I lost an argument last Tuesday morning over coffee with my colleague Sarah about remote work policies. We were both frustrated, talking past each other, defending our positions instead of understanding them. But then something shifted: I asked Sarah to explain why her view made sense to her—not to convince me, but just to help me understand her strongest reasoning. She did. And suddenly, I saw gaps in my own thinking I’d completely missed.
That conversation introduced me to steelmanning, a practice that’s become central to how I approach disagreements, learning, and problem-solving. Steelmanning is the opposite of strawmanning—instead of attacking the weakest version of someone’s argument, you construct and engage with the strongest version. You’re not trying to win. You’re trying to think better.
If you work in knowledge work, lead teams, or simply want to make better decisions, steelmanning is one of the highest-use practices you can adopt. The research shows it changes how your brain processes information, builds intellectual humility, and often reveals truths you didn’t expect to find. [3]
What Steelmanning Actually Is (And Why It Matters)
Let me be clear about what steelmanning is not. It’s not agreeing with someone. It’s not being nice or politically correct. It’s not saying “all views are equally valid.”
Related: cognitive biases guide
Steelmanning means taking someone’s argument and rebuilding it in its strongest, most coherent form—as if you were arguing it yourself. You find the best evidence they could have used. You remove the awkward phrasing. You acknowledge legitimate concerns beneath their position. Then you engage with that version, not the weak strawman version.
I first encountered this idea while teaching critical thinking to high school seniors. A student named Marcus made an argument I immediately wanted to dismiss. But instead of shutting him down, I asked: “What’s the strongest possible version of what you just said?” His face changed. He thought harder. His answer became genuinely compelling—and I had to reconsider my own position.
Steelmanning is intellectually powerful because it forces you to understand arguments at a deeper level (Mercier & Sperber, 2017). Most people engage in what researchers call “confirmation bias”—we seek out information that supports what we already believe. When you steelman an opposing view, you’re doing the opposite. You’re voluntarily building the strongest case against yourself.
That’s uncomfortable. It’s also exactly why it works.
How Steelmanning Changes Your Brain
Here’s what happens neurologically when you steelman: your brain activates regions associated with empathy, theory of mind, and perspective-taking (Mitchell, 2009). You’re not just thinking differently—you’re engaging different neural networks than you use for defensive argumentation.
When you defend your position without steelmanning, your brain is essentially in threat-detection mode. The amygdala is active. You’re looking for flaws in the other person’s logic so you can win. That’s fast, but it’s also narrow.
Steelmanning engages your prefrontal cortex—the part responsible for complex reasoning, nuance, and integration of information. You’re actually thinking harder, not just defending more aggressively.
I experienced this during a heated disagreement about curriculum design with a veteran teacher named Patricia. We fundamentally disagreed on how to structure science classes. My first instinct was to dismiss her approach as outdated. Instead, I forced myself to steelman her position: What educational outcomes was she optimizing for? What student needs did her approach address? What was she protecting against? [2]
Fifteen minutes of genuine steelmanning revealed that Patricia and I weren’t actually in conflict—we were optimizing for different (but equally valid) outcomes. She cared more about deep understanding and retention. I was focused more on student engagement and breadth. We both had legitimate goals. The “argument” dissolved once I understood her strongest reasoning, not her weakest.
This happens repeatedly when people actually steelman. The disagreement doesn’t disappear, but it transforms. You move from “you’re wrong” to “we’re prioritizing different things, and here’s what we can learn from each other.”
The Practical Steps: How to Steelman an Argument
Steelmanning sounds abstract until you practice it. Here’s how to actually do it.
Step 1: Identify the core claim. Strip away the emotion, the poor phrasing, the examples. What is the fundamental claim being made? If someone says “remote work destroys company culture,” the core might be “frequent in-person interaction affects team cohesion.”
Step 2: Find the legitimate concern beneath the claim. Why might someone believe this? What real observation or value is driving their position? With the remote work example: yes, isolation is real, and relationships do matter for collaboration.
Step 3: Gather the best evidence that supports it. What research, examples, or logic would support this position? What do proponents of this view actually rely on? (You might find your opponent was actually citing real studies—you just didn’t look close enough.)
Step 4: Remove the strawman elements. Don’t engage with their weakest points. Remove bad arguments, unfair characterizations, and logical fallacies—replace them with stronger ones.
Step 5: State the steelmanned position clearly. Say it back to them: “So what I’m hearing is that you’re concerned about X because Y research suggests Z. Is that fair?”
Step 6: Engage authentically. Now you can disagree. But you’re disagreeing with their actual position, not a caricature.
I do this regularly with my team when we’re evaluating instructional strategies. Someone proposes a new approach I’m skeptical about. Instead of poking holes, I force myself through these six steps. About 40% of the time, I realize the proposal is stronger than I initially thought. The other 60%, I understand the proposal well enough to offer substantive critique instead of dismissive pushback.
The key is that steelmanning is a practice, not a one-time gesture. You’ll feel resistance. Your brain wants to defend, not understand. That resistance is normal. You’re literally rewiring your default approach to disagreement. [1]
Why Knowledge Workers Need Steelmanning Most
If you work with ideas—whether you’re a manager, analyst, designer, or executive—steelmanning is probably more valuable than you realize.
Knowledge work is built on judgment. You evaluate proposals, choose strategies, hire people, decide which problems to solve first. These decisions are only as good as your understanding of the alternatives you’re rejecting.
When you steelman proposals you disagree with, something shifts. You stop seeing them as threats to your preferred solution. You start seeing them as possibilities with tradeoffs. Some tradeoffs might be worth it. Some might reveal that a hybrid approach is better than either pure option.
