Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Getting Along

How to Gain Empathic Insight during a Conflict

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One simple starting point for finding common ground during a conflict is to ask, “what if the others’ perspectives were true?”

When others tell you something that you don’t agree with, just suspend disbelief for a moment.

How to Gain Empathic Insight during a Conflict Imagine what it is to be like them.

Think, “what if the others’ perspectives are true.”

What would that mean to you?

What would that mean in the context of your shared interests?

How would that change your perspective on your own opinion?

Putting yourself in the other person’s shoes can help you identify how they’re feeling and why they’re feeling that way. This makes it easier to take the big vital step: treating them with empathy and compassion. Suddenly, the conflict is less personal—it’s not about you or them.

Idea for Impact: We human beings are not transformed as much by statistics and facts as we are by stories. When there are two alternative viewpoints of one story, being open-minded, listening honestly, and identifying the other through their stories could be really transformative. It changes the conversation. It helps you move forward and seek solutions that are favorable to both sides.

Wondering what to read next?

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  2. Don’t Ignore the Counterevidence
  3. [Effective Arguments] Explain Your Opponent’s Perspective
  4. Rapoport’s Rules to Criticize Someone Constructively
  5. Presenting Facts Can Sometimes Backfire

The High Cost of Winning a Small Argument

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Winning a conflict with a colleague over who’s right may feel good at the moment. But you could lose a future battle when you may need her cooperation and support the most.

Insisting upon being right when disagreeing with your boss could be dearer.

It’s futile to win any argument by overpowering or silencing the other person. Even causal denigration and occasional microaggressions can eventually lead to feelings of alienation and anger.

The High Cost of Winning a Small Argument Conflicts sometimes evolve quickly from simple disagreements into high-stakes battles. So, before it’s too late, consider if taking a step back is wiser. Take the initiative and concede a point—even if you may end up losing the argument.

Seeking small glory now may only spoil your chance of bigger success in the future. Focus on the outcome—often, it’s the result that matters, not your role in it.

Idea for Impact: When you think you can nail someone with a winning argument, take a deep breath, and check if you could control your ego and back down. You may actually lose something small, but avoid losing something bigger.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. How to Make Others Feel They Owe You One: Reciprocity and Social Influence
  2. Rapoport’s Rules to Criticize Someone Constructively
  3. Let’s Not Talk About Trump
  4. [Effective Arguments] Explain Your Opponent’s Perspective
  5. Become a Smart, Restrained Communicator Like Benjamin Franklin

When One Person is More Interested in a Relationship

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The American sociologist Willard Waller coined the term “Principle of Least Interest” to describe how differences of commitment in a relationship can have a major effect on the relationship’s dynamics.

In The Family: A Dynamic Interpretation (1938,) Waller noted that, in any relationship (romantic, familial, business, buyer-seller, and so on) where one partner is far more emotionally invested than the other, the less-involved partner has more power in the relationship. In a one-sided romantic relationship, for example, the partner who loves less has more power.

Principle of Least Interest - One Person More Interested in a Relationship Moreover, appearing indifferent or uninterested is a common way by which people try to raise their own standing in a relationship. Recall the well-known “walk away” negotiation tactic—tell a used car salesman, “this just isn’t the deal that I’m looking for,” and he may call you the next day with a better offer.

An imbalanced relationship can only last for a while.

A nourishing relationship shouldn’t involve a constant struggle for power.

Idea for Impact: Watch out for relationships where the other seems to care less about the relationship than you do. Such relationships can drain you dry.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. What Makes a Great Relationship
  2. We’re All Trying to Control Others
  3. Four Keys to an Excellent Relationship with Your Boss
  4. Become a Smart, Restrained Communicator Like Benjamin Franklin
  5. Our Vision of What Our Parents Achieved Influences Our Life Goals: The Psychic Contract

It’s Probably Not as Bad as You Think

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The 20-40-60 Rule, believed to be written by humorist Will Rogers for his movie Life Begins at 40 (1935,) states,

When you are 20, you care about what everybody thinks of you.
When you are 40, you don’t care about what people think of you,
and when you are 60, you actually understand that people were too busy thinking about themselves.

