The second distinction is that there is more than one way to talk and listen. There is an ordinary approach that works for simple problems, and there is an extraordinary approach that works for complex problems. The first distinction is that there is more than one way to solve problems.

I would like to offer two sets of practical distinctions that you can use to solve your tough problems more effectively. When we talk and listen in this way, we guarantee that we will end up trying to solve our tough problems by force. Our most common way of talking is telling, and our most common way of listening is not listening. Why is it that we so often end up trying to solve our tough problems by force? Why is it that our talking so often fails? The answer is both simple and at the same time subtle and challenging. I had tried to solve a tough problem by using authority: by force. I had managed to do in my own home what the Americans were doing in Iraq. The next morning she left and went to stay with her sister. I was furious! I told her that this kind of behavior was absolutely unacceptable and that she needed to change what she was doing if she wanted to use my phone and stay in my house.

One evening she had spent hours on the phone having a weepy conversation with an old boyfriend. She would go out without telling us, stay out partying until late, and sleep away the day. Then my youngest stepdaughter, who is 27 years old, came home for the holidays and immediately lapsed into her old teenage behavior. While this was happening, I was at my home in South Africa working on a book about how we can solve such tough, complex problems through open-minded, open-hearted talking and listening. If you’re not part of the problem, then you can’t be part of the solution. The second side prevailed, and the war started. government and its allies argued that talking could not work and that force was the only way to solve this problem. On one side, most of the world’s leaders and most of the countries on the United Nations Security Council argued that we needed to keep talking, with each other and with the Iraqis, to try to find a peaceful solution to this tough, complex problem. In December 2002, the entire world was arguing about what to do about Iraq.

The most common listening problem is