Tim Newman [00:00:09]:
You can win every argument this month and still lose everyone in the room. I've watched it happen to smart people over and over. Today I'm handing you the diagnostic tool that shows you exactly how. Welcome back to Speaking with Confidence, the podcast that helps you build the soft skills that lead to real results. Communication, storytelling, public speaking, and showing up with confidence in every conversation that counts. I'm Tim Newman, a recovering college professor turned communication coach, and I'm thrilled to guide you on your journey to becoming a powerful communicator. All right, so here's the thing that nobody wants to admit. Most of us think we're decent communicators because we talk a lot.

Tim Newman [00:00:48]:
But talking isn't communicating. And somewhere along the way, we started treating conversations like competitions, Instead of collaborations. We walk in ready to win, ready to prove, and ready to defend. Almost nobody walks in ready to understand. We listen to reply, not to hear. And then we act surprised when nothing ever actually gets resolved. And this isn't about politics or some fight on social media. This is about your Monday morning meeting, your text thread with your spouse, Or that email you probably shouldn't have sent last Tuesday.

Tim Newman [00:01:24]:
But today I'm giving you a framework I call WRONG. 5 letters, 5 habits that quietly wreck every conversation they touch. And I'd bet you're running at least 3 of them on a regular basis. I want you to think of WRONG like a check engine light on your dashboard. It doesn't fix the car, just tells you that something's wrong under the hood. And for most of us, something is definitely wrong under the hood. Some of this is going to sting a little bit, and that's fine, because you can't fix what you can't name. So let's start naming it.

Tim Newman [00:01:58]:
This is part 1 of a 2-part series. Today we're diagnosing what's broken, and next time I'll hand you the right way to do it. But you can't get to right until you're honest about what's wrong. Let's start with habit That fuels all the other 4. W is for win at all costs. Win at all costs is the root habit. It poisons everything downstream. The second communication turns into competition, you stop trying to understand the other person and start trying to score points.

Tim Newman [00:02:31]:
You keep a mental scoreboard. You correct minor details just to prove you're paying attention. You need the last word because the last word feels like victory. Here's what that looks like in the real world. Someone spends 20 minutes of a team meeting arguing over whether a project slipped by 3 days or 5. They win the correction, but they lose the room. Because now everyone in that meeting knows they care more about being right than about keeping the project on track. Comes across as strength.

Tim Newman [00:03:02]:
It's actually insecurity wearing a mask. Your ego gets tied to being right, so admitting fault starts to feel like dying. I've watched grown, capable adults refuse to say a 2-word sentence, I'm sorry, because saying it felt like surrender. Even when you win the argument, you lose the relationship. You lose the trust. You lose the actual chance to fix the problem. You might walk out of that room thinking you crushed it, The person across from you is already planning how to avoid you next time. And this habit fuels every other habit in wrong, because once you're playing to win, you can't play to understand.

Tim Newman [00:03:45]:
And the conversation stops being about the issue and starts being about you. And once it's about you, everyone else becomes either an opponent or an audience. Opponents get fought. Audiences get performed to. And nobody in that room gets heard. Companies lose an estimated $359 billion a year to workplace conflict, according to research from CPP Global. Employees spend nearly 3 hours a week tangled up in conflict instead of doing their jobs. That number starts right here.

Tim Newman [00:04:18]:
It starts with someone who would rather be right than be effective. But winning isn't the only way we sabotage a conversation. Sometimes we don't even make it that far before things blow up. R is for react instead of respond. And reacting instead of responding starts when your emotions outrun your brain. Someone says something that hits a nerve, and before you can stop yourself, the words are already out. You interrupt, your voice climbs, and you fire off the text or the email you'll regret in 30 seconds. Here's the biology.

Tim Newman [00:04:54]:
The gap between something triggering you and reacting to it is about 3 seconds. Most of us never use a single one of them. And your brain treats a hard question the same way it treats a threat. So the amygdala takes over before the rational part of your brain can catch up. That's not a character flaw. That's wiring. But wiring isn't destiny. You can train that pause, but most people never try because reacting feels so natural in the moment.

Tim Newman [00:05:25]:
Picture the message where someone questions the timeline and the reply that comes back is sharp enough to cut through the screen. By the time the apology goes out, the damage has already been done. And reacting feels powerful in the moment. It even feels like honesty. But it's not honesty. It's just emotion turned up too loud, and that volume drowns out the actual message you wanted to send. The worst part is the cycle it creates. You react, you apologize, you react again, you apologize again.

Tim Newman [00:05:57]:
Every lap of that cycle erodes trust a little more, till the other person stops believing your I'm sorry altogether. They start bracing for your reactions instead of listening to your words. You become someone they manage, not someone they trust. And that shift is brutally hard to undo. The 3-second pause is the difference between a response and a reaction. Most of us never take it. But even if you manage to pause, something else can still trip you up before you open your mouth. And O is for only my opinion matters.

Tim Newman [00:06:35]:
Only my opinion matters is confirmation bias wearing a nicer outfit. You filter for information that agrees with you. You dismiss anything that doesn't. You nod while someone's talking, but you're not listening. You're reloading. You're building your rebuttal before they've even finished their sentence. And here's the strange thing that research shows. A poll from AP-NORC found 87% of Americans say political polarization is a genuine threat to the country.

