There's one more prerequisite for communication to succeed. It has to be safe for another person to communicate with you. We all want our partners to be honest with us. At the same time, nobody likes to hear bad news. From ancient empires to modern boardrooms, bearers of bad tidings have paid the price for delivering messages distasteful to the recipient's ears. Even in ordinary day-to-day conversations, there are all kinds of ways we can make it dangerous for others to say what we don't want to hear.