In essence, don’t agonize about what other people are thinking about you. They’re perhaps busy worrying over what you’re thinking about them.

The 20-40-60 Rule became popular when venture capitalist Heidi Roizen cited it (incorrectly attributing it to the actress Shirley MacLaine) at a 2014 lecture at Stanford. First Round Capital’s Review has noted,

People have enormous capacity to beat themselves up over the smallest foibles—saying the wrong thing in a meeting, introducing someone using the wrong name. Weeks can be lost, important relationships avoided, productivity wasted, all because we’re afraid others are judging us. “If you find this happening to you, remember, no one is thinking about you as hard as you are thinking about yourself. So don’t let it all worry you so much.”

Idea for Impact: Don’t Beat Yourself Up Over Your Mistakes

Chances are, people around you aren’t nearly as critical of you as you are of yourself. No one’s going to remember or care about your mistakes, and neither should you.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Care Less for What Other People Think
  2. Ever Wonder If The Other Side May Be Right?
  3. You Can’t Know Everything
  4. The More You Believe in Yourself, the Less You Need Others to Do It for You
  5. Could Limiting Social Media Reduce Your Anxiety About Work?

Is Your Harried Mind Causing You to Underachieve?

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American psychiatrist Edward Hallowell, author of Driven to Distraction (2011,) surveyed cognitive effects such as reduced attention instigated by the hyperkinetic environment that’s become an artifact of modern life.

Is your frenzied mind barraged of stimuli and sensations and causing underachievement? A never-ending barrage of stimuli and sensations have instigated distractibility, mayhem, inner frenzy, and impatience. Consequently, people can’t stay organized, establish priorities, and manage time effectively—causing them to underachieve.

Hallowell described how “Attention Deficit Trait (ADT)” makes smart people underperform in this Harvard Business Review article.

ADT is brought on by the demands on our time and attention that have exploded over the past two decades. As our minds fill with noise, the brain gradually loses its capacity to attend fully and thoroughly to anything.

The symptoms of ADT come upon a person gradually. The sufferer doesn’t experience a single crisis but rather a series of minor emergencies while he or she tries harder and harder to keep up. Shouldering a responsibility to “suck it up” and not complain as the workload increases, executives with ADT do whatever they can to handle a load they simply cannot manage as well as they’d like. The ADT sufferer therefore feels a constant low level of panic and guilt. Facing a tidal wave of tasks, the executive becomes increasingly hurried, curt, peremptory, and unfocused, while pretending that everything is fine.

At a time when the modern corporate culture over-rewards folks who can multitask, deal with ever more responsibilities, and respond now, Hallowell offers the following solutions:

  • Promote positive emotions. Create a work positive, fear-free emotional work environment in which the brain can function at its best.
  • Take physical care of your brain. Adequate sleep, a proper diet (increase complex carbohydrates and protein intake,) exercise, and meditation are vital for staving off ADT.
  • Get organized. Take note of the times of day when you tend to perform at your best; do your most important work then, and save the routine work for other times. Reserve a part of the day to think, plan, and do “deep work.”
  • Regulate your emotions. To thwart an imminent overreaction to stress (“amygdala hijack” per Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence (1995,)) distract yourself by stopping and doing something else. A self-soothing action calms you down until you can focus again.

