So, if you resume your challenging conversation after burning up the treadmill, you’ll feel burned up, too, even more than you did before. And as my readers know, anger interferes with our ability to practice good consensus and communication.

Our stress reaction evolved to prepare our bodies for dangerous situations such as the approach of a saber tooth cat. In other words, stress prepares us to fight or flee. But our physiological evolution has not caught up to the circumstances of modern life. When the dangerous creature you face is not a hungry tiger, but rather, your boss, you want to stay calm and focused. You want to practice consensus skills that are often counterintuitive.

Even in physically dangerous situations, such as modern warfare, military personnel perform better if they can maintain what is called “coherence.” According to Ms. Richards, HeartMath, a research and education organization that trains US service members to handle extreme situations, emphasizes grounding practices that enable soldiers to regain their composure quickly “in the heat of the moment.”[2]

HeartMath trains people, first, to recognize physical symptoms of unproductive stress, such as a rapid heartbeat, sweaty palms, or runaway thoughts, then consciously return to balance.

I have written previously about carrying a physical grounding trigger, such as a photo of a supportive loved one, to look at when emotions become unproductive. But when pulling out a photo is not practical, there are other ways to summon a positive feeling. HeartMath recommends practices such as five seconds of deep breathing followed by recollection of a happy event, like playing with your pet.

When time permits a longer recovery process, it can help to switch to a cerebral activity such as playing Scrabble on your iPad.

However you choose to get there, the more calm and focused you feel during a challenging conversation, the better you’ll do. If you have a favorite way of nipping stress in the bud, I’d love to hear fr

To persuade another person to agreement, or reach consensus with her, we begin by asking the question, “Why?” Bridges to Consensus describes in detail how to prepare for a consensus seeking conversation by asking yourself why you want what you think it is that you want and also asking yourself why the other person might want what they seem to want. Then, we learn how to ask the other person about the broader interests behind her positions and tell her about our broader interests.

“Why?” is the fist of what I call “the three magic questions.” The magic resides in the way the answers to this question can bridge seemingly irreconcilable differences. For example, suppose Bob wants to sell his van for $17,000, and Carol wants to buy the van but can only pay $12,000. If the reason why Bob is asking $17,000 is because he needs that much to buy a piano, and Carol happens to have a piano she no longer wants, they might make a better deal with an even trade, rather than trying to compromise on a dollar amount.

How can this magic question help with our own personal decisions? In “How to Ditch a Dream,”[1] Augusten Burroughs writes about his dream of becoming a great actor. He held onto this dream until he saw a video recording of his own performance in an acting class and concluded that, “I sucked worse than anything has ever sucked in the history of suckage.”

But Burroughs didn’t have to abandon his dream. He only had to broaden his definition of that dream to find a way of fulfilling it that matched with his talents. He stopped and asked himself why he had wanted to be an actor. For Burroughs, who had trouble reaching out and connecting with people, acting had seemed like a comfortable way to do that.

But acting was not the only way to reach out and connect with people. He is now a successful writer, author of the best-selling book Running with Scissors, as well as Dry and This Is How.

So if you’re trying to do something that you really want to do, but it’s not working, stop and ask yourself why you want to do that thing. You may discover that what you were trying to do is simply one means to an end, an end that can be reached in other ways.

Have you tried to stick to a diet, but without success? Ask yourself why you tried that diet to begin with. You’d like to show up for the class reunion in your cheerleader uniform. Could a good tailor or dressmaker duplicate that uniform in your grown-up size?

Maybe you’ve been trying to become a good microwave cook. But you don’t really like the meals you turn out. Why did you try microwave cooking? You wanted to save money by not eating out so often, but since you often work late, you didn’t want to spend much time cooking. Maybe you would do better with a slow cooker. You could put everything into it in the preceding evening, stick it in the fridge, then before you leave for work in the morning, just take it out and plug it in.

Or if your current career isn’t working out, do like Burroughs did. Ask yourself why you were attracted to that career to begin with then look for another line of work that involves some of those same characteristics without the downsides.

As a bonus, the more skilled you become at asking yourself why in your personal decisions, the better you will employ this magic question when dealing with others.

