"I Definitely Won"

I’ll be honest: when a kid walks out of a round and tells me they got screwed by the judge, I kind of stop listening to anything else they say. There is no quicker way for me to lose respect for a debater than for them to make that explanation a habit.

I suspect every coach reading this knows the conversation. I can count on my fingers the students I’ve coached who consistently walked out of a loss ready to take responsibility and reflect on what they could have done better. It makes sense that this would be difficult for debaters. We attract people who enjoy being right, and then we spend years teaching them to defend a position under pressure. Of course they can produce a pretty good defense of their own performance! But being willing to examine that performance honestly is probably the most important skill they have for getting better.

Debate is extremely subjective. The flow, the written record of arguments and responses in the round, does not spit out a winner when the timer ends. Someone has to decide whether an answer actually addresses an argument, whether an explanation is sufficient, and which reasons deserve more weight. Debaters can agree on everything that was said and still disagree about who won. We should probably keep that in mind before treating every ballot we dislike as evidence of incompetence.

When you debate, part of your job is figuring out what this particular person needs to hear to be persuaded. That could mean slowing down or spending more time explaining a concept you take for granted. Making those adjustments is part of becoming a better debater. You tell me the judge didn’t understand your best argument. How much time did you spend explaining it? Did you say why it mattered more than the argument they voted on? Let’s be honest, if you need five minutes in the hallway to explain why your fifteen-second response won you the round, I have a pretty good guess about what happened.

I think a lot of efforts to make judging more objective miss how much of the activity is learning to persuade a human being. Judges should know the rules and apply them carefully, but they will still have to interpret your arguments, and they will still bring different expectations to the round. No judging system can relieve you of the responsibility to make yourself understood.

Obviously, I see decisions I disagree with. Sometimes I think a student really did deserve to win. We can acknowledge that and then spend the rest of the conversation on what would help next time. Going over the injustice for the sixth time gives us very little to practice. Looking at the speech might give us something we can fix before the next round. I want a student to leave a loss with something specific to work on. Redo the explanation the judge found confusing. Practice the comparison you ran out of time to make. Look at why you spent so long answering an argument that never mattered. Taking responsibility is the first step.

The same habit is useful long after debate. You can bring a good proposal to work and have it rejected because you spent the whole meeting explaining what interested you while barely addressing the concern your boss raised in the first minute. You can spend the afternoon telling a coworker that your boss doesn’t get it. You can also go back, understand the objection, and make a better case. That takes some humility, especially when you still think your original idea was good.

Being right will not spare you the work of understanding the person you want to convince. You have to listen well enough to figure out where you lost them and be willing to change an explanation you thought was perfectly clear. Debate gives you repeated chances to practice that while the consequences are still relatively small. I can help a student work through a loss. It gets a lot harder when they have already decided the only person who needs to improve is the judge.