Idea for Impact: Stress is a terrible ailment in today’s workforce. Learn to manage yourself actively instead of continually reacting to problems as they happen. Avoid overburdening yourself and squandering your willpower. Regulate your work environment, tweak your work habits, get organized, and manage your emotional and physical health.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. The More You Can Manage Your Emotions, the More Effective You’ll Be
  2. Expressive Writing Can Help You Heal
  3. How Mindfulness Can Make You Better at Your Job // Book Summary of David Gelles’s ‘Mindful Work’
  4. Understand What’s Stressing You Out
  5. A Quick Way to De-stress: The “Four Corners Breathing” Exercise

This is the Career Kiss of Death, according to Lee Iacocca

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Auto industry icon Lee Iacocca wrote in Iacocca: An Autobiography (1986,)

There’s one phrase that I hate to see on any executive’s [performance] evaluation, no matter how talented he may be, and that’s the line: “He has trouble getting along with other people.”

To me, that’s the kiss of death. “You’ve [the evaluator] just destroyed the guy,” I always think. “He can’t get along with people? Then he’s got a real problem, because that’s all we’ve got around here. No dogs, no apes—only people. And if he can’t get along with his peers, what good is he to the company? As an executive, his whole function is to motivate other people. If he can’t do that, he’s in the wrong place.”

A significant predictor of success in most professions is being easy to get along with. People who’re well-liked, work well with others, and help them do their jobs well will advance in any organization. Those who don’t usually don’t get as far.

A significant predictor of success is being easy to get along with

Idea for Impact: Interpersonal relationships in the workplace are at the heart of the matter

Leadership is influence. Leadership isn’t about titles, positions, pedigree, distinction, or corner offices. A leader who can encourage, inspire, and direct others’ efforts will be effective in any endeavor.

If you’d like to exert more influence on your boss and inspire more cooperation from your peers and colleagues, work on being genuine, pleasant, sincere, easy to talk with, and friendly—without becoming desperate to please others.

Too, develop the antennae for what motivates people by respecting their ideas and values. That may sometimes necessitate holding back your own.

Read Dale Carnegie’s masterful manual on people skills, How to Win Friends & Influence People (1936.) Jeswald Salacuse’s Leading Leaders (2005; my summary) can help you expand your persuasive skills for situations where you may not have much influence over others.

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  3. Could Limiting Social Media Reduce Your Anxiety About Work?
  4. Systems-Thinking as a Trait for Career Success
  5. Being Underestimated Can Be a Great Thing

Let’s Not Talk About Trump

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If you feel like you’ve been overdosing on news and conversations related to politics and Trump, much to the exclusion of other meaningful subjects, try the “No Trump Rule” evoked by essayist Joseph Epstein in the Wall Street Journal:

Every Friday I meet for lunch with three or four friends from high school days. I instituted at these lunches what I called the No Trump Rule: ‘No’ not in the sense of being against Trump’s politics but against talking about him at all, for doing so seems to get everyone worked up unduly. The rule, I have to report, has been broken more than the Ten Commandments. No one, apparently, can stop talking about our president. The Trump talk quickly uses up most of the oxygen in any room where it arises, and can bring an argument to the shouting stage more quickly than a divorce settlement.

Look, I understand that everybody has been amped up to eleven since Trump emerged as the Republican Party’s nominee in May 2016, but some of us don’t want to talk about him—or politics.

I, for one, don’t think it’s a good idea for so much of our news, talk shows, and social media feeds to be devoted to a single subject for this long. Yes, Trump is a polarizing figure, and our country is so divided. But we don’t need to let him, and the anger he provokes, besiege every moment of our lives.

Awareness and activism are vital to civic duty, but hatred isn’t meaningful activism

Let's Not Talk About Trump I’m happy to listen to everybody’s opinions, but I’m fatigued by the extent to which politics dominates present-day exchanges. Ordinary conversations about routine topics tend to degenerate quickly with any evocation of the current state of affairs. Even banter about the weather (“the last refuge of the unimaginative” per Oscar Wilde) can quickly spiral into climate change, the environment, fossil fuels, oil, Russia, Putin, and so on.

More than anything else, I can’t bear the way most people currently think about politics—in particular, how ill-informed they tend to be. I am dismayed at people’s shallow understanding of the significant issues of the day—immigration, trade, nationalism, economic inequality, healthcare, etc. The stakes are high, and, given the depth of people’s political convictions, their anger is understandable. Nevertheless, the propensity to lash out against those with different views and dehumanize them is deplorable.

