We say things like, ‘You could … You should … I would propose that you … You’d do well to … If I were you, I would …’, ‘Do this, think that, get on with it just as I say.’

That ‘language of advice’ is itself an interruption of the person’s independent thinking. When we use that language, we are requiring the person to think like us, in essence to become us. So the person’s mind becomes defensive. People resist having to think just like someone else. This requirement is demeaning; it is diminishing of the self. And so, what is offered in the language of advice is usually only partially heard and often rejected, sometimes out of hand.

But if instead we use the language of experience – ‘I discovered that … In my experience, I have found that …’ – or the language of information – ‘the law says that … research is showing that … so far the facts here are that …’ – or even, ‘if I were in your situation, I would …’, the person engages readily, accepting bits, rejecting bits, questioning bits. They keep thinking for themselves. They keep their own mind. They have not been required to become us.

Now I think I understand it: the language of advice invisibilizes the advised. It requires them to abandon their own self and to conform. It is an interruption of independent thinking.

We do need to accept that the power of persuasion at its worst lies in its design to interrupt. It is supposed to interrupt us, our independent, cogent, thinking selves. And it does.

We can create a thinking environment even in the dwellings of extreme disagreement. We can, quite simply and profoundly, promise not to interrupt. We can honour the three ingredients of that promise: to start giving attention, to stay interested in where the person will go next and to ‘share the stage’ equally.

We also have seen the power of repeating a question. And we know about the importance of using the thinker’s own words if we refer to their thinking. People think in their own specific words, not just in their own language.