The most powerful thing we can do to show that we are seeking to understand and not to be understood in a tense conversation is to:
(a) take the time to wait for the person to finish
(b) then play back what we understood and
(c) check if what we understood was what they were trying to say.
That ability to summon the discipline to look for understanding is the unlock to a far more productive conversation because until people feels understood, they are not going to be able to understand.
H/T: Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg
