging in irrelevant discussions, and kept being a broken record by restating that we were going with the repair.

Why did I even let him continue pushing, you may ask? 

Well, there was always a chance that he’d bring up something important that we hadn’t thought about. After all, he was the expert on air conditioners. But in the end, he didn’t.

Eventually, seeing that he was getting nowhere, he sighed and stopped. He—slightly apologetically—said he was just trying to do what was best for us, but that he would, of course, schedule the repair if that’s what we really wanted.

And how’s our AC doing, two years later? 

Well, it’s over 90 degrees outside my window right now, and my feet are cold.

Your turn.

So, the next time someone tries to steamroll you, remember this: 

You don't have to out-argue them. You just have to stay calm and focused on the things that actually matter.

That's usually more than enough.

And if you find it difficult to assert yourself enough that people actually listen when you share your points or correct behavior, you can get free access to my assertiveness course on LinkedIn on my Courses Page.