Quotes from Douglas Stone

Contribution Is About Understanding, and Looks Forward

If advice is autobiographical, so is evaluation. The evaluation we give people is a reflection of our own (or our organization's) preferences, assumptions, values, and goals. They might be broadly shared or idiosyncratic, but either way, they are ours.

The single most important thing [you can do] is to shift [your] internal stance from "I understand" to "Help me understand." Everything else follows from that. . . . Remind yourself that if you think you already understand how someone feels or what they are trying to say, it is a delusion. Remember a time when you were sure you were right and then discovered one little fact that changed everything. There is always more to learn.

difficult conversations are almost never about getting the facts right. They are about conflicting perceptions, interpretations, and values.

People almost never change without first feeling understood.

Often we go through an entire conversation – or indeed an entire relationship – without ever realizing that each of us is paying attention to different things, that our views are based on different information.

The urge to blame is based . . . on the fear of being blamed.

Explicit disagreement is better than implicit misunderstanding.

Learning that you can't control the other person's reaction, and that it can be destructive to try, can be incredibly liberating. It not only gives the other person the space to react however they need to, but also takes a huge amount of pressure off you. You will learn things about yourself based on their reaction, but if you are prepared to learn, you'll feel free from the desperate need for their reaction to go one certain way.

Paradoxically, there is also considerable persuasion power in inquiry and listening.

Imagine that while scuba diving, you suddenly see a shark glide into view. Your heart starts to pound and your anxiety skyrockets. You're terrified, which is a perfectly rational and understandable feeling. Now imagine that your marine biology training enables you to identify it as a Reef Shark, which you know doesn't prey on anything as large as you. Your anxiety disappears. Instead you feel excited and curious to observe the shark's behavior.

Receiving feedback sits at the intersection of these two needs—our drive to learn and our longing for acceptance.

Before you tell me how to do it better, before you lay out your big plans for changing, fixing, and improving me, before you teach me how to pick myself up and dust myself off so that I can be shiny and successful—know this: I've heard it before. I've been graded, rated, and ranked. Coached, screened, and scored. I've been picked first, picked last, and not picked at all. And that was just kindergarten.

Depending on how we handle them, feelings can lead to great trouble. But the feelings themselves just are. In that sense, feelings are like arms or legs. If you hit or kick someone, then your arms or legs are causing trouble. But there's nothing inherently wrong with arms or legs. The same with feelings.

get curious about what you don't know about yourself.

The truth is, intentions are invisible. We assume them from other people's behavior. In other words, we make them up, we invent them. But

Working to keep negative information out during a difficult conversation is like trying to swim without getting wet.

Our Assumptions About Intentions Are Often Wrong

Telling someone to change makes it less rather than more likely that they will.

Interpretations and judgments are important to explore. In contrast, the quest to determine who is right and who is wrong is a dead end. In

We don't care where the ball lands, as long as it doesn't land on us.

Simply by changing your own behavior, you gain at least some influence over the problem.

The point is this: difficult conversations are almost never about getting the facts right. They are about conflicting perceptions, interpretations, and values.

When competent, sensible people do something stupid, the smartest move is to try to figure out, first, what kept them from seeing it coming and, second, how to prevent the problem from happening again. Talking