Exercise 2 — Find the verb, or say that it isn't there

Three described capabilities. For each, write the filmable verb — or write the sentence this has no verb yet, because ___.

1. From a job posting: "Comfortable with ambiguity."
2. From a coach: "Let the other person finish."
3. From a friend, describing someone: "She makes people feel like they have time."

How to tell it's any good. You handled (1) well if your answer is a refusal plus a request — comfort is a state and there is no situation named, so the honest move is to say what is missing before guessing. You handled (2) well if a bystander could count your reps without being told what you were working on; note that it arrives as a negation, so a correct answer supplies the positive thing done in the gap. Number (3) is the trap. There is a set of filmable behaviors in it — the pause before answering, not naming the next appointment, not checking the time — but the capability is not those behaviors, and a person who performs them without the thing underneath produces precisely the uncanny effect the sentence was praising the absence of. If you produced a tidy three-part verb for (3) and felt pleased with it, read it again and ask whether you would want it done to you.