[jaggederest]

I like to frame it as "not me versus you, us versus the problem" when things get too heated. Otherwise things degrade into ad hominem "Those goddamn X people", instead of "We're having a lot of problems getting our project to work with X"

[rarecoil]

I like this one, too. The moment the people are your adversary in a technical discussion, you have probably lost sight of the actual problem. Much of the time I find it's misaligned incentives or, as Amy wrote here, sometimes it's people working with obsolete context or old grudges. Reframing yourself first, and then the discussion, is very much the way to succeed.

[sdbrown]

My partner is a physician, and this is _exactly_ how they manage disagreements about treatment plans, almost by instinct. It is amazing how well this works at clearing things up.