You said it yourself. I always noticed them. I noticed them because I couldn’t help it. Only from the inside can you know what it’s like from the inside. Understanding isn’t just knowing or learning what it is but knowing what it’s like.

I asked, “If you could pick one trait that would predict how someone would turn out, what would it be?”

“That’s easy,” he said. “How willing they are to change their mind about what they think they know.”

The most valuable people, he continued, weren’t the ones with the best initial ideas, but the ones with the ability to quickly change their minds. They were focused on outcome over ego. By contrast, he said, the people most likely to fail were those obsessed with minute details that supported their point of view.

I once had a coworker who was also a friend. One day he walked into my office with some news. “I figured out what I’m doing wrong,” he said. "I’m so busy trying to prove to everyone I’m right that I can’t see the world from their point of view.

When the other person is done answering that first question, my friend still doesn’t offer his own thoughts right away. He first asks a follow up: “What else did I miss?”

This approach to interpersonal communication is an example of a reference-shifting safeguard. Asking the two questions, and listening to the answers people gave him, forces him to see things through other people’s eyes. Taking the time to do that protects him against a tendency that he identified as a weakness.

One way to keep meetings short and avoid the signalling that comes from repeating information that everyone knows is simply asking everyone, “What do you know about this problem that other people in the room don’t know?