We call them “open questions” because they can’t be answered “yes” or “no,” and that’s the reason they draw out more information than closed (yes-or-no) questions. As explained in Bridges to Consensus, the more we know about the interests of another person, the more ways we can find to address those interests in a manner that also supports our own interests. The more ways to address the other person’s interests (in ways that also work for us), the more likely that she will agree to at least one of them.

Let’s say you ask a coworker to cover for you so you can take a long lunch, and she says, “Sorry, can’t do it today.”

You wonder if she’s too busy with work projects, so you ask her a closed question about addressing that interest, “Is there something I can do to help you with your work after I get back from lunch?”

She replies, “No, thanks.”

Where does that leave you?

Now compare what happens when you ask her an open question, “What’s going on with you today?”

She replies, “I need to finish this report in time to leave early so I can buy a sandwich tray on my way to a party.”

Now you have something to work with. You offer to buy the party tray for her while you’re out doing your own errand at lunch. But instead of simply offering to do so, try asking an open question about your idea. “How would it work if I buy the party tray for you while I’m out doing my own errands at lunch?”

Your coworker is not satisfied with this option, but the fact that you put it in the form of an open question elicits more information. “That wouldn’t work well for me. There’s a particular type of sandwich tray I want from the Kroger store, and besides, I’ll be doing good to get out of here on time even if I don’t have to field all your phone calls during lunch.”

Now you log on to the Kroger store’s website and pull up their sandwich trays. You carry your laptop or tablet over to her desk, show her the web page, and say, “if the tray you want is one of these, I could call and pre-order it, pick it up, and also field all of your phone calls for the rest of the afternoon when I get back from lunch. How would that be?”

Though they have many virtues and uses, open questions don’t always come naturally to us. We tend to tell, rather than ask, and when we do ask, we tend to use yes-or-no questions. So your resolution for this month is to set aside a time each day to practice asking open questions. For me, it works well to set aside a brief period when I know I will be having a meal with someone. For example, I might decide that, at lunch, I will practice open questions between the time we order and the time the food arrives at our table.

The open questions you practice don’t have to be related to consensus. Just listen to what your companion says, and try asking some open questions that help him to elaborate.

While practicing these questions, you will learn more about other people, they will become more interesting to you, and they will appreciate your interest in them. Then, when you are seeking consensus, you can easily ask your way to success.

You’ll notice that, once you sign on to one of these, you’ll receive a follow-up request for a donation or some other action, such as forwarding the message to your friends by e-mail or posting it on social media. As Dr. Robert Cialdini points out in Influence, the Psychology of Persuasion, one of our most compelling hardwired urges is the desire to act consistently with positions we have taken, especially if we have put them in writing.

It’s hard to fault an organization promoting a worthy cause for soliciting donations and action in the most effective way possible. However, people sometimes act against their own best interests because of the strong pull of the desire for consistency. Here’s how I summarized one of Cialdini’s many examples in my own book, Bridges to Consensus:

In another study, … homeowners were asked to display an unsightly “Drive Carefully” sign in their front yards. The sign, as shown to the homeowners in a sample photo, was poorly lettered and so large it would significantly obscure the view of the house. In a control group, 83% of the residents refused to display the sign. The test group, however, had been primed two weeks earlier when asked to display a three-inch square sticker reading, “Be a safe driver.” Of those who had accepted and displayed the window sticker, 76% agreed to display the big, ugly sign.

According to Cialdini, toy manufacturers utilize this principle around Christmas time. Their advertising creates a large demand for a particular toy among children. Parents promise the children that they will receive the toy in question. However, the toy companies under stock stores with this particular toy yet provide a good supply of somewhat similar alternatives. Remember the Cabbage Patch doll shortage? Tickle Me Elmo? The parents who can’t find the toy they promised to their children buy one of the alternatives, perhaps a cute, but not Cabbage Patch, baby doll.

But after Christmas, the toy manufacturer renews its advertising, while also providing ample supplies to the toy stores. Now the parents who promised the toy to their children feel compelled to keep their promise. So they go out and buy it after Christmas, even though they already purchased the alternative.

