i recently received an email from a friend who is using the following quote as her email signature, i thought it would be a good way to ring in the new year as we take our ‘lessons learned’ into 2006:

“The colossal misunderstanding of our time is the assumption that insight will work with people who are unmotivated to change. Communication does not depend on syntax, or eloquence, or rhetoric, or articulation but on the emotional context in which the message is being heard. People can only hear you when they are moving toward you, and they are not likely to when your words are pursuing them. Even the choices words lose their power when they are used to overpower. Attitudes are the real figures of speech.”

Edwin H. Friedman
http://www.wisdomquotes.com/002877.html

though i do think articulation and eloquence help!