Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Etiquette

A Great Email Time-Saver

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When you’re trying to schedule a meeting with someone, make it easier for them to respond by proposing one or two choices in your initial email: “How about 9:00 AM on Tuesday?” or “Are you available on Tuesday at 10:00 AM or on Wednesday at 3:00 PM?”

Don’t give them many options (“any time next week”) or, worse yet, don’t ask them to leaf through their calendar and suggest a time (“I know you’re busy. Let me know when you want to meet.”)

Keeping it brief and specific maximizes the chance that one of your suggested times will work out, and they’ll quickly say “yes” without further iteration.

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  4. How to Organize Your Inbox & Reduce Email Stress
  5. Stop asking, “What do you do for a living?”

How to Reduce Thanksgiving Stress

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Getting everything organized in your kitchen for this week’s annual celebration—one that nonetheless marks the Anglo-Saxon incursion of someone else’s country—is challenging enough, but hosting Thanksgiving gets even more stressful as soon as guests start arriving. You’re obliged to talk to them, entertain them, and keep them busy and occupied, all the while prepping and oven-coordinating.

How to Reduce Thanksgiving Stress One way to reduce your festive stress is to assign each guest a simple responsibility. Get aunt Mary to set the table, uncle Roger to get all the wine and the champagne ready, and the children to prepare the place cards. Somebody else can organize simple Thanksgiving games for the restless kids.

Give them all specific goals; don’t dictate perfection. Make sure the jobs are easy enough, short, and, preferably centered away from the kitchen, allowing you to focus on getting the food ready.

Appoint one dependable person to operate as your right-hand person—this person can coordinate with everybody else.

Your guests will feel satisfied that they’ve helped, and you’ll get some valuable space to get everything ready and have a fun time with your family.

Reduce Thanksgiving stress further by not partaking in that ritualized consumer orgy called Black Friday. Join the Buy Nothing Day movement in protest against excessive consumerism.

Addendum: When multiple families assemble for large gatherings, there’s a tendency for entire families to sit together. That’s a shame; if people could scatter around the dining table, there’d be more interactions and a livelier event. Bear this in mind while you decide on seating arrangements.

Wondering what to read next?

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  4. How to Overcome Shyness in Initiating Conversations
  5. Could Limiting Social Media Reduce Your Anxiety About Work?

Etiquette: How to Tell Someone Their Fly is Down?

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Etiquette: How to Tell Someone Their Fly is Down? What do you do if you notice that your boss’s fly is down? Or a manager’s undergarment is showing?

Should you tell them?

Definitely. Because they’ll want to know.

Most people would rather be a little embarrassed now in the presence of someone familiar than later in the company of clients or someone important.

Keep it simple and say, “Jeff, your fly is down.” Or “Hey Rita, your slip is showing.”

Tell them quietly and discreetly. Don’t be vague.

If you’re uneasy with speaking about this to the opposite sex, request a person of that sex to deliver the message.

You may feel briefly awkward and uncomfortable, but the consequences of not informing them could be high—especially if it becomes apparent that you were aware of the problem and said nothing.

The other person will be appreciative. You’ll gain some respect not only for limiting their exposure but also for being candid and considerate.

If they get angry, declare, “I was just trying to be helpful.”

Wondering what to read next?

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  3. Is Showing up Late to a Meeting a Sign of Power?
  4. Don’t Be Interesting—Be Interested!
  5. Five Signs of Excessive Confidence

Don’t One-up Others’ Ideas

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A manager who has the tendency to put his oar in his employees’ ideas ends up killing their ownership of ideas. This diminishes their motivation and performance.

When employees feel disrespected or unappreciated, survival instincts will kick in—employees turn inward and stop participating fully in their teams. It will only erode their commitment and led to poor results.

People Tend to Reject Ideas Offered by Others in Favor of Their Own

'What Got You Here Wont Get You There' by Marshall Goldsmith (ISBN 1401301304) In the bestselling What Got You Here Won’t Get You There (2007,) the celebrated leadership coach Marshall Goldsmith describes this behavior as the tendency to “add too much value.”

