I appreciate the unique qualities in every person I meet.

The quietest person in most offices turns out, on inspection, to be the only one who understands the payroll system, or who can talk a furious customer down in ninety seconds, or who has kept an allotment going for twenty years.

Unique qualities are rarely the ones on display. What is visible is usually personality - loud, dry, anxious - and personality is a poor guide to what somebody can actually do or has actually survived.

Which is why asking people what they are good at produces such surprising answers, and why so few of them are ever asked.