Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most

by Douglas Stone

You can feel furious with them, and you can also feel love and appreciation for them. The And Stance gives you a place from which to assert the full strength of your views and feelings without having to diminish the views and feelings of someone else. Likewise, you don’t need to give up anything to hear how someone else feels or sees things differently. Because you may have different information or different interpretations, both stories can make sense at the same time. It may be that as you share them, your stories change in response to new information or different perspectives. But they still may not end up the same, and that’s all right. Sometimes people have honest disagreements, but even so, the most useful question is not “Who’s right?” but “Now that we really understand each other, what’s a good way to manage this problem?”