There is a story about a Rabbi who invited an apprentice to watch him mediate a dispute between two congregants. The Rabbi started the process by meeting each person separately. The first person was adamant and persuasive, and the Rabbi responded to his story by saying: “You are absolutely right!” The second person was even more persuasive, and the Rabbi responded to his very different version of events with: “You are absolutely right!”

The apprentice was genuinely puzzled, and as soon as he and the Rabbi were left alone, he said: “Rabbi, how could you tell both people they were right, when their stories were so diametrically opposed? This does not make any sense.”

Predictably, the Rabbi’s response was: “You know something? You are absolutely right.”

I am reminded of this story during meetings where two sides argue passionately in favor of their views and against seemingly opposite views. To the outside observer, both sides may seem 100% right. But why is it so significant to prove that one side is right and another side is wrong? Both sides could be 100% right from their own perspectives, but also 100% irrelevant. There may well be a bigger and more compelling truth that both of them fail to see and consider, because they are too busy trying to prove that they are right and their opponents are wrong.

A colleague of mine summed it up this way: If you have a point of view A, and I have a point of view B, there may well be a point of view C, combining the benefits of both A and B, and possibly without their respective drawbacks. But we’ll only be able to find point of view C by listening to one another and by changing our mode from “combat” (whereby we fight to prove that we are right) to “construction” (where we work together, as a team, to build the bigger truth).