How to Know a Person — Chapter Nine: Hard Conversations

1. 1. Hard conversations are shaped by historical inheritances like slavery, elitism, and sexism, and you cannot know someone while ignoring ideology, class, race, faith, or identity.
2. 2. Every conversation has two levels: the official conversation of words and the actual conversation of underlying emotions that signal safety, respect, and intention.
3. 3. When someone talks about pain, stay within their frame rather than yanking the conversation back to your own perspective.
4. 4. Respect is like air: when present, unnoticed; when absent, all anyone can think about.
5. 5. To redeem a hard conversation going south, step back, split your motives, and reidentify a mutual purpose.
6. 6. People perceive the world not as it is but as it is for them, based on their capacities and histories.
7. 7. Hard conversations are necessary because we must ask others how they see the situation to enter their point of view.
8. 8. Responding to furious emails with respect and curiosity almost always transforms the other person's tone immediately.