Jim felt the team converging on a decision — from his perspective, not a good decision. So he offered, "We're getting lots of complaints about this. I think we should fix it in this release." Beth was unmoved. "OK, customers are complaining, but they complain about everything. If we add these fixes just because of a few complaints, we'll have to add the whole B list, and we'll never ship."

The U.S. Capitol at night. "Slippery slope" arguments are a favorite tactic of politicians the world over.
Jim had been "slippery-sloped." To use the rhetorical trick called the slippery slope, you exaggerate your opponent's argument and claim that conceding your opponent's point means accepting the exaggerated form as well. You usually prevail because the exaggerated form is scary — so scary that observers rarely notice that you haven't justified the exaggerated form.
Nobody noticed that Beth hadn't justified her claim that they would have to add the entire B list. She glided over it, nobody questioned her, and Jim's proposal was rejected.
When a problem-solving team is slippery-sloped, it's misled, and it risks failing to find a solution. It mistakenly concludes that accepting one point requires that it accept that point's exaggerated form, and so it rejects the original point. What can you do to reduce your team's vulnerability to this trick?
First, educate people in advance. Don't introduce the slippery-slope concept during a slippery-slope incident. A team in the midst of heated debate doesn't want to take time out to learn rhetorical techniques. Moreover, someone will have just used the tactic, and your attempt to educate might look like a personal attack. Instead, at a meeting when no serious debate is expected, explain the slippery-slope tactic, and the damage it does. For a little humor, use examples from Meet the Press or the Congressional Record.
Slippery-sloping
works because
the exaggerated claim
is so scaryOnce everyone knows about the tactic, it's much less effective, and it's less likely to be used. If it does appear, call time out and let people know what you feel you saw. Have an open discussion, and if all agree that it really was a slippery-slope tactic, you can investigate the implicit connection between the original claim and its exaggerated form. The connection might be real, and if you all agree that it is, then you can resume the debate. Otherwise, you can go back to the unextended form and start to build on that as a solution. This works best if the person who calls time out is an observer of the debate, rather than the one who was slippery-sloped.
Once everyone understands that slippery-sloping is taboo, they'll wonder "If slippery-sloping is taboo now, won't all my sneaky tactics be taboo soon?" And of course, it's true. You'll be on the slippery slope toward treating each other with dignity and respect — not a bad slope to be on. Top
Next Issue
Are you fed up with tense, explosive meetings? Are you or a colleague the target of a bully? Destructive conflict can ruin organizations. But if we believe that all conflict is destructive, and that we can somehow eliminate conflict, or that conflict is an enemy of productivity, then we're in conflict with Conflict itself. Read 101 Tips for Managing Conflict to learn how to make peace with conflict and make it an organizational asset. Order Now!
For far more than you ever wanted to know about slippery-slope argumentation, see M.J. Rizzo, "The Camel's Nose Is in the Tent: Rules, Theories, and Slippery Slopes."
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Related articles
More articles on Emotions at Work:
Peek-a-Boo and Leadership
- Great leaders know what to say, what not to say, and when to say or not say it, sometimes with stunning
effect. Consistently effective leadership requires superior empathy skills. Here are some things to
do to improve your empathy skills.
Responding to Threats: III
- Workplace threats come in a variety of flavors. One class of threats is indirect. Threateners who use
the indirect threats aim to evoke fear of consequences brought about not by the threatener, but by other
parties. Indirect threats are indeed warnings, but not in the way you might think.
Favors, Payback, and Thoughtlessness
- Someone at work who isn't particularly a friend or foe has asked you for a favor. What happens if you
say no? Do you grant the favor? How do you decide what to do?
Scope Creep, Hot Hands, and the Illusion of Control
- Despite our awareness of scope creep's dangerous effects on projects and other efforts, we seem unable
to prevent it. Two cognitive biases — the "hot hand fallacy" and "the illusion
of control" — might provide explanations.
Unanswerable Questions
- Some questions are beyond our power to answer, but many of us try anyway. What are some of these unanswerable
questions and how can we respond?
See also Emotions at Work, Effective Communication at Work, Critical Thinking at Work and Rhetorical Fallacies for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming December 18: The Trap of Beautiful Language
- As we assess the validity of others' statements, we risk making a characteristically human error — we confuse the beauty of their language with the reliability of its meaning. We're easily thrown off by alliteration, anaphora, epistrophe, and chiasmus. Available here and by RSS on December 18.
And on December 25: Disjoint Awareness
- In collaborations, awareness of how our own work might interfere with the work of others is essential. Unless our awareness of others' work — and their awareness of ours — matches reality, the collaboration's objective is at risk. Available here and by RSS on December 25.
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