“You distill the essence of what the other person is saying, and then play it back to them. There’s no need to agree with the person – or even to pretend to like them. “The point is not to convince, nor to contradict, nor to take exception to, nor explain away,” as Friedman writes in Challenging Conflict, which he co-authored. “The point is to understand.”
Gary Friedman quoted in “Make America Talk Again”, The Guardian