Archives for June 2010

June 27, 2010

How Confident People Talk

I’m listening to the audio version of Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. So far, it’s a fascinating book and I have an intuition it only gets better. One thing I like about the characters in Ayn Rand’s novels is how they are constructed in epic proportions. Some of them are pure models of confidence, dedication and rational living.

Here is one piece of dialog in the book I wanted to share. It’s a part of the first discussion between Hank Rearden and Francisco d’Anconia. And I think it’s a great example of how two very confident people talk (especially follow Francisco d’Anconia).

He stood there for a while, leaning on a sense of privacy as if it were a physical support.

“Mr. Rearden,” said a strangely quiet voice beside him, “permit me to introduce myself. My name is d’Anconia.”

Rearden turned, startled; d’Anconia’s manner and voice had a quality he had seldom encountered before: a tone of authentic respect.

“How do you do,” he answered. His voice was brusque and dry; but he had answered.

“I have observed that Mrs. Rearden has been trying to avoid the necessity of presenting me to you, and I can guess the reason. Would you prefer that I leave your house?”

The action of naming an issue instead of evading it, was so unlike the usual behavior of all the men he knew, it was such a sudden, startling relief, that Rearden remained silent for a moment, studying d’Anconia’s face. Francisco had said it very simply, neither as a reproach nor a plea, but in a manner which, strangely, acknowledged Rearden’s dignity and his own.

“No,” said Rearden, “whatever else you guessed, I did not say that.”

“Thank you. In that case, you will allow me to speak to you.”

“Why should you wish to speak to me?”

“My motives cannot interest you at present.”

“Mine is not the sort of conversation that could interest you at all.”

“You are mistaken about one of us, Mr. Rearden, or both. I came to this party solely in order to meet you.”

There had been a faint tone of amusement in Rearden’s voice; now it hardened into a hint of contempt. “You started by playing it straight. Stick to it.”

“I am.”

“What did you want to meet me for? In order to make me lose money?”

Francisco looked straight at him. “Yes – eventually.”

“What is it, this time? A gold mine?”

Francisco shook his head slowly; the conscious deliberation of the movement gave it an air that was almost sadness. “No,” he said, “I don’t want to sell you anything. As a matter of fact, I did not attempt to sell the copper mine to James Taggart, either. He came to me for it. You won’t.”

Rearden chuckled. “If you understand that much, we have at least a sensible basis for conversation. Proceed on that. If you don’t have some fancy investment in mind, what did you want to meet me for?”

“In order to become acquainted with you,”

“That’s not an answer. It’s just another way of saying the same thing.”

“Not quite, Mr. Rearden.”

“Unless you mean – in order to gain my confidence?”

“No. I don’t like people who speak or think in terms of gaining anybody’s confidence. If one’s actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others, only their rational perception. The person who craves a moral blank check of that kind, has dishonest intentions, whether he admits it to himself or not.”

How many people do you know with the skills and confidence to talk like that in real life? I certainly wish I would see more.

Filed Under: Attitude, Inspirational, People Skills Tagged With: , , , 10 Comments
June 21, 2010

Stop Trying to Control Your Emotions!

A lot of people think that I teach others how to control their emotions in order to improve their communication and people skills. I don’t. And let me make it clear right off the bat: I believe that trying to control your emotions is messy, dangerous and ineffective stuff.

Emotions are not meant to be controlled

Emotions are not supposed to be something we have direct and instant power over. That would defeat their purpose. Imagine one of our ancestors in the Stone Age who is attacked by a hungry bear, feels fear and has the impulse to run like hell.

But then, he decides: “Hey, I’m gonna control my fear and try to negotiate with this bear.” And he somehow switches off his fear just like that. You would have a dead caveman in the next 5 seconds, regardless of his people skills (a… bear skills). Our species would be extinct if we could all command emotions like that.

So, what is it that I teach within my attitude-based approach? What is it that you can effectively do about those nasty negative emotions you don’t want? The point is this:

Instead of trying to control your emotions, learn to manage them.

Controlling emotions vs. Managing emotions

Managing your emotions is subtly but meaningfully different than trying to control them. When you try to control your emotions, you do so by rejecting and repressing them. It’s like putting a cap over a pot of boiling water and pretending the water isn’t boiling. I see this as a bad idea for several reasons:

  • It requires a lot of effort and is intrinsically painful;
  • It doesn’t really work; you can only control your emotions to a small degree;
  • The emotions eventually bottle up and they overwhelm you;
  • In the long term, the whole process is stressful and damaging to your health.