If you’re inclined to get wrapped up in adding your two cents and improving the quality of an idea a little, you may devalue an employee’s commitment to execute the idea:

Imagine an energetic, enthusiastic employee comes into your office with an idea. She excitedly shares the idea with you. You think it’s a great idea. Instead of saying, “Great idea!” you say, “That’s a nice idea. Why don’t you add this to it?” What does this do? It deflates her enthusiasm; it dampers her commitment. While the quality of the idea may go up 5 percent, her commitment to execute it may go down 50 percent. That’s because it’s no longer her idea, it’s now your idea.

Don't One-up Others' Ideas

Effective Coaching is Helping Others Discover Insights

Focus on helping others discover insights—not by solving the problem for them, but by helping them improve how they’re thinking about the problem.

  • If you have an idea that the other must hear, don’t tell them immediately. Use Socratic questioning to tease the idea out of them.
  • Examine how you hand out ideas. Resist the temptation to add your advice. Before you propose an idea, pause and ask yourself, “Is it worth it?”
  • Avoid declarative statements such as “you should …” or “I think … .”
  • The higher up you go in an organization, the more your suggestions become interpreted as orders.
  • Don’t marginalize the concerns of your team members in the interest of moving your ideas forward. Ignoring employees’ inputs can send a message to the entire team that you’re not actually looking for their creative ideas, but that you’ve got your own agenda and just want them to rubberstamp it.
  • Get your team involved early. People are more motivated to do the things they have to do if they are part of the planning and strategy.

Idea for Impact: Improve your team performance by encouraging better thinking, not by handing out advice.

Don’t give unsolicited advice. Don’t make team decisions to which you—but nobody else—is committed. Learn to persuade others to see things your way by tapping into their talents, passions, and abilities.

Remember, being an effective manager is not about winning yourself; it’s about making other people winners.

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  4. 20 Reasons People Don’t Change
  5. Don’t Lead a Dysfunctional Team

Use this Technique to Praise At Least Three People Every Day

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Scott Adams, the American cartoonist who created Dilbert, writes in How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big (2013),

Children are accustomed to a continual stream of criticisms and praise, but adults can go weeks without a compliment while enduring criticism both at work and at home. Adults are starved for a kind word. When you understand the power of honest praise (as opposed to bullshitting, flattery, and sucking up), you realize that withholding it borders on immoral. If you see something that impresses you, a decent respect to humanity insists you voice your praise.

Lavish Praise on People and They’ll Flourish

In his masterful self-help manual, How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936), Dale Carnegie quotes the American steel magnate Charles M Schwab who was renowned for his people skills,

I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people, the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. …

I am anxious to praise but loath to find fault. If I like anything, I am hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise. …

I have yet to find the person, however great or exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than he would ever do under a spirit of criticism.

Carnegie suggests, “Be lavish with praise, but only in a genuine way … remember, we all crave appreciation and recognition, and will do almost anything to get it. But nobody wants insincerity. Nobody wants flattery.”

How to Praise No Less Than Three People Every Day

Use this Three-Coin Technique to Praise Others Everyday Here’s a simple, effective technique to unleash the power of praise and honest appreciation:

  • Start each day with three coins in your left pocket.
  • Transfer one coin to your right pocket each time you praise someone or remark about something favorably. See my previous article on how to recognize people in six easy steps.
  • Make sure that you have all the three coins in your right pocket by the end of the day, but don’t give compliments willy-nilly.

Avoid flattery and pretentiousness, especially when someone thinks that they truly don’t deserve the praise. As well, don’t undercut praise with criticism (as in a sandwich feedback.)

Idea for Impact: If you can’t be bothered with opportunities to elevate others’ day with a few simple words of appreciation, perhaps you’re just too insecure or emotional stingy. Even if praise is directed on others, it emphasizes your own good character—it shows you’re can go beyond self-absorption in the self-consumed society that we live in.

Wondering what to read next?

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  3. How to Increase Your Likeability: The 10/5 Rule
  4. On the Use of ‘But’ in Interpersonal Feedback
  5. How to Accept Compliments Gracefully

Why a Friend Can’t Keep a Secret

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Why a Friend Can't Keep a Secret A caring, faithful relationship with a family member or a friend is a sacrosanct space where you can shed your guard, reveal your secrets, and disclose your worries. Such relationships are life’s principal social support systems.

Your ability to form close relationships with others hinges on the trust you feel with your nearest and dearest.

