Good morning beautiful
people
Its Min from the Art of Verbal War
Where people learn to excel in verbal skills
I recently made a video called How to Make Good Comebacks, Don Draper Edition
And in that video we talked about how to verbally defend yourself
from a verbal attack, Don Draper style
Today I'm going to teach you the same thing, but we're gonna do it Harvey Specter style
And we're going to use a scenario from the TV show Suits that's a little bit different
In this scene that we're about to see in Suits
instead of being verbally attacked by someone
we're dealing with someone who's trying to make him or herself look better than you
so let's see how Harvey Specter deals with this type of situation
In this scene Harvey is
helping his client merge with another company
and he's meeting in a hotel lobby
with his client and the other company's CEO
And the other company's lawyer shows up
who happens to be Harvey's law school classmate
at Harvard Law School
and as we find out later, she's also an ex-lover
but that's not the point.
So she immediately tells everyone that
Harvey ws fifth in their class at Harvard Law
and then she asks Harvey
"And I was??"
Harvey of course, doesn't respond directly to that
and he says "Married to the library?"
She of course says "That's right"
"Number one"
Harvey says "Number one in studying"
So in this video, the other lawyer is trying
everything to make herself look good and everything to make Harvey look bad
but Harvey just totally stonewalls her.
In this scenario, the other lawyer isn't actually attacking Harvey directly
She's trying to make herself look good
and she's trying to make Harvey fall into what I call, her "frame".
Simply put, a frame is the perspective through a particular issue is being viewed
In this case, the 'frame" is she's smart and he's less smart
As a corporate lawyer myself
like Harvey Specter
I have to deal with frame battles all the time.
As lawyers know, if you fall into the other lawyer's frame
you're pretty much screwing yourself
and your client.
So you have to do everything possible to resist that frame
meaning that you have to resist that viewpoint that the other lawyer wants the issue to be viewed.
Of course in this situation, the "issue" isn't that serious.
Its not a real legal issue, she just wants to make herself look smarter than Harvey.
So in responding to the other lawyer,
Harvey doesn't actually saying anything about himself.
What he's trying to do, and what he does in this scene is
you saw is he's trying to break that frame
into pieces.
So what Harvey does, and this is key,
he's trying to show that he's in control of this interaction
So, which she might have done better
than he did at Harvard
he's trying to show that in the REAL WORLD
he's actually in control and he's actually way wittier than she is.
So, in order to break someone's frame, how do you do that?
Well, you do that by "reframing" the "frame".
What does reframing mean?
It means reinterpreting the frame that they're trying to establish.
By reframing, I mean reinterpreting their frame
in a way that makes them look bad.
How does Harvey reframe the frame she's trying to establish?
She says she was #1 in their class at Harvard
but Harvey basically reinterprets it to say
she was #1 at studying.
And by doing that, he's implying that
while she was good at studying
she's not effective in the real world.
Like he is.
What Harvey is implying is that in the real world
academics mean nothing.
He's right by the way.
Alright, let's summarize
When someone is trying to make themselves look good and by implication, make you look bad
the way you attack that is by reframing the frame they're trying to establish.
And you do that by reinterpreting what they're trying to say.
Okay my friends, I hope that was helpful
and you learned a lot about frames and reframing.
Until next time, keep being excellent and please SUBSCRIBE to this YouTube channel!