And of course, all sorts of sales people and other negotiators will first seek a small concession, knowing that they can then build up to a larger one because of your need to feel consistent in your own skin and also seem consistent to others.

In a more chilling example, Cialdini tells us that the compulsion for consistency is so strong that it was exploited by the Chinese during the Korean war to ease American prisoners into making anti-American statements or informing on other prisoners who escaped.

The process began by eliciting a seemingly harmless statement, such as “The U.S. is not perfect.” Well, no country is perfect, so where was the harm in admitting a self-evidently true statement? Building on this, the prisoner was then persuaded to write an essay on ways the U.S. was imperfect.

“Aware that he had written the essay without any strong threats or coercion, many times a man would change his image of himself to be consistent with the deed and with the new ‘collaborator’ label.” When an American escaped from a camp, at least one such ‘collaborator’ was willing to inform on him for as little as a bag of rice. The Chinese had a near perfect record on recapture.”[1]

This Chinese “lenient” policy was much more effective than the North Korean technique of trying to obtain cooperation through physical brutality and contrasts starkly with the rarity of collaboration by American prisoners in World War II.

I believe the hard-wired urge to be consistent is related to the hard-wired urge to be right (or to resist being made wrong) that I wrote about in Bridges to Consensus. When we act inconsistently with a position we have previously taken, it feels like we are making ourselves wrong.

Perhaps it helps to remember Dr. Cialdini’s quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” [Emphasis added by Ciladini] In that spirit, perhaps we can see informing on an escapee as foolishly inconsistent with the statement that the U.S. is not perfect. Perhaps we can see that donating to one charity twice in one month is foolishly inconsistent with signing their online petition or other document if the second donation means we must deny an equally worthy charity that doesn’t solicit us as often.

For me, simply knowing about the consistency dynamic has made it easier to refuse an unreasonable request, even though it is consistent with a position I have previously taken. In my last “Defense” post, I described my handy list of donations to causes I wish to support. Now, after I “click to sign the online…,” I check this list to see when I last gave to the organization and how much I gave. Knowing that the petition was, at least in part, a mechanism to compel me to donate, makes it easier to refuse the follow up request if it doesn’t fit my donation budget and schedule.

During a recent presentation for a religious organization, I performed a demonstration of an interest-oriented dialogue. During Q&A, an audience member said something like, “But you could have been asking about her interests, and addressing those interests, just to get what you wanted.” Her frown told me that idea disturbed her. How could a good, moral, church-worthy outcome result from a selfishly motivated behavior?

It’s natural for us to sense that, if someone practices a persuasion or consensus-building skill solely for their own sake, they must be manipulating the other person or treating them unfairly in some way. The reason this feeling comes so naturally is akin to our cultural tendency to view persuasive interactions as win-lose, or “fixed pie,” in nature. We feel that, if someone is getting what they want from us, we must be losing something.

So, intuitively, we also feel that, only if someone truly cares about our welfare, can we feel comfortable releasing the win-lose assumption.  But, as Bridges to Consensus readers also know, consensus-building skills are often counterintuitive, and the win-win is a real possibility.

It’s true that the interest-oriented approach works best for us when we are honestly curious about the other person and compassionately interested in trying to satisfy their needs for their sake, not just our own. However, the very nature of the skills themselves makes the skill user’s motives and intentions less important to the welfare of the one with whom he uses them than in a win-lose dynamic.

Suppose Dick and Jane have a joint project to do. The project will involve background research and interviews with their fellow employees (or fellow congregants, depending on the venue of the project). Each of them wants to do the research and leave the interviews to the other. Dick can choose between two approaches: he can try to cajole, argue or bully Jane into doing the interviews, or he can find out about her interests in doing the research and try to address them in ways that are consistent with his own interests.

Dick prepares by getting clear on his interests in doing the research. First, he has a head start on it because he did similar work in the past. Second, he feels uncomfortable interviewing people he knows and will interact with in the future; if they don’t like the conclusions the project reaches, they might resent him. Third, he can do most of the research at home, but the interviews have to be done in person.

Now Dick asks Jane why she prefers the research, and why she doesn’t want to do the interviews. Jane says she enjoys talking to people, but having training in academic research, she could do that part efficiently, whereas she would have a big learning curve before she could properly design interview questions.

