Perhaps the best way to describe it is to say that it was a skill of listening. Though it was possible for friend Giskard to influence others with his abilities, it was a matter of adjusting when they felt rather than sending a thought to them. Perhaps, had we time to experiment, we may have learned how to communicate in this way, but he only passed the programming matrix to me when he was commencing the cascading positronic failure that led to his permanent deactivation. There was no time.