Remember the Pan Pasand advert from our childhood in which a girl says angrily, "Shaadi aur tumse? Kabhi nahi." Someone offers her a Pan Pasand candy, and she repeats exactly the same words, but with such charm and grace that the sting of rejection disappears.

Imagine if we could do that before a strategy meeting or when addressing the elephant in the room with our partner, in business or in life. Pop something, say what needs saying kindly, and avoid a Mahabharat. Just respond with empathy. 

Researchers tried a version of this. They asked couples to discuss things they usually fought about. You know those conversations. The subject is today's problem, the evidence goes back seventeen years, and somebody's mother will eventually be summoned.

One group received intranasal oxytocin, while the other received a placebo. Among the 47 couples studied, those given oxytocin showed a higher ratio of positive to negative communication and lower cortisol levels after the discussion. The study did not claim to repair marriages. But handling the same old fight more kindly, with less stress afterwards, seems a decent place to start. Doesn’t it?

Imagine wearing an oxytocin patch, like a nicotine patch, before an appraisal, a strategy meeting or that dreaded moment when your partner says, “We need to talk.” Nice idea. But oxytocin doesn't work the same way for everyone or in every situation, and it certainly doesn't guarantee kindness. So, what can we do instead?

One experiment found that support from a close friend reduced men's cortisol responses to a stressful task. In a brain-scanning study, married women anticipating electric shocks showed reduced threat responses while holding their husbands’ hands. Of course, the quality of the marriage mattered.

A reassuring touch is not a pharmaceutical, yet it can still change our stress response. We may not have the oxytocin spray, but we do have behaviours that can produce similar effects.

One caution: please do not hold your finance director's hand.

US President Jimmy Carter had considerably more consequential meetings to manage: negotiations between Egypt and Israel, five years after the 1973 war.

In 1978, talks had stalled. Carter brought the leaders to Camp David, with its woods, chess, an outing to Gettysburg, their advisers and their wives, Rosalynn Carter and Aliza Begin. Journalists were kept outside and given controlled briefings. It was rather different from a WhatsApp group argument, where everyone watching has an opinion and nobody wants to back down.

Even with the ‘nice’ setting, direct talks got so bad that Carter spent much of the summit walking between the two delegations.

He carried a shared draft back and forth, collecting objections and revising it. There was one document everyone could criticise. He didn’t force everyone to sit in the same room; he gave the disagreement an address. “You are impossible” became “This line needs to go”.

Near the end, Carter gave Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin photographs he had requested for his grandchildren, personalised with each child's name. Begin became emotional. After days of arguing over borders and settlements, here was a grandfather looking at his grandchildren's names. Carter recorded a change in Begin’s willingness to reach an agreement.

The summit produced separate frameworks and sometimes relied on deliberately ambiguous language where precise agreement remained impossible. The framework for peace between Egypt and Israel led to the 1979 peace treaty.

Listen First
In an ordinary disagreement, too, two conversations can be happening at once: one with the other person and one in our head.

Someone raises a factual objection: the payment system hasn't passed testing. What lands in your ears is, "How dare they question me? Who do they think they are?" Meanwhile, the payment system is still waiting to be discussed.

By the time they reach their second sentence, you have prepared a defence against something they haven't accused you of.

One way out is surprisingly simple: summarising. Restate their concern in your words: "So, you're worried that customers will be charged without receiving a confirmed order?"

They might say yes. They might say you have misunderstood completely. Either answer is better than arguing with the version that you invented.

"I feel undermined" is about you. "This person is undermining me" is a claim about them, and you haven't checked it yet. Mindfulness is just the gap where you notice how fast you made that jump.

Perhaps the objection was delivered rudely. Perhaps it also reveals an expensive mistake. Both deserve a hearing. Otherwise, we may spend company money defending ourselves against an insult nobody actually delivered.

Once the payment problem is back on the table, there is something to investigate. How often does it happen? Can it be contained? What would make the launch acceptable?

In psychology, we can reduce this to three steps: explore, clarify and act. Fancy words for: find out what failed, ask what would make it acceptable, and decide who owns the fix.

A room with no objections can look reassuring from the head of the table, especially when the person who spotted the flaw remembers what happened to the last colleague who spoke up. Congratulations, everyone agreed. The forecast is still wrong.

At home, "You never listen" can send us rummaging through every occasion on which we demonstrably did. We might even remember the date. The person speaking is still waiting to tell us what happened today.

Repeating "I understand" while waiting for our turn is remarkably like pressing the pedestrian crossing button and hoping the other person will stop talking.

You ask how their week was. Then you check your phone. Then you ask again. They can see exactly how much of you is in the room and how little attention you are paying to them. 

Sometimes a conversation needs a pause. "Can we come back to this after dinner?" gives the other person some idea of when it will resume. Walking away leaves them guessing whether the discussion is over or merely postponed.

There is also room for refusal. "I cannot do Thursday" gives us something to rearrange, unlike "You are always so demanding", which gives us another argument. And nobody has to remain in a conversation while being insulted.

Agreement requires deciding what happens next. The promised help with dinner needs a person, a task and a time. The launch needs someone responsible for testing and a decision about what happens if it fails. Otherwise, someone ends up washing the dishes again while the other person congratulates themselves on how beautifully they communicated.