The House of Unexpected Sisters by Alexander McCall Smith

I am doing a little light reading and came across this gem. Mma Ramotswe is talking to a friend who is planning to wear a conspicuous hat while observing a suspect. Mma Ramotswe persuades him to change his mind about the hat.

She was relieved, and as she drove away, leaving him to his task, she thought of how important it was to go halfway in a disagreement—to see the other person's point of view and to find the positive side of it; this little discussion with Mr. Polopetsi had been yet further proof of that. If you did that, if you expressed their viewpoint rather than your own, then you found that they often came round to seeing things as you saw them.

If only everybody would do this, she thought; if only the leaders of countries, politicians and people like that, would adopt the same approach, then how much more peaceful and harmonious would be our world. Rather than threatening one another with this, that and the next thing, they would say to one another, 'What good ideas you have! And how well you put them.'" And this would draw the response, "Well, your ideas are very good, too, and you are so right about just about everything!"

Or if they simply said to one another, "I like you." That was all that was required. "I like you." (Page 98)