Let’s say that Dick reasons, because he has a head start on the research, he can afford to spend some time helping Jane design the interview questions if she does the actual interviewing. This would allow him to work at home and avoid interviewing people he knows. But it would take more time, thus partly offsetting his head start on the research. However, he could further suggest that Jane do a small portion of the research along with the interviews, thereby bringing his working time back to about what he had hoped it would be.

Jane agrees to this plan. All her interests are satisfied. She is more than willing to do the actual interviewing (which she enjoys) and a little of the research (at which she is efficient) in return for not having to design the interview questions all by herself.

Put yourself in Jane’s shoes. What would have happened if Dick had not tried to think of ways to (1) work at home, (2) avoid talking to his fellows, and (3) reduce your learning curve on interview questions? What if, instead of discovering and addressing these interests, Dick had made it his goal to get the entire research phase of the project for himself and get you to do the entire interview phase? What if he had tried to cajole, argue or bully you into doing the interview phase?

In a good-case scenario, you might have agreed to each do half the interviews and half the research. How well would your interests have been satisfied by that plan? How does the halvsies plan compare with your interest satisfaction when Dick used an interest-oriented approach?

Worse, if Dick is a better cajoler, arguer or bully than you are, you might have ended up with the entire interview process, including design.

Now suppose that you know Dick doesn’t care a hoot about how happy you are with the your part of the project. He only accommodated you in order to get himself out of doing the interviews. Would you prefer that, instead of trying to address your interests, albeit for his own selfish reasons, he argued or bullied you?

Speaking for myself, I only wish everyone who wanted to persuade me of something would take the interest-oriented approach, no matter what their motivation.

But there’s more. Notice that Dick also achieved a higher level of interest satisfaction for himself when he used the interest-oriented approach rather than the halvsies approach. Even if his first few attempts at interest-orientation are selfishly motivated, when he experiences the results, he begins to release the win-lose assumption, release his fear of losing, and so release his fear of sincerely caring for others. And once he begins to care, he learns that the interest-oriented approach works even better for him.

Like the lady who commented on my dialogue demonstration, we intuitively feel that, at least in a congregation, of all places, everyone should deal unselfishly and compassionately with one another. We also know that this doesn’t always happen. Whether the person you’re dealing with cares about you or only himself, you will be better off if he uses the same interested-oriented consensus skills you do.

As a writer, trainer and consultant on consensus, persuasion and communication, I find that many of my professional decisions revolve around what to say and how to say it. On days when I can afford the time to loll in bed for a while after awakening (no early appointments), I am often surprised at how many breakthrough ideas occur to me. This works best when, rather than working at a decision, I simply relax and let my thoughts flow freely.

Just a few days ago, while listening to my spontaneous thoughts, I developed some good ideas for my next book. Moreover, it was during that slow awakening time that it occurred to me to write about that very process in this blog.

Of course, not everyone can afford to do this every morning. Many feel that it’s all they can do to get to work on time. Creative lolling is even more challenging for parents of minor children. Still, most people can find a way to practice free-flowing thought at least one day per week.

If you watched one less TV show in the evening, could you go to bed thirty minutes earlier and set your clock thirty minutes earlier? On weekends, do you really need to pop out of bed the minute your eyes open and hurry off to do errands? If you tend to nap in front of the television, how about turning it off, getting really comfortable, and taking a more deliberate nap from which you will wake to the peace and quiet that help you hear your 1st thoughts?

A couple might agree that, if one of them is contemplating particular decision, the other will take complete charge of the children the next morning so that the problem solver can lie in for a while. The problem solver agrees to return the favor another day. If they can’t do this first thing in the morning, they might try a weekend afternoon, one of them taking the children out, leaving the other free to nap and then practice free-flowing thought afterword.

Even if you can’t manage much lolling time, there are other ways to boost your unconscious mind’s ability to work while you sleep. Simply focusing on the decision in question just before you nod off can help. It’s best to do this in a calm and relaxed state, rather than fretfully, so take a few mindfully deep breaths before you begin to focus on the issue.