I will talk about politics with people who aren’t as much interested in winning an argument and convincing opposing people of the wrongness of their positions as they are about understanding more fully why others hold a particular conviction.

Our values, not politicians, should mold the policies and positions we support

'I Think You're Wrong' by Sarah Stewart Holland Beth Silvers (ISBN 1400208416) Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers’ commendable I Think You’re Wrong (But I’m Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations (2019) proposes a framework for having productive political discussions with those you love and yet disagree with.

Somewhere along the way we stopped disagreeing with each other and started hating each other. We are enemies, and our side is engaged in an existential battle for the very soul of the country. We are no longer working toward common goals. We are no longer building something together. Our sole objective is tearing the other side down. Nothing short of total victory is acceptable.

…

The reality is that we never stopped talking politics altogether—we stopped talking politics with people who disagree with us. We changed “you shouldn’t talk about politics” to “you should talk only to people who reinforce your worldview.” Instead of giving ourselves the opportunity to be molded and informed and tested by others’ opinions, we allowed our opinions and our hearts to harden.

The authors, hosts of a popular discussion-podcast, invite readers “to hear each other’s thoughts, to test our own beliefs against each other’s philosophies, and to better appreciate our own core beliefs by having to articulate and challenge those beliefs.” They emphasize an earnest curiosity for the counterargument and the open-mindedness to leave room for nuance:

Engaging with other people is never easy, but it always will be worth it. Engaging with other people about politics is no different. Let yourself take that chance. Let yourself rise to the challenge. Your ability to stretch and grow will surprise you, and so will the people around you. Once people see you as a person willing to have thoughtful, curious, calm discussions, you will have all kinds of interesting conversations that seemed impossible a year ago.

Postscript: Things are far more awkward in the workplace. Politics has always been a sensitive topic—but in today’s contentious climate, such conversations can rapidly escalate into arguments.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Presenting Facts Can Sometimes Backfire
  2. How to Overcome Shyness in Initiating Conversations
  3. [Effective Arguments] Explain Your Opponent’s Perspective
  4. Don’t Be Interesting—Be Interested!
  5. How to Argue like the Wright Brothers

Understand What’s Stressing You Out

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Mindfulness comes from paying attention to what you’re feeling right now and then taking the first steps to let go of your regrets, worries, and fears.

To gain an insight into why you’re feeling stressed out, first get into a relaxed frame of mind. Take a deep breath. Hold it for a moment, and then exhale.

Mentally ask yourself, “Why am I so tense right now?” Then, listen to whatever feelings pop into your mind or notice any images of distress or anxiety that emerge.

If you can’t get an evocative response to your question, imagine that you’re confiding in a best friend or chatting to a counselor.

Your spontaneous reflections can give you valuable insights into your inner feelings and concerns. Become acquainted with your inner experience and embrace what you see with a kind heart.

Understand What's Stressing You Out

Try a relaxation technique—play with a pet, soak in a warm bath, listen to soothing music, practice yoga or meditation, do physical activity, write a journal entry (try expressive writing,) or get a massage. When you perform a relaxation technique, you’re stimulating activity in the parasympathetic nervous system, which can offset the effects of your body’s overly activated stress response.

While relaxation techniques may calm you down and relieve the immediate symptoms of stress, they’ll not help alleviate the underlying triggers of stress.

If you resort to relaxation merely to suppress or bury your emotions, the tension will find its way to pop up somewhere else.

For a more in-depth, enduring solution to your stress, you must learn how to unshackle yourself from this source of stress through alternative actions. Ask your inner self, “What do I need to do to stay calm?” Be receptive to what your mind tells you.

Don’t overanalyze the past, get upset, and increase your stress. Stay in the moment.

Look forward. Ask yourself, “What is the first baby step I can take toward mitigating my stress?” Or, “What is a stumbling block that I can overcome now?”

