Have three or four openers ready before you need them. For what it is worth. Can I run something by you. You might not like this, so give me the benefit of the doubt.

Before someone has said a word, you have often already decided what they are: only here because they were made to come, not really interested, wasting your time. That decision changes how the meeting goes.

This is not a milestone you pass. The two year old's version goes, then a version comes back at twenty two, and again at fifty two, wearing whatever clothes that stage of life provides.

Their account makes sense from where they are standing. So does yours. Granting the first does not cost you the second.