Tim Newman [00:07:06]:
A separate survey found that that same 87% are just tired of the division itself. And almost everybody agrees the conversation in this country is broken, but almost nobody thinks they're the one breaking it. Your feed is proof of this. You follow people who already agree with you. You quietly mute the ones who don't. You call it discernment. It's really just comfort with a nicer name. And the cost is that you stop learning.

Tim Newman [00:07:36]:
Your opinions calcify. You become a person who already knows everything, which means you're no longer capable of knowing anything new. And when 2 people who already know everything sit down together, you don't get a conversation, you get a collision. This habit is dangerous because it disguises itself as intelligence. As if having standards— but standards without curiosity aren't standards, they're just walls. And those walls don't protect you from bad ideas. They protect you from good ones that happen to show up looking different than you actually expected. Ask yourself something honest: when's the last time you actually changed your mind about something that mattered? If you can't remember, this habit owns more of you than you think.

Tim Newman [00:08:21]:
And once you stop questioning your own opinions, you stop questioning anything at all. N is for Never Ask Questions. Never Ask Questions is what happens when curiosity checks out and the monologue takes over. You make statements when you should be asking questions. You assume you already know the answer, so you never bother finding out if you're wrong. Questions feel like weakness and statements feel like strength, but it's actually backwards. The person asking the questions is steering the conversation. The person making all the statements is just generating noise.

Tim Newman [00:08:55]:
Picture a negotiation where one side talks for 45 minutes and never once asks the other side what they actually need. They walk away with nothing, convinced the other party was unreasonable, when really they just never asked. When you stop asking questions, you stop learning. You stop discovering the one piece of information that might have changed your mind or improved your position. You just keep talking and your listener quietly checks out. It stops being a conversation. It turns into a performance. Performances build audiences, not relationships.

Tim Newman [00:09:30]:
And audiences eventually leave. This habit pairs perfectly with only my opinion matters. Because once you already know everything, The question feels redundant. But the answer you already have is usually incomplete. And the question you refuse to ask is usually the one that would have solved the whole thing. Questions aren't an admission of ignorance. They're a tool of power. Lay them down and you've disarmed yourself.

Tim Newman [00:09:59]:
The best communicators I know aren't the ones with the best answers. They're the ones who ask the right question at the right moment. Because one good question moves a conversation further than 100 confident statements ever could. But some people don't just stop asking questions. They take it a step further and make the whole thing personal. And G is for get even. And get even is where conversation stops being about the issue and starts being about the score. You keep a mental ledger.

Tim Newman [00:10:29]:
Every slight, every disagreement, Every moment someone made you look small, and then you wait. You bring up old wounds in the middle of new disagreements. You reach back for something they said months ago because it gives you an edge right now. Getting even feels like justice, but it's really just revenge with better PR. Picture the coworker who never forgets a disagreement, who turns every new conflict into an excuse to open every old one. Eventually, her team stops being honest with her because honesty starts costing interest. The scorekeeper always ends up playing alone because scorekeeping is a solo sport. Instead of resolving conflict, getting even compounds it every single time.

Tim Newman [00:11:15]:
Civil conversation doesn't usually die from disagreement; it dies from revenge. And once a conversation becomes about settling a score, The actual issue stops mattering, and the relationship turns into a battlefield. And battlefields don't produce winners. They just produce survivors who are tired of fighting. This is the loudest habit in the wrong framework because it's the one that leaves the scars. Winning at all costs is subtle. Reacting is fast. Rigid opinions are quiet.

Tim Newman [00:11:48]:
Refusing to ask questions is boring. But getting even? People remember that. They remember who made them pay for an old mistake, and they adjust how they treat you from that point forward. They hide things from you. They hedge. They stop bringing you real information because real information might trigger another collection call. The person who gets even doesn't just lose the argument. They lose every future argument Before it even starts, because nobody wants to keep playing the game they know they'll eventually pay for.

Tim Newman [00:12:21]:
The scoreboard never resets, and eventually everyone just stops playing with you. So that's wrong. Win at all costs. React instead of respond. Only my opinion matters. Never ask questions. And get even. If you recognize yourself in 2 or 3 of these, That's good.

Tim Newman [00:12:42]:
That's the whole point. Recognition is the first step, and you can't fix what you refuse to name. So here's your challenge this week. Pick one single conversation, just one, and watch yourself for a single habit from this list. Maybe it's the meeting where you feel the urge to correct a small detail that doesn't actually matter. Maybe it's the text you want to fire back before you've even taken 3 seconds to breathe. You don't have to fix all 5 today. Just notice one.

Tim Newman [00:13:11]:
Because next time I'm handing you the other half of this— the right way to have these conversations and how to build the kind of civil discourse that actually gets you somewhere. You'll want the diagnosis before you get the prescription. So if you haven't already, hit follow so you don't miss it. That's all for today. Remember, we're looking for progress, not perfection. Be sure to visit speakingwithconfidencepodcast.com to get your free ebook, The Top 21 Challenges for Public Speakers and How to Overcome Them. You can also register for the Formula for Public Speaking course. Always remember, your voice has the power to change the world.

Tim Newman [00:13:46]:
We'll talk to you next time. Take care.