Myself
We will always be in situations when we’re talking to someone who might not agree with us and also think we’re not reputable enough to comment on the topic. Perhaps you’re a product manager who is trying to convince a senior developer to do a particular feature or you’re working with people 10+ years your senior.
In general, it’s good to make it so that if they disagree, they aren’t disagreeing with you but things such as an expert opinion, customer research data or objective facts. You want to make it so any disagreement would be not against you but something else. Remove yourself from the argument.
For example:
- We should do this feature because I interviewed 20 users and they all had this same complaint.
- I looked at 20 peer-reviewed scientific journals and they all say this.
- This isn’t me saying this but {insert respected scientist, business person, senior person in the company} - this is what they said verbatim.
This makes your reasoning and logic hard to fault because by arguing they have to argue against something else other than you.