You've completed the room reservation in time. You've arranged for coffee and beverages. You've set up the agenda and mailed it in advance to all participants. All feedback has been incorporated, of course. All flip chart supports are loaded with fresh pads of paper.

As a true follower of Getting Things Done (GTD), you've tracked all those tasks as next action items and completed them, over time. You think you've also dealt with the 20,000 feet perspective on that little meeting project; covered all areas of your responsibilities.

Then the meeting begins. Discussion starts. After a while, you feel like you'd rather be amidst a bunch of howler monkeys during their mating season. Why isn't anybody listening?

Maybe, you've missed some of your responsibilities. You have dealt with facts, space and time, but maybe you were not paying enough attention to the

Great Commandment of Communication:
You shall listen fourfold and you shall speak fourfold.  »

You've probably been there: despite your best intentions a conversation turns sore with anger or even into a heated dispute. How could anybody be so stubborn and tenacious? The behavior you'd like to see just vanishes somewhere on the horizon. How could things get so out of hand?

If you're assuming, in principle, that your counterpart is quite reasonable, «in general», then there is hope. Precisely because you might have nearly forgotten that assumption.

The concept I'll describe was written down in 1951 by Paul Helwig, a German psychologist, philosopher, stage director and screenplay writer. Later, Friedemann Schulz von Thun (a psychologist, too) added several practical extensions to it.  »