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But… I Don’t Agree
We all want the tallest building in the city.
There are two ways to attain the tallest building:
1. Build your building taller
2. Knock down the surrounding buildings
Bailey Eldridge pointed out to me on LinkedIn, the value of responding to someone with “and” rather than “but” when you might have a different viewpoint than someone. She said that she has found when responding to someone with the word “but” the person you are speaking with may feel nullified and that they are not heard.
We might not always agree, we might not always see eye to eye, but does that matter?
In his book, One Nation, Ben Carson writes, “However, I tried to look at things from the nurse’s perspective. The only black males she had seen come onto that ward wearing surgical scrubs were orderlies who were coming to pick up or deliver a patient. Why would she think differently in my case?”
He writes this about his experience in 1977 at John Hopkins University. He said that often when he went into a hospital ward, the nurse would essentially let him know that the body wasn’t ready yet. He would respond as so and state that he is actually Dr. Carson and there for another reason, to actually treat the patients, as a doctor.
