This morning, my son Jeffrey suggested we meditate together. “Great,” I replied, “where should we sit?”

“The view is nice from the hotel window, let’s just sit here.” I looked out the window in incredible disbelief. “What the heck?” I thought. And then I said, “What I like about you, Jeffrey, is you see the positive in everything, even parking lots and the backs of buildings.”

He said, “Allow me”, and he pushed the drapes aside a bit more, and gently took my head in his hands, redirecting the way I was looking out the window. Yes, we had two very different views from our hotel room, as his included a sprawling Arizona mountain landscape.

“Wow,” I said, “I could have left this hotel and never realized we had a view!”

I feel like this happens so often in corporate America. Last week I was having coffee with an executive and he shared with me a conflict that had occurred in his office recently.

The client retold that he had said during a meeting, “I think we might be agreeing with each other.” When that didn’t work, he said, “I don’t think we are very far apart here.” Both are statements of finding commonality, and understanding differing points of view.

Unfortunately, and the reason we were meeting for coffee, is that two members of that group were already too incensed and upset to listen. They were unable to have their vision “gently redirected.”

What do you miss when you don’t allow yourself to be “gently redirected?”