Idea for Impact: By practicing positive modes of reflection and taking small corrective actions now, you can bring balance to your inner life and deny those negative emotional patterns their power to affect your sense of self-control.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Learn to Manage Your Negative Emotions and Yourself
  2. Anger is the Hardest of the Negative Emotions to Subdue
  3. The More You Can Manage Your Emotions, the More Effective You’ll Be
  4. Expressive Writing Can Help You Heal
  5. Summary of Richard Carlson’s ‘Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff’

What Makes a Great Relationship

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'The Hard Thing About Hard Things' by Ben Horowitz (ISBN 0062273205) Venture capitalist Ben Horowitz’s The Hard Thing About Hard Things (2014) is one of the best business books I’ve read in a long time. Here’s what he says about how he and Marc Andreessen have worked effectively in partnership across three companies over two decades:

Most business relationships either become too tense to tolerate or not tense enough to be productive after a while. Either people challenge each other to the point where they don’t like each other or they become complacent about each other’s feedback and no longer benefit from the relationship. With Marc and me, even after eighteen years, he upsets me almost every day by finding something wrong in my thinking, and I do the same for him. It works.

Close relationships—at work or home—are tough. Nothing in life prepares you for them. But the intellectual and emotional rewards of close relationships are stimuli enough for navigating these choppy waters.

Disagreement is inevitable, but it is at the heart of creative thinking and problem-solving. An unassuming disagreement—even a misunderstanding—can cause tensions to rise. Differences of opinion can turn into disputes and arguments can cascade into fights, putting a relationship at risk.

The healthiest relationships are built on a strong foundation of mutual respect. A reciprocally beneficial connection entails accepting the others, knowing their goals, supporting them to become the best version of themselves, and wanting to work through difficulties and disagreements.

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  4. Being Underestimated Can Be a Great Thing
  5. Don’t Be Interesting—Be Interested!

Who Told You That Everybody Was Going to Like You?

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From investor Joshua Kennon’s perspectives on being disliked,

Years ago, a family member had to deal with a work colleague who utterly despised her to the point this colleague couldn’t conceal their disdain.

Exasperated, my family member called the prayer line of a televangelist and pleaded, “Please pray with me to have God to change this coworker’s heart so they like me. I’m friends with everybody. There’s no reason they hate me so much.”

The lady on the other end of the phone was quiet for a moment. When she finally spoke, she asked, “Who told you that everybody was going to like you? You weren’t promised that. In this world, there are going to be people who hate you for one reason or another, perhaps even without justification. As long as you’ve examined yourself and are sure it’s not something you’re doing wrong, if you’ll let me, I’d instead like to pray with you that God helps you find peace with the situation so it doesn’t steal your joy and you can move on to more edifying things.”

Who Told You That Everybody Was Going to Like You? If others’ disapproval tends to nurture your self-dissatisfactions, question it. If you’ve made a mistake, try to right the wrong. Learn from it, pardon yourself, and move ahead.

If your quest for others’ approval is rooted in insecurity, remind yourself that your contentment in life cannot spring from other people’s perceptions of you; it has to come from an inner scorecard. Warren Buffett famously said, “The big question about how people behave is whether they’ve got an Inner Scorecard or an Outer Scorecard. It helps if you can be satisfied with an Inner Scorecard.”

Striving to live your life to satisfy others always is an impossible aspiration. You’ll wind up losing your sense of individuality in the quest to conform to others’ expectations. “It is our very search for perfection outside ourselves that causes our suffering,” warned the Buddha.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Could Limiting Social Media Reduce Your Anxiety About Work?
  2. Anger Is Often Pointless
  3. Learn to Manage Your Negative Emotions and Yourself
  4. Stop Trying to Prove Yourself to the World
  5. Summary of Richard Carlson’s ‘Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff’
Here’s a prayer to help you deal with annoying people. Learn from the Stoics!