Once You Share Something Confidential, You Lose Control of it

Sharing your secrets with others and keeping others’ secrets are essential to establishing and nurturing bonds between people.

Secrets are kept or revealed for a variety of complex reasons—utter carelessness, actual malice, self-serving manipulation, or altruistic protection of others.

  • Forgetfulness and negligence often initiate letting a secret slip; some people may not understand the potential consequences of not keeping somebody’s secret to themselves.
  • As the World War II idiom cautions, loose lips sink ships. Some blabbermouths just can’t be the soul of discretion—they have no filters and don’t concern themselves with betraying others’ trust.
  • Some folks justify spreading others’ secrets by convincing themselves that the secret is common knowledge—if a source shared a secret with them, the source may have shared it with others too.
  • Some nefarious people use secrets they’re supposed to keep as currency to curry favor with someone else. An egregious recent example is that of McKinsey’s Managing Director Rajat Gupta revealing confidential information about Goldman Sachs, on whose board of directors he sat, to hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam.
  • Some people may assume an altruistic—or self-righteous—mind-set and reveal a secret assuming that divulging the secret could be more beneficial to those concerned than keeping the secret.
  • Some people reveal secrets because they can’t bear the mental distress of keeping the secret. Often, the bigger the secret, the harder it is to keep it.

If you’ve been told a secret or have some information in hand that may put somebody in immediate emotional or physical risk, be careful in how you act. Telling secrets in the wrong way, to the wrong people, or at the wrong time can be surprisingly destructive. If required, seek help from a relationship counselor.

If a friend shared something about you that you told them in private, try to forgive his/her lack of discretion. Hold back your trust until you can feel comfortable trusting them again.

Wondering what to read next?

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  2. On Recruiting from a Competitor
  3. Don’t Assume Conversations with Human Resources Will Remain Confidential
  4. Nobody Likes a Tattletale: Do Not Play the Office Cop
  5. Etiquette for Office Cubicle Dwellers

Here’s How to Improve Your Conversational Skills

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How to Start a Good Conversation

A year and a half ago, I wrote a popular article titled, “Stop asking, ‘What do you do for a living?'” The crux of my argument was,

Chatting with somebody in socializing situations should be less about discerning the details of the other’s life to size up the other’s socioeconomic status, and more about building a bit of familiarity to initiate stimulating conversations about topics of mutual interest.

A recent Harvard Business Review blog article on networking argues that the ‘what do you do?’ question may not be the best way to build rapport with someone else.

Research findings from the world of network science and psychology suggests that we tend to prefer and seek out relationships where there is more than one context for connecting with the other person. Sociologists refer to these as multiplex ties, connections where there is an overlap of roles or affiliations from a different social context. … We may prefer relationships with multiplex ties because research suggests that relationships built on multiplex ties tend to be richer, more trusting, and longer lasting.

The article gives examples of open-ended questions that could elicit non-work-related answers.

  • What excites you right now?
  • What are you looking forward to?
  • What’s the best thing that happened to you this year?
  • Where did you grow up?
  • What do you do for fun?
  • Who is your favorite superhero?
  • Is there a charitable cause you support?
  • What’s the most important thing I should know about you?

These inquiries could be helpful once you have a conversation going—they don’t make good initial questions. I’ve found it helpful to start with simple questions (“how do you know the hosts” or “is this your first time in this city”) and wait for personal details to flow into the conversation naturally.

Another practice I’ve found helpful is to ask to be introduced. Request your host to mention common interests when you are introduced to a new person in the gathering.

Susan RoAne’s How to Work a Room and Do I Say Next? provide great guidelines on how to make your business and personal conversations more effective.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Personal Spaces for Social Interaction
  2. Five Signs of Excessive Confidence
  3. Don’t Be Interesting—Be Interested!
  4. Stop asking, “What do you do for a living?”
  5. Office Chitchat Isn’t Necessarily a Time Waster

A Little-Known Public-Speaking Tip

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If you’ve expected to address an audience that you aren’t familiar with, it can be difficult to connect with your audience and build a rapport.

Ask the organizer for the names of a half dozen people who will be in the audience.

Contact them and find out about their backgrounds and their expectations for your presentation.

Thank them when you start your speech.

Doing this homework, identifying the specific requirements, and customizing your presentations will impress the audience. Whatever the topic, audiences respond best when speakers personalize their communication.

