In a meeting, for example, we think attendees will be more likely to listen if the boss says something rather than a subordinate. Or that the same idea will have more impact if a higher-status person brings it up.

And that’s partially right. Status does matter. Sometimes. When students thought they were listening to a higher-status speaker, for example, they thought that person was a stronger, more dynamic presenter.

But what the speaker said mattered a lot more. Hesitating hurt. Speakers who hesitated were seen as less intelligent, less well informed, and less qualified. Listeners thought they had less expertise, and saw them as lower status, regardless of what their title actually was.

This is what I think it takes.

Two things.

One, we have to get it, really get it, that one person’s generative attention produces another person’s new thinking.

Don’t rush that.

Two, a person’s generative attention loses its power the very second it wavers. Attention like this has to be continuous.

Take that in, too. It defies 3,000 years of instruction in how to listen.

Dr Paul Brown, Faculty Professor at Monarch Business School in

Switzerland, explained this to me. He had noticed that these ten behaviours not only work; they work every time.

He said that the reason for this dependable quality of thinking is that generative attention, uncorrupted and sustained, calms the brain’s amygdala, the emotional ‘control centre’ of the brain, producing hormones like serotonin and oxytocin. These hormones then ‘bathe’ the cortex, the cognitive ‘control centre’ of the brain, allowing a perfect interplay between these ‘approach’ hormones and cognition. And because the listener’s attention doesn’t waver, and we know it Wont, the amygdala stays calm, and thought-disturbing hormones like cortisol and adrenaline stay at bay.

Sometimes this difference is not even substantive. Sometimes it is a shift internally that the listener cannot see, but the thinker can feel. Sometimes it is a new emotional relationship with the thought.

So I have become impressed by those thinker-‘repetition’ moments, now understanding that, yes, it matters what the thinker says, but it matters more what happens for them because they say it.

Also, the best appreciation is about a quality in the person that is not based on the content of the person’s thinking turn. It needs to be a quality you’ve noticed in them generally.

And it needs to be free of any mention of the dynamics of the session like: ‘Your listening so well made such a huge difference to me,’ or ‘Your thinking was marvellous.’ Appreciations like that can register subtly as assessments. They can weaken the safety for the next time.