24 Cold buttons What we say and what other people hear are rarely the same thing You'd think that building relationships with people ­ either personal relationships or business relationships ­ should be easy for us. After all, as any anthropologist will tell you, humans are social creatures by nature. It's natural for us to interact with others. It's natural for us to build relationships and form social groups. So why is it that we so often struggle in our efforts to connect with the people around us? Sure, we can blame stress, circumstances, outside factors, karma ­ any number of things. But the truth is, a lot of our social challenges are often self- inflicted. And most of them are entirely preventable. Along with hot buttons, we are also all fully equipped with our own unique set of cold buttons. We all have words, phrases and actions that get our dander up a little when we are exposed to them. Have you ever been in conversation with someone, and