I watched this happen at an investment firm where I consulted. A team was deciding between two portfolio strategies. The lead analyst favored Strategy A and had built a strong case for it. Strategy B’s proponent made a weaker case (partly because she was new to the team and less confident). The senior partner asked her to steelman her own position—to present the strongest argument for Strategy B she could construct.
She spent a week rebuilding her analysis. Her steelmanned version was genuinely impressive. The team didn’t abandon Strategy A, but they modified it to incorporate elements of B—and the hybrid outperformed pure Strategy A by about 2.1% annually over the next three years. Small difference in percentage terms. Massive in dollar terms for that firm’s assets under management.
That’s the power of steelmanning in professional contexts. You make better decisions because you understand the full landscape of options, not just the one you’ve already decided to prefer.
The Uncomfortable Truth: You Might Be Wrong
Here’s what stops most people from steelmanning: fear that they might actually change their mind.
You’re not alone if that thought scares you. It’s deeply uncomfortable to build the strongest case against yourself and realize it’s compelling. It means admitting you’ve been wrong. It means adjusting your position. It means the work you’ve already invested in defending the old position was partly misdirected.
But here’s the reframe: you’re going to be wrong about some things. The question is whether you find out now, through steelmanning, or later, through costly mistakes.
Research on decision-making shows that people who actively seek out strong counterarguments make better decisions than those who don’t (Kross & Ayduk, 2011). Better decisions mean better outcomes. It’s worth being uncomfortable.
I started steelmanning deliberately about five years ago, and I’ve changed my mind on several substantive issues since then. That’s awkward. I’ve had to adjust my teaching, my recommendations, my personal philosophy on a few things. It’s also one of the best intellectual investments I’ve made.
You’re reading this, which means you’re already open to the idea. That’s the hard part. The practice itself gets easier with repetition.
Common Mistakes People Make With Steelmanning
Mistake 1: Conflating steelmanning with agreement. You can steelman an argument and still disagree with it. Steelmanning is about understanding, not converting. Don’t apologize for your actual position once you’ve steelmanned theirs.
Mistake 2: Only steelmanning when you’re losing. If you only steelman arguments that are gaining ground, it looks performative. People sense it. Steelman consistently, especially positions you find easy to dismiss.
Mistake 3: Steelmanning the person instead of the argument. The goal isn’t to validate them as a person. It’s to validate their reasoning. These are different. Someone can be confused or uninformed but have a kernel of truth in their position. Steelman the kernel, not the confusion.
Mistake 4: Forgetting to actually engage. Steelmanning only works if you then respond to the strengthened argument. If you steelman and then say “okay, but I still think I’m right,” you’ve missed the point. Engage substantively with what you’ve built.
These mistakes are easy to make. I made all of them when I started. The fact that you’re aware of them now means you can watch for them in your own practice.
Building the Habit
Steelmanning won’t become automatic overnight. It’s a skill, which means it requires deliberate practice.
Start small. Pick one recurring disagreement in your life—maybe a standing debate with your partner, a colleague, or a friend. The next time it comes up, commit to steelmanning their position before you defend yours. Spend ten minutes genuinely constructing the strongest version of their argument.
Notice what happens. Do you see something you missed before? Do they seem more open to hearing your view once they feel understood? Does the disagreement feel different?
Then expand. Try it in meetings when someone proposes something you’re skeptical about. Try it when reading opinion pieces you disagree with. Try it when you’re frustrated with a family member’s choices.
The goal isn’t to become endlessly charitable or to lose your ability to disagree sharply. The goal is to disagree smarter—to operate from genuine understanding rather than defensive caricature.
After a few months of deliberate practice, steelmanning starts to feel natural. Your brain gets faster at finding the strongest version of opposing arguments. You become genuinely harder to fool, because you understand ideas at a deeper level. You make better decisions because you’re not discounting options based on weak versions of them.
It’s a competitive advantage in any field that values judgment, learning, or collaboration. Which is to say: it’s valuable in almost every field.
The Deeper Benefit: Intellectual Humility
The real reason steelmanning matters isn’t about winning arguments or making better professional decisions. It’s about building intellectual humility.
Intellectual humility is the recognition that your knowledge is limited and that you could be wrong. Research shows it’s correlated with better learning, more accurate beliefs, and stronger relationships (Leary et al., 2017). It’s also increasingly rare.
When you practice steelmanning regularly, something shifts in how you hold your own beliefs. They become less like identities you’re defending and more like working hypotheses you’re refining. That’s powerful.
You start to ask better questions. You become more genuinely curious about why smart people believe different things. You notice the real tradeoffs inherent in complex problems instead of pretending there’s an obvious right answer.
This is how teams do better work. This is how organizations make better decisions. This is how individuals think more clearly.
Steelmanning won’t make you agree with everyone. It will make you understand everyone better. And understanding is the foundation of everything that comes after—better decisions, better relationships, better learning.
Conclusion
Making your opponent’s argument stronger feels counterintuitive. Why would you help build a better case against yourself?
Because understanding the strongest version of what you disagree with is the only way to genuinely evaluate it. Because your own thinking improves when you engage with ideas at their best, not their worst. Because the confidence that comes from actually defeating a strong argument is more valuable than the false confidence of defeating a strawman.
Steelmanning is a practice that compounds. The first time you do it, it feels awkward and costly. After a dozen times, you see the value. After a hundred times, it becomes how you naturally think.
You’re competing against people who dismiss opposing views without understanding them. You’re making decisions about your career, your investments, your relationships, your beliefs. The people who do this well tend to end up ahead—not because they’re smarter, but because they understand more.
Start with one argument. Steelman it properly. Notice what happens to your thinking. Then do it again.
