When the response to an idea you disagree with is to take aim at an entire group of people with broad-sweeping strokes that stain them with the funk of dehumanization, it is unfair to the people — the individual human beings — who absorb our mass judgment.

When examined through the lens of building rapport, as well as Chris Hadnagy’s advice to leave people feeling better for having met you, how many of us can look at our lives and our interactions and say we lead with these intentions in mind?

When we merely seek to see the "other side" of complex issues, it oversimplifies and categorizes us into warring factions, and it prevents us from seeing the vast, gray middle where most of us actually reside.

I share these thoughts with you this week not to beat you up, but to help you get past any fear you might have of asking questions that have answers that might be uncomfortable for you.