As we argue vociferously for our view, we often fail to question one crucial assumption upon which our whole stance in the conversation is built: I am right, you are wrong. This simple assumption causes endless grief.

Listen Past the Accusation for the Feelings. Remember that the accusation about our bad intentions is always made up of two separate ideas: (1) we had bad intentions and (2) the other person was frustrated, hurt, or embarrassed. Don’t pretend they aren’t saying the first. You’ll want to respond to it. But neither should you ignore the second. And i

The easiest approach is first to talk about how to talk. Treat “the way things usually go when we try to have this conversation” as the problem, and describe it from the Third Story:

innocent victims – when something goes wrong, it’s always because of what someone else did. Others of us have the opposite tendency: we are all too aware of the negative consequences of our own actions. In the face of this, others’ contributions seem insignificant. An “absorber” tends to feel responsible for everything.

There’s only one way to come to understand the other person’s story, and that’s by being curious. Instead of asking yourself, “How can they think that?!” ask yourself, “I wonder what information they have that I don’t?” Instead of asking, “How can they be so irrational?” ask, “How might they see the world such that their view makes sense?” Certaint

In his provocatively titled book The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t, Stanford Business School professor Robert Sutton shows readers how to deal with “bullies, creeps, jerks, tyrants, tormentors, despots, backstabbers, egomaniacs, and all the other [people]” at work who can make our lives miserable.7 Cit

Unspoken feelings can color the conversation in a number of ways. They alter your affect and tone of voice. They express themselves through your body language or facial expression. They may take the form of long pauses or an odd and unexplained detachment. You may become sarcastic, aggressive, impatient, unpredictable, or defensive. Studies show th

To get anywhere in a disagreement, we need to understand the other person’s story well enough to see how their conclusions make sense within it. And we need to help them understand the story in which our conclusions make sense. Understanding each other’s stories from the inside won’t necessarily “solve” the problem, but as with Karen and Trevor, it

The phenomenon of an internal voice and the three conversations within it seems to be a universal and fundamental aspect of being human. What does differ across cultures is whether, when, and how the internal voice is expressed.