The Calculated Avoidance Technique

Strengths:

• Makes it possible to avoid needless confrontations and to retain control.
• Avoids lending weight to opposing arguments.

Weaknesses:

• May be perceived as a dodge if the other party presses too hard.
• Risk of frustration if no concrete answer is provided.

When a subject is too delicate and a response could make the situation worse.
When an interlocutor is trying to trap the discussion and you need to keep control of the framing of the debate.

Calculated avoidance is particularly effective in contexts where debate may be harmful and where control of communication is paramount, notably in politics, public relations and sensitive negotiation.

• Buy time to rebalance an unfavourable balance of power (waiting for better information, reinforcement, or a deadline that works in your favour)
• Decline to enter a low-stakes or emotionally costly conflict, preserving the relationship rather than imposing a position
• Defuse an escalation by offering no purchase to the other party’s provocation or ultimatum
• Signal that the subject, the channel or the timing is not acceptable, prompting the opponent to return within a more favourable framework
• Preserve your room for manoeuvre and your options by avoiding binding yourself prematurely to a response or a commitment

Diplomatic · Non-engagement as a response: A power faced with a pressing demand from a partner refuses to say yes as much as to say no: it multiplies internal consultations, refers the matter to working groups and lets the timetable stretch out. This deliberate non-handling is not passivity: it aims to let the pressure subside, to await a change of context (an election, the economic climate) and to compel the other party to improve its offer in order finally to obtain an answer. A scenario representative of common diplomatic practice, without attribution to any specific episode.

Corporate · Not responding to the ultimatum: Faced with a supplier imposing a price increase within 48 hours “or else we walk away”, a procurement director chooses not to react within the imposed deadline. He does not break off, does not give in, does not negotiate immediately: he lets the artificial deadline pass. Deprived of the panicked reaction it had counted on, the supplier, whose order book depends in part on this client, comes back of its own accord a few days later with a softened proposal. Avoidance has defused the false urgency.

• Confusing calculated avoidance with flight: avoiding out of fear or discomfort, with no strategy and no date for re-engagement, which lets the problem fester and the position deteriorate
• Avoiding a high-stakes conflict that in fact demands to be addressed: the postponement then becomes a disguised concession that proves costly in the long run
• Failing to watch the clock: avoidance is only worthwhile if time is on your side; if waiting benefits the opponent, the posture turns against you
• Overusing the device to the point of destroying trust: an interlocutor who feels systematically ignored stops negotiating and seeks an alternative elsewhere
• Avoiding without leaving a door open: cutting off any signal of possible re-engagement turns delay into an unintended breakdown

Avoidance does not address the substance; it organises its absence. It has a perfectly legitimate, and even necessary, domain: refusing to follow a provocation, a personal attack or an imputation of bad motives, declining to legitimise a bad-faith argument by debating it, bringing the exchange back to its object - that is mastery, and the negotiator who answers everything lets himself be led. The tipping point lies in the nature of the question dodged. Deflecting a legitimate question, one to which the other party has the right to obtain an answer in order to decide with full knowledge of the facts, is no longer mastery but a refusal to be accountable. The distinction becomes imperative as soon as there is an asymmetry of power: an employee, a tenant or a patient who sees their question slide away lacks the means to keep raising it indefinitely, and the dodge becomes a way of winning through position rather than through argument. Its practical limit is that silence speaks: a question avoided twice is taken as an answer, and rarely one in your favour. Refusing to follow a provocation is mastery; dodging a legitimate question is an evasion.

• Kenneth W. Thomas & Ralph H. Kilmann (1974) Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) Xicom / CPP, Mountain View
• Roger Fisher & William Ury (1981) Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In Houghton Mifflin, Boston
• Thomas C. Schelling (1960) The Strategy of Conflict Harvard University Press, Cambridge