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  3. General Communication Skills #1: Begin at the End
  4. Avoid the Lectern in Presentations
  5. An Essential Secret of Great Speakers: Pauses in Talking

Office Chitchat Isn’t Necessarily a Time Waster

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When Employees are Happy, They Work Better

Office Chitchat Isn't Necessarily a Time Waster Managers who disapprove and clamp down on impromptu encounters that people have at their desks, in the hallways, by the elevators, in the lunchroom, or by the water coolers can create a work environment that’s unpleasant, even repressive.

If truth be told, what may seems like idle chitchat actually forges links between people and encourages a culture of openness that can help people work toward common goals.

Informal, spontaneous conversations between coworkers, especially between colleagues from different departments, will not only give people a chance to know each other better, but also create a feeling of collaboration. The camaraderie that grows from employees sharing a little fun can go a long way toward fostering a feeling that they’re part of a team.

Chitchat is About Building Relationships

During those inconsequential “idle moments” of office conversations, important information is being exchanged. You’re learning much about others and offering details about yourself.

  • Whom can you trust? Who possesses strong convictions? Who has a broad experience or in-depth knowledge?
  • Who is a stimulating brainstormer? Who has the wherewithal for workarounds to problems?
  • Who can open doors for you? Who can facilitate otherwise hard-to-get connections?
  • Who can influence the leadership decisions? Who can evangelize your project to the right people? Who can bend the leadership’s ear? Who can be your cheerleader?
  • Who can lend a consoling ear in moments of problems or crisis? Who sees the bright side of problems?
  • Who can help you with questions on software, help you decide health insurance plans, or fix the printer?

Casual Conversations are About Networking and Leaving Positive Impressions

Small talk and casual conversations are an important element of collegial workplaces. People like talking about themselves, so if you can remember a nugget of information from the last time you met (kids, pets, and travels are great topics) bring it up.

To be respectful of others’ time, remember this two-minute rule: unless you’re discussing a topic of some importance, try to wrap up your small talk and casual chats in two minutes. Pay attention to your listener’s non-verbal cues and adjust the extent of your conversation. You can always arrange to convene later, “I’d love to hear more, but I’m in a rush. Why don’t I call you afterhours? How about we meet up for coffee this weekend?”

Nevertheless, don’t let chatter go too far and negatively impact your productivity or those of others. If you’re considered as too chatty, others may to resent bumping into you. If you tend to talk too much about yourself, you’ll be judged self-absorbed and interpersonally clueless.

Likeability is Important in How You Will Be Perceived in Your Workplace

Likeability is Important in How You Will Be Perceived in Your Workplace Cordiality is a significant persuasive technique because people are much more likely to feel warmly towards those they like. They’ll do things for you if you earnestly show interest in them, chat with them on a regular basis, and make them feel good about themselves.

Colleagues who don’t chat can come across as arrogant or abrupt. Highly competent but unpopular professionals don’t thrive as well as their moderately competent, but popular counterparts.

Small Talk is a Critical Tool for Creating a Personal Bond with Your Coworkers

Even though an office is primarily a place of business, chatting about non-work topics and establishing rapport with coworkers is important. People who know and like each other tend to have each other’s backs and help out when necessary.

Even if, eventually, you’ll be accepted or rejected based on the more tangible aspects of your work, the fact of the matter is that these interpersonal impressions matter a great deal along the way and can even shape how people judge your more actual work.

Idea for Impact: Balance your dedication to your workload with a cooperative nature, you will gain needed allies to get things done and to help your career progression in the company.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Etiquette for Office Cubicle Dwellers
  2. Don’t Be Interesting—Be Interested!
  3. Here’s How to Improve Your Conversational Skills
  4. Stop asking, “What do you do for a living?”
  5. Five Signs of Excessive Confidence

Don’t Be Interesting—Be Interested!

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Management Guru Jim Collins’s “Golden Rule”

Jim Collins's 'Golden Rule': Don't Be Interesting---Be Interested! In the December 2005 issue of the now-discontinued Business 2.0 magazine, 30 business visionaries disclosed their “golden rules”—attitudes they swear by more than any other. Jim Collins, the renowned leadership consultant and author of such bestselling management books as Good to Great and Built to Last, recollected a lesson he learned from his mentor, the American intellectual and public servant John W. Gardner:

One day early in my faculty teaching career, John Gardner sat me down. “It occurs to me, Jim, that you spend too much time trying to be interesting,” he said. “Why don’t you invest more time being interested?”

