Translations:Creating Comfortable Conversations/6/en

Finally, comfort is not the same as agreement. Groups that never disagree are sometimes performing ease rather than experiencing it. A conversation can hold difference and still feel safe, provided disagreement stays attached to ideas rather than to people's standing in the room.

| Social=Conversation in social settings does a great deal of unspoken work. It establishes who belongs, distributes attention, and communicates the group's norms to anyone encountering them for the first time. People often report that they decide within the first stretch of an evening whether they will speak freely or stay peripheral, and that this decision is based on small cues rather than explicit welcome.