And even if you must get up as soon as the alarm rings, try to minimize sensory distractions for a while. For example, don’t turn on a radio, television or phone while brushing your teeth, doing your hair, and dressing. On the way to work, try listening to some soft, slow-paced music, rather than news or talk radio.

Most importantly, even if you do nothing to boost the process, pay attention to whatever thoughts you have upon waking. They just might provide the inspiration you need to have a successful day.

Henny Penny readily gathered followers because it’s easiest to influence people when they feel a sense of crisis. Like most of the brain circuits compliance professionals exploit, willingness to take action in a true crisis is generally adaptive. When you hear a siren, you don’t spend time wondering if it’s a real emergency or whether the firefighters simply want a clear path to the donut shop. Better safe than sorry. You pull over and let the fire engine pass. Donations to the Red Cross rise in the wake of a natural disaster, as well they should.

But people can influence us by prolonging our initial sense of crisis, exaggerating an actual event, or even creating a false crisis. Sometimes their intentions, and the results, are good. Charles Duhigg writes that, after the 1987 Kings Cross fire in the London Underground, a government-ordered investigation resulted in many suggestions for change. Bogged down by long-entrenched procedures, the Underground failed to take up these suggestions. But the lead investigator extended the sense of crisis by holding public hearings and interviews a year after the fire. “By inflaming the sense of crisis, he created flexibility within the organization, and within six months, everything about the London Underground had changed.”[1] Good intentions, good result.

But when a TV ad for security systems shows a masked man breaking into a house while telling us that an American home is broken into every few minutes, our autopilot gets the sense that that masked man will be at your window any moment.

Several years ago, I decided to see whether my local property taxes could be reduced. The first protest assistance company I checked with ran regular TV ads depicting people in great distress because of their taxes. When I actually read their contract, I didn’t like what I saw. So I then checked out a second company that had sent me a low key mailing. The second company’s terms were much better.

In retrospect, I’m not surprised that the company with the alarmist ads charged fees many people would either not notice in the fine print, or not understand. Sometimes vendors use alarmism or other compliance tactics because the merits of their products or services don’t measure up.

Many advertisements and sales pitches exaggerate the sense of crises in subtle ways without actually lying. Still other crisis statements are downright untrue, but they still get spread by the Henny Pennys of this world. Today’s Henny Pennys can go far beyond word of mouth alarmism. They tell us the sky is falling by email and on social media, reaching more Turkey Lurkeys, who spread the crisis statements exponentially.

Appeals for donations or other non-purchase actions often seek to inflame our fear or outrage. Such emotions may have helped the earliest humans deal effectively when another tribe attacked their camp, but they don’t always serve us in modern life.

I subscribe to a number of list servers for causes dear to my heart. I want to stay informed about news relating to these causes, but sometimes feel overwhelmed by the frequency of the email messages. For a time, I questioned whether I was giving more than was prudent in terms of my finances. Was I giving disproportionately to some organizations based on the composition or frequency of their appeals, rather than on the relative worthiness of their cause?”

Moreover, many of these email solicitations reflected an ongoing or new issue that was depicted as a crisis. Even if all these crises were real and unexaggerated, they began to get me down. Add to this the posting of similar messages on Facebook, and no wonder we sometimes feel that life itself is one continuous crisis.

It is neither normal nor healthy to live in a constant state of crisis, fear or outrage. Nor is it helpful. When we focus on negative words, repeatedly reading or saying them (aloud or in our minds) we can actually enable negative outcomes. Carl Jung said, “What we resist persists.” The words that help an organization raise the most money for a cause are not necessarily the words that help that cause when we repeat them over and over among ourselves.

Of course we want to be aware of problems so we can think about how to solve them. But once we have a vision of what those solutions look like, it’s better to think and talk about the solutions. Are you against pollution? Think and talk about clean air and clean water. Are you concerned about heart disease? Think and talk about healthy hearts. Mother Teresa said, “I will never attend an anti-war rally. If you have a peace rally, invite me.”