Managing your emotions is not about trying to reject them or repress them. It’s not a combative process, it’s a transformational process. To manage your emotions means to:

  • Accept they are there and there’s a positive intention behind them;
  • Understand both the external aspects of your life and the internal aspects of your thinking which create them, amplify them and sustain them;
  • Address these aspects and change them, in order to change your emotional reactions.

When you manage your emotions, they do not change all of a sudden. There are leaps in awareness in this process which can create instant emotional changes, but for the most part, the whole process is gradual. It takes place step by step, as you either change how your life is or how you habitually think about it.

Sometimes, negative emotions are just signals that you’re doing things that are not aligned with your values and an external change is required; sometimes they are signals that your thinking in certain situations is irrational and an internal change is required.

Either way, by managing you are not addressing your emotions head on and you are not fighting them. You are going to the root of your emotions, you are pulling out the weeds and you are planting new seeds. This is why in a very Zen way, managing your emotions makes a lot more sense than trying to control your emotions.

Filed Under: Attitude, Inspirational, Psychology Tagged With: , , , , 13 Comments
June 15, 2010

Why Being Yourself Is Hard and How to Actually Achieve It

‘Be yourself’ has got to be one of the most popular and attractive pieces of advice for people skills development these days. I think I read it or hear it almost every day. It’s one of those things people say instantly when they want to help you embrace your flaws, be more comfortable and more expressive socially.

I believe that actually learning to be authentic is a pretty complex process. In my experience, giving a person advice like ‘be yourself’ will usually do nothing (and I mean nothing) to actually help that person achieve this. It’s a piece of advice in the same category with ‘be confident’ or ‘be positive’, which are just as ineffective.

Why? Because none of these things are something you just do. Most people would really love to just be themselves. But they simply can’t do it like that.

In order to master being yourself, you need to dig dipper, and understand the attitudes and beliefs which allow you to be yourself. Then, you need to work on developing them. As you develop these attitudes and beliefs, you will naturally end up being more authentic. But your focus is not on authenticity most of the time; it’s on building this foundation for it.

In the last years, helping people learn to be more authentic has been one of the most meaningful parts of my work. I firmly believe that being yourself is one of the most powerful people skills to have.

But I don’t teach this by telling my clients: ‘Just be yourself man! What the hell is wrong with you?!’ I help them work on this foundation I’m talking about. What is this foundation? When it comes to being authentic, I think there are some key attitudes one must learn:

  • That it’s OK to be imperfect, to have flaws and make mistakes;
  • That people generally won’t think you’re an idiot and reject you for them;
  • That even if some people do, it really doesn’t matter.

These attitudes are solid gold from my perspective. Once you manage to drill them deep into your habitual ways of thinking, being yourself becomes easy. You can no longer imagine yourself not being yourself, and it seems so silly to be otherwise.

Of course, if you’re not used to thinking and feeling in a way which is aligned with the key attitudes above, it will take some time and practice to master them. Adopting these beliefs and making them a natural part of you can take anywhere from 3 months to 3 years, depending where you are right now.

And this provided you actually use the right personal development tools. Considering that a lot of people use the ineffective ones, and even more don’t go beyond just trying to be themselves directly, what we’ve got in today’s world is a large population striving for authenticity and not getting there.

The good news is that the more people will learn to address people skills like being authentic by going beyond the surface, and the more they will use scientific, well grounded in reality tools for transformation, we will see great things happening.

Filed Under: Attitude, Inspirational, People Skills Tagged With: , , , , 28 Comments
June 9, 2010

How to Give the Really Negative Feedback to the People Who Really Can’t Take It

One thing I find interesting about the people who have the biggest flaws is that very often they’re also the ones who have the hardest time seeing them and accepting them. If a person is a real pain in the ass, she probably sees herself as a really cool person, with awesome people skills, who everybody loves.

This is the result of a combination of things:

  • A big ego;
  • An even bigger lack of self-awareness;
  • The facts that let’s face it, it’s hard to accept that you have some major flaws.

As a result, giving feedback to these people about their flaws (meaning really negative feedback) will usually leave you wondering what did you open your damned mouth in the first place. I am proud to have a pretty good success rate in giving really negative feedback to the people who really can’t take it, and getting through to them (and by ‘pretty good’ I mean about 50%).

Here are some of the ideas which create the best results specifically with these kinds of people, when you give them really negative feedback:

1. Catch them when they’re questioning themselves. Even the most arrogant and blind person has moments when she’s wondering if it’s possible that she did something wrong, that it’s her fault. When the manager with terrible people skills will lose his 5th employee that month, chances are that at least for a couple of minutes, he’s questioning his people skills as a manager. It’s the best opportunity to deliver the negative feedback.

