The authors of Crucial Conversations observe that in any conversation, respect is like air. When it’s present nobody notices, but when it’s absent it’s all anybody can think about.
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But what we forget is that while it’s easy for us to parse, others may not feel the same way. While we have spent lots of time thinking about something, or know a lot about it, we often fail to account for the fact that others may not be in the same position.
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.
TWO: How Not to See a Person
“If you want to understand humanity, you have to focus on the thoughts and emotions of individuals, not just data about groups.
We’re becoming comfortable with each other, and comfort is no small thing. Nothing can be heard in the mind until the situation feels safe and familiar to the body. Small talk and just casually being around someone is a vastly underappreciated stage in the process of getting to know someone. Sometimes you can learn more about a person by watching how they talk to a waiter than by asking some profound question about their philosophy of life.
Even when you know someone well, I find that if you don’t talk about the little things on a regular basis, it’s hard to talk about the big things.
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.