Here are some other tips for keeping alarmism from dragging you down, emotionally or financially:

• If, after seeing or hearing a sales pitch, you feel anxious, don’t purchase immediately. Take time to let your knee jerk reaction ebb. Then, do a little research. So an American home is broken into every few minutes. But how many homes are there in the U.S.? What percent of homes do the break ins represent? How often are homes in your city, your neighborhood, broken into? How do the costs and benefits of the alarm company that used the scare tactics compare with competitors’ products?
• Don’t take a Henny Penny approach to donations. Decide how much you can afford to donate to each of your pet causes, and how often. Keep a handy list of your donations—organization, date and amount given. When you receive a compelling appeal, find your last donation to the organization in question on your list. Then, determine whether donating again now would comply with your pre-determined budget and schedule. This doesn’t mean you can’t make an extra donation to the Red Cross in the event of a disaster, or a one-time donation to a non-pet cause, but only that you do so with the big picture in mind.
• When you’ve read or heard negative news, decide whether there’s anything helpful you can do, and want to do, about it. If so, do it. If not, move on. In either case, balance yourself by consciously giving thanks for several good things—a wonderful friend, good weather, a story about someone doing a good deed, and take time to rest in the good feelings those reflections evoke.
• For any given cause, there are usually multiple support organizations. If one organization typically uses inflammatory language to exaggerate everything as an outrage or a horrible threat, look for another organization that presents the issue in more realistic terms. Reward the behavior you want to encourage by donating to the organization with the realistic messages, and stop reading, watching and responding to excessive alarmism.
• If you can’t find an acceptable alternate organization, or the frequent alarmer is just too important for you to cut off, try to wait for them to send a solution-oriented appeal, then reward the behavior by donating in response to that appeal, rather than a more inflammatory one. Or go directly to their website and make a donation that is not responsive to any particular exaggerated appeal.
• Don’t be a Turkey Lurkey. Be careful what you repeat or share through email or social media. Check things out on Snopes.com or several different reputable news sources. Reward the behavior you want to encourage by sharing the realistic report, not the exaggerated (or even erroneous) one. And when you realize that all your Facebook friends have already heard about crisis X two or three times, don’t post a fourth story making the same point in similar negative terms. Post a solution, or nothing at all.
• And for every bad news story you feel you must share because it’s not widely known, balance with two or three upbeat items—good news, good wishes, or something humorous.
• Finally, speaking of humor, take time for a good-humored laugh several times a day.

Instead of Henny Penny or Turkey Lurkey, you can be the wise monarch in the palace, creating more solutions than crises.

To paraphrase, simply restate the other person’s point in different words, then, ask if you got it right. People often repeat themselves because, when you disagree with them, they feel you didn’t get their point. As soon as they realize that your reply is moving in a different direction, they tune you out and turn their minds (and mouths) to making you understand.

When you paraphrase another person’s ideas, then, ask if you got it right, he may correct you or elaborate. That’s good. It saves you from trying to address the wrong idea or an incomplete idea. So you paraphrase again till he agrees that you’ve got it. Now you’ve proved to him that you fully understood, even if you didn’t agree. You’ve taken away the temptation for him to tune out and redouble his efforts to get through to you. Now is the time when he’s most likely to listen.

Be sure to use different words. If you simply parrot his words, you don’t prove you understood, and he might even think you are mocking or dismissing him.

Let’s look at an example. Beth tells you, “I don’t appreciate that nasty look you gave me at the meeting yesterday.”

You reply, “It wasn’t about you. I was—“

Beth interrupts, “It was ugly. And we were in a meeting.”

When Beth interrupts and repeats herself, that’s your clue that she needs to feel heard before she can listen. You think about her words, then try this paraphrase, “It sounds like you felt that others at the meeting would judge you because of the look on my face. Is that right?”

Beth: “Well, yeah. You were looking right at me.” She has let go of part of her repetition, the part about being at a meeting. You’re making progress, even though she is still repeating herself about the look.

You paraphrase about the look. “And you felt that that look on my face expressed disapproval of you, correct?”

Beth corrects you. “More like suspicion.”

You paraphrase again. “Or distrust?”

Beth: “Yes.”

Although you don’t have to agree with what you paraphrase, you can calm people down when you can find something to agree with. So you say, “If I felt someone looked at me with suspicion, I wouldn’t like it either.”

