Kuala Lampur, Oct. 2 -- When we are young, we are taught that the loudest person in the room is the one with power. I remember my mother calling me home to bathe because it was almost Maghrib time, her voice rising above the chatter of us children playing marbles. Or that kindergarten teacher who told us to line up in a straight line, her clap sharper than the noise we were making. In those moments, authority was loud.

As adults, many of us carry that lesson forward. We assume that volume equals strength. That certainty equals wisdom. Yet over the years, I have come to see the opposite. Shouting rarely convinces anyone. More often, it is a sign that the argument itself is running thin.

The art, then, is not in raising your voice first, ...