2. Earn their trust. When a person knows that you mean to help her and that your judgment is sound, even if she usually can’t take negative feedback, she will become a lot more open to yours. I sometimes give pretty brutal feedback in my coaching to people who otherwise don’t take it well. And because I have earned their trust as a coach, they take my feedback well. Find your own ways to earn their trust, and use them.

3. Give it in thin slices. Don’t use one opportunity to tell a person like this about all her flaws, which could be quite a few. It works with some, but more often than not, it just seems like you’re set on butchering her and this is why her defenses will go up. My recommendation is that you point out one flaw in one feedback.

4. Back it up with hard evidence. It will be tough to convince a person like this of a certain flow. When you point it out, she will just deny it. This is the moment when you need to present real, powerful examples of that certain flaw. For example, when you say to this person that she often breaks her promises, she will say: “No I don’t. I never break my promises”. It is at this point that you pull out the big list of real situations when she did break her promises and start reading it. Kidding about the list by the way; you should have them in your head, otherwise is seems like a trial.

5. Whatever you do, do not loose your temper. With this person, it is very likely that as you give her the negative feedback, she will loose her temper and get verbally aggressive on you. In my perspective, if you do the same, it’s game over. Your chances of getting your feedback accepted have gone down to zero. This is why it’s essential to keep you calm, or at least to be able to fake it.

Don’t expect to make every person accept any feedback. No amount of people skills will allow you to do that. But, do expect to be able to break even the toughest shell, at least once in a while. And give it a try before saying no.

Filed Under: Career, People Skills, Psychology Tagged With: , , , , , , 12 Comments
June 4, 2010

Are You a Pain-In-The-Ass Person?

She calls me again. A business acquaintance of mine, who wants to partner up with me for this training, learning, changing the world project she has in mind. And again I say: “Thanks, but no thanks”.

The project is not the problem. It seems like a good idea. The person is the problem. I know from one too many previous experiences that working with her, interacting with her, is a burden. She is what I call a pain in the ass person.

You know the type: the manager whose employees quit constantly, the businessman nobody wants to work with, the friend nobody wants to hang out with. Even though this person might have good professional skills, because of bad character and even worse people skills, she manages to make everybody want to stay away from her. And of course, like most people in this category, she has no clue why this is happening and thinks people are just mean, evil creatures.

Unfortunately, pain in the ass people are very common. Over the years, I have worked with these kinds of people, helping them improve their people skills and attitudes. Are you a pain in the ass person?

I believe that the most important steps in not being a pain in the ass person are to accept that you might be one, at least to a certain degree, to understand the key traits this person has and to look for them at your own person. Here are some of the essential traits from my perspective:

1. Compulsive lying. Pain in the ass people will constantly tell you what they believe you want to here, without really thinking whether it’s the truth or not. They will make stuff up and lie constantly. Even when you catch them, they will apologize and promise not to do it again, than they’ll do it 10 minutes later. This makes it very hard to trust them. Speaking of promises…

2. Not keeping their promises. Pain in the ass people will promise big things all the time, but they will not even manage to keep their small promises. They will promise to send you an email tomorrow, and they will do it in 3 days. They will promise you an 800$ fee, and after you finish your job they’ll tell you they can only give you 400$.

 

3. Lack of fairness. Pain in the ass people will often want you to do most of the work, while they get most of the money and the appreciation. They bring little value to the table but they want to get as much value as possible. And when you ask for your fair share, they won’t think twice about calling you selfish, but they will fail to see their selfishness, especially when it’s even visible to a blind man.

4. Bad listening skills. Pain in the ass people will generally have bad communication skills, but their listening skills are usually the worse. They don’t really listen when you talk; they just phase out and think about their stuff. Then, when they have a thought they want to express, they will just interrupt you brutally and say it. This is how a hypothetical dialog with these people takes place.

5. Opposition to any idea different than their own. Pain in the ass people will reject your ideas simply because they are different from theirs. Their big egos cannot tolerate the thought that they are wrong or that someone else has a better idea. They will often try to bring arguments to support their side but in the end, even if they lose the debate on logic and arguments, they will simply ignore this and just say: “No, you’re wrong. We’ll do it my way.”

If you identify any of these traits at yourself, I strongly suggest you work on your people skills and eliminate them. These traits sabotage your relationships and performances like crazy. If you’re working or interacting with a person with these traits, I have 6 words for you: Get the hell out of there!

Filed Under: Career, People Skills Tagged With: , , 36 Comments