Beth: “So why did you do it?” More progress. Beth has stopped repeating herself and has asked you a question. She’s now ready to hear your answer.

You: “Actually, I thought Charles’s criticism of your part of the project might be untrue and unfair. I guess my suspicion was about what he said, but I was looking at you because Charles had directed my attention your way and also because I was looking for your reaction.”

“Well, I think it made the others think you agreed with Charles.” Beth is still complaining, but you continue to make progress because she is now actually listening and responding to your statements.

You: “It might have, and I’m going to correct that impression by expressing support for your part of the project to those people.”

So your resolution for this month is: once a day, choose a statement someone else has made and, even if you think you know how to respond, take the time to paraphrase first.

The statement doesn’t have to be difficult or controversial. For example:

Him: I’m tired of eating in the company cafeteria.

You: You’d like more variety, huh?

Him: You bet.

Later, when you feel frustrated because someone just won’t listen, and counterarguments are hammering on the roof of your mouth trying to escape, this counterintuitive technique will come to you more naturally.

And for more uses and benefits of paraphrasing and other forms of “mirroring,” check out Chapter 11 of Bridges to Consensus.

Gracie’s volunteer group of fifteen undertook the design and crafting of 135 miniature quilts to attach to the tops of the award ribbons for a quilting contest associated with the Quiltfest biennial show. [With Ms. Killough’s permission, I’ve included an image of one of the awards with this article.]

Volunteer and affinity groups have even greater consensus needs than commercial organizations. In this respect, they are more like religious and nonprofit organizations. In the business world, the old command-and-control paradigm can function for at least a while, although collaborative processes often work better. A boss can tell a worker what to do, and the worker is less likely to rebel if he’s getting paid to do what the boss wants. The worker may look for another employer who values his contributions and meets his need better, but he takes time to do so, and usually gives notice if he quits.

However, in groups like Gracie’s, as in churches and nonprofits, members can more easily vote with their feet if their needs are ignored, and they can do so on the spur of the moment. So building consensus among volunteers can be even more important than in commercial settings.

A natural leader and talented artist, Gracie excels at envisioning a good plan for a project such as the contest awards. It’s tempting for such leaders to simply present their visions and push for acceptance. However, Gracie writes that, inspired by Bridges to Consensus:

Rather than force the group to meet my goals, I used the “Three Magic Questions” and was thrilled with the results. I found that my group was open minded and motivated to work together. Instead of making an executive decision when we encountered issues, I rallied for dialogue on a solution.

It was a challenge for me to simply document the process the bee developed, but it turned out to be one of my best contributions to the team. During a key month of production, I was out of town helping my mother recover from hip replacement surgery. My quilt bee used the production documents I wrote to continue in my absence.

The project is complete six months ahead of schedule and my quilt bee members are thrilled with the results. I am very proud of the 2012 QuiltFest Awards and of the friendships that we strengthened during their creation.

Like Gracie, many people find that, when it comes to team leadership, less can be more. She found it challenging to ask questions and listen more than she spoke, but once she tried it, Gracie learned that soliciting everyone’s ideas resulted in a better plan from her own perspective as well. And asking the right questions inspired fifteen “highly opinionated” people to want to work collaboratively.

As explained in Bridges to Consensus, when you offer most of the solution ideas, you often wind up contributing more effort than other group members. When we focus on the interests we wish to satisfy, rather than rush in with a full-blown plan, we may find that others have ways to address our interests even better than we ourselves imagined.

Did Gracie “demote” herself from a team leader to a mere scribe by taking notes? Not at all. She was still the leader, and her production documentation led the group in her absence. In her own words, “Your book made me a hero on this project. I can’t thank you enough.”

But the part of Gracie’s story I like best is her comment about how the process she used strengthened friendships among the group members—proof positive that our consensus skills really do build bridges.

In Predictably Irrational, Ariely writes that most of us can’t determine what we want without context. We need relatively. In the case of the shirts, a $12 savings seems worth a twenty-minute trip because you are comparing $55 and $43. In that context, the difference seems significant.

But what if you continue browsing in Southside Mall and find a new sofa you like for $1999. The same passerby says she saw the sofa at Northside for $1987? Now would you make the trip? Ariely says most people would not. The same $12 difference seems insignificant when you are comparing two four-digit items.