If you want to have an interesting dinner conversation, be interested. If you want to have interesting things to write, be interested. If you want to meet interesting people, be interested in the people you meet—their lives, their history, their story. Where are they from? How did they get here? What have they learned? By practicing the art of being interested, the majority of people can become fascinating teachers; nearly everyone has an interesting story to tell.

I can’t say that I live this rule perfectly. When tired, I find that I spend more time trying to be interesting than exercising the discipline of asking genuine questions. But whenever I remember Gardner’s golden rule—whenever I come at any situation with an interested and curious mind—life becomes much more interesting for everyone at the table.

The Technique to Become the Most Interesting Person in the Room is to Find Others Interesting

Becoming likeable requires creating lasting impressions in others by becoming genuinely interested in them In the conduct of life, people tend to focus more on becoming more interesting—i.e., impressing others with their personae and their stories. While trying to become more interesting is a worthwhile pursuit, it is certainly not everything in becoming accepted and well-liked. Becoming likeable requires creating lasting impressions in others by becoming genuinely interested in them.

John Gardner’s advice (via Jim Collins) echoes self-improvement pioneer Dale Carnegie’s legendary advice that the ticket to one’s success in life is one’s ability to make others feel good about themselves. In his masterful manual on people skills, How to Win Friends & Influence People, Carnegie writes, “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”

It is a common fallacy to assume that you must just be an interesting person to get people to like you. Observe this human tendency in the next networking meeting or social gathering you attend. Most people tend to be absorbed in just one thing: being interesting themselves—blabbing “I did this … I did that … I like this … I’ve been there” and offering bits of information that nobody else but them really cares about.

How to Build a Bit of Intimacy, Even in a Brief Conversation

Become genuinely interested in others and make them like you Making others like you amounts to making them feel special about themselves—making them feel that you really “get” them. The next time you meet someone new at a social setting, try this easy technique to be more interested.

  • The key to become absorbed in a conversation is to focus on being curious about others. So, tell yourself repetitively, “This seems to the most interesting person in the world. Let me discover why.” Look for opportunities to connect.
  • When you meet someone new, make eye contact and smile. Introduce yourself with a simple “Hi, my name is Joanna Kovaleski. I am Megan’s real estate agent.”
  • Pay attention and make them feel like they are the only people in the room.
  • Ask a question or two about the person before talking about yourself. “How do you know Megan and Eric?” “Is this your first time in Chicago?” As I’ve written previously, chatting with somebody in socializing situations should be less about discerning the details of the other’s life and more about building a bit of familiarity to initiate stimulating conversations, debates, discussions, and exchange of ideas about topics of mutual interest. These prospects will all be missed if your initial interaction starts with annoying cross-examinations such as “What do you do for a living?”
  • Ask a follow-up question based on what they have just said. Try to understand who they are and why they are there. Learn about their interests and hobbies.
  • Say more about yourself. Use what you’ve just learned about the other person so far to selectively highlight anything you have in common.
  • Then, ask one question to bring the focus back to the other person.
  • People love to talk about themselves; so, make them. Everyone’s got a story to tell.
  • Don’t talk too much or too little. Try taking your focus off yourself.

Idea for Impact: Become Genuinely Interested in Others and Make Them Like You

'How to Win Friends & Influence People' by Dale Carnegie (ISBN 0671027034) To be interested in other people—and consequently get them interested in you—is a significant social skill you must develop and hone. But don’t feign. As Carnegie cautions in How to Win Friends & Influence People, “The principles … will work only when they come from the heart. I am not advocating a bag of tricks; I am talking about a new way of life.”

The following books have helped me with improve my socializing skills. Perhaps you’ll find them useful too.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Here’s How to Improve Your Conversational Skills
  2. How to Make Others Feel They Owe You One: Reciprocity and Social Influence
  3. Office Chitchat Isn’t Necessarily a Time Waster
  4. Stop asking, “What do you do for a living?”
  5. Five Signs of Excessive Confidence
Here’s a prayer to help you deal with annoying people. Learn from the Stoics!