Handling Opinions for the Best Results

Asked for an opinion or not, it seems most people jump at the chance to say what’s on their minds. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn discusses the ways opinions can go wrong, and how to make them go the right way.

Rob Artigo: Often flipping through Zen of Zinn one, two, or three and things appeal to me in some way, shape, or form. Hit me in a way and I write down a note, and I think this one did. You wrote about how people are quick to offer critical opinions, but you also suggest that an opinion that creates hard feelings should be avoided. Why is that the case?

Ray Zinn: Well, we talk about protests. A protest is an opinion effectively, and there’s no such thing as a good protest. They’re all evil, or they all have hatred or some animosity associated with a protest. So when you express an opinion, you’re actually protesting because if you’re not, unless you agree with somebody else’s opinion, you’re offering a counter view on something.

Ray Zinn Cont: And opinion is an unsubstantiated fact, is what an opinion is. In other words, it’s your view of a particular thing that may or may not have any substance to it whatsoever, but it is usually an opposing view on something. That’s what opinion is. So if an opinion doesn’t enhance the situation, if it doesn’t uplift it, if it doesn’t cause it to become better, then you should avoid it. As you say, your mom always says, if you haven’t got something good to say, don’t say it at all.

And so if you’re offering an opinion because you want damage a relationship, then that’s what’s going to happen. What is your goal? Why am I offering this opinion? Am I offering it because I want to ruin the relationship that I have? Or is it because I want to enhance the relationship that I have? So that’s that birds of a feather flock together thing. So depending upon what your goal is, what is your objective? Do you want to enhance the relationship or you want to destroy it? If you’re offering an opinion that’s going to destroy a relationship, like a protest, as you would, I would say avoid it. I don’t know why you would want to destroy a relationship. No matter how much you might dislike that relationship, destruction is never good. I don’t know, unless you’re trying to demolish a house to rebuild another one.

I don’t know why you would want to destroy a relationship unless it didn’t. If it wasn’t there to begin with, I guess you’re not going to destroy it anyway. But my point though is that be careful about how readily you’re going to offer up your view. If it doesn’t enhance, if it doesn’t develop, improve the relationship. I would avoid it. Keep your opinions to yourself. Now again, as your mother would tell you, if you haven’t got something good to say, don’t say it at all. And remember, most of what we say is an opinion, our view. We’re always offering our view, whether it’s wanted or not. These podcasts, these are effectively views on particular subjects. We’re offering this one up as a positive, and that if you haven’t got something good to say, just keep it to yourself. And if you got something good to say, then obviously if it’s helped to either help your relationship or help strengthen a particular view, then go ahead. But again, the purpose of this podcast is to reinforce how much our opinion or our views do affect our relationship with others.

Rob Artigo: Well, let’s close out the podcast by getting a good answer to this part of it, which is that in the business world, we may be faced with having to make tough decisions, tough decisions, where we don’t want to destroy somebody. But at the same time, like on Shark Tank for example, Shark Tank is something we bring up all the time on the show because such a great example of different communications and pitches and how to respond in the business