Logically, $12 is worth the same in either case, but because our brains our wired to make relative choices, it seems worth a trip in the case of the shirt, but not in the case of the sofa.

Marketing and sales people not only can use this to influence us, sometimes they must. Ariely tells us the first home bread baking machine introduced to the market drew little interest from consumers. No one knew how to assess its value. But on expert advice, the manufacturer, Williams-Sonoma, introduced a second model of bread baking machine that was larger and more expensive. Sales of the original machine took off when people had something analogous to compare it with.

We are wired to compare things because, in many cases, comparison is adaptive, it usually helps us make good decisions and make them efficiently. But this wiring also means that we can be manipulated into paying too much for something by the presence of an artificially inflated price on a similar type item shown for that purpose. You tell a realtor the most you want to pay for a house is $150,000. She shows you a beautiful house listed for $200,000 “just to give you a range for reference,” a very nice house for $170,000, and a less attractive house for $145,00. Now the $170,000 house looks like a good deal.

Our hard-wired need for relativity extends beyond money matters. Ariely’s experiments showed that college students’ interest in dating a person in a photograph could be skewed by Ariely’s choice of other photos shown along with it.

The same mental wiring causes us to judge ourselves by comparison to others. When federal securities regulators first required companies to disclose the salaries and perks of their top level executives, people thought that this requirement would cause the companies to moderate executive pay to avoid embarrassing bad press. Instead, executive pay levels increased because, when one executive could learn that another earned more than he did, he would demand more.

Sadly, we often hurt ourselves more than any marketer could hurt us by comparing our own situations with others’. Jealousy drives us to want as much or more than others have, and the more we have, the more we want, even though studies show that the happiest people are often those of more modest means.

We even compare ourselves to ourselves. We move up from a Chevy to a Cadillac, and before you know it, we feel we need a Ferrari. Making the same salary for ten years somehow doesn’t feel right, although it may provide a good lifestyle and the ability to provide for retirement. How many people have quit a pleasant and personally satisfying job for a higher paying position that increases stress and decreases family and leisure time?

How can we protect ourselves from relativity-based marketing gimmicks (and from our own jealousy)? Predictably Irrational recommends surrounding ourselves with smaller comparisons. If you go to a party, don’t hang around next to the big shot surrounded by admirers. Rather, start a conversation with an ordinary person on the other side of the room.

Ariely reports that one wise man owned a Porsche but realized he would soon want to move up to a Ferrari, but that it wouldn’t make him happier. He deliberately adjusted his reference point by selling the Porsche and buying a Toyota Prius.

When applying these techniques, I advise making a point of noticing how much you enjoy speaking with that ordinary person at the party and all the things you can do with the money you save on the Prius. Relishing those feelings can help you expand your brain wiring.

I would add that some of the techniques we use in consensus building can help us here, too. Before making an important decision, take a break (see Bridges to Consensus, Chapter 9). Time alone can lessen the autopilot pull of relative thinking. Then identify the comparisons influencing you. How valid are they?

Ask yourself questions that clarify your interests (Bridges, Chapter 5), not only those interests related to the current decision, but broader life interests as well. Why are you considering driving to another mall for a better price on the shirt? To save money. What is the value of the gas you’ll burn making a second shopping trip? At today’s prices, it’s probably enough to eat up the savings on the shirt.

If you didn’t make the second trip, what would you do with the time you’d spend driving to another mall? Would you get to read your child a story before she goes to bed? Is that worth $12?

Buying a $200,000 house can make an additional $10,000 to replace some of the carpet with tile seem trivial, but what would you do with $10,000 if you won it in a lottery?

Even small decisions based on unsound comparisons can add up. Do you habitually buy the brand of pickles that costs the least? Good idea, unless the cheaper jar contains fewer ounces. If you eat pickles every day with your lunch, the savings over time justifies the time it takes to compare brands more thoroughly.

Of course we will still make decisions based on comparisons. It’s part of the human condition, and as mentioned, often adaptive. But with a little more attention, we can make those decisions more logically, adding a touch of relative sanity.