Perhaps to really know another person, you have to have a glimmer of how they

experience the world. To really know someone, you have to know how they know you.

The questions she asks are intended to steer people toward the positive: Isn’t it time you forgave yourself for that? When you and your parents are close again, what will you want them to understand about this time in your life? Early in her career, she tried to understand people by asking how others treated or mistreated them. As she matured, she found it

more useful to ask, How do you treat others? How do you make them feel?

People answer better with narrative. When they are in the thread of a narrative, they get comfortable and will speak more fully,” David says. In a job interview, he focuses

especially on someone’s high school experience. Did the person feel like an outcast in high school? Did they empathize with the poor and the unpopular? “The only thing you can be certain about every person is that nobody escapes high school. Whatever your high school fears were, they are still there.” David’s getting at a person’s vulnerabilities, trying to see the person whole.

Then you try to reidentify the mutual purpose of the conversation. That’s done by enlarging the purpose so that both people are encompassed by it.

There’s one more thing that happens as I listen to life stories. I realize I’m not just listening to other people’s stories; I’m helping them create their stories. Very few of us sit down one day and write out the story of our lives and then go out and recite it when somebody asks. For most of us it’s only when somebody asks us to tell a story about ourselves that we have to step back and organize the events and turn them into a coherent narrative. When you ask somebody to tell part of their story, you’re giving them an occasion to take that step back. You’re giving them an opportunity to construct an account of themselves and maybe see themselves in a new way. None of us can have an identity unless it is affirmed and acknowledged by others. So as you are telling me your story, you’re seeing the ways I affirm you and the ways I do not. You’re sensing the parts of the story that work and those that do not. If you feed me empty slogans about yourself, I withdraw. But if you stand more transparently before me, showing both your warts and your gifts, you feel my respectful and friendly gaze upon you, and that brings forth growth. In every life there is a pattern, a story line running through it all. We find that story when somebody gives an opportunity to tell it.