Failure to Communicate: How Conversations Go Wrong and What You Can Do to Right Them

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

When Conversations Go Wrong

JACK GRIFFIN and Mike Antonelli became friends in college, where they played hockey at Clarkson. ¹ The two small-town Midwesterners roomed together for their last three years and had stayed in touch when Mike went off to law school in Nebraska and Jack went back to Cleveland and into his family’s concrete products business.

While Jack rose through the ranks of the family company, Mike dabbled first in government contracts and then in corporate transactions, never really finding his place. He began to wonder if law school had been a mistake.

By the time Jack was thirty-seven, he had married, renovated an old Victorian in Cleveland Heights, and had three sons. At the same age, Mike was in Seattle, ...