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Negotiation

Why Your Partner May Be Lying

January 30, 2023 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Why Your Partner May Be Lying Honesty builds trust and intimacy. When one partner conceals information or has secrets, it erodes a trusting relationship.

One non-obvious reason people lie to their partners is that they don’t feel safe telling the truth. Their head goes into a defensive mode, thinking merely about the short-term benefits. They fear rejection or disapproval. If such are the consequences of telling the truth, they believe it’s expedient to sidestep it, especially if they expect they’re unlikely to be caught.

If you reckon your partner is lying, first seek to figure out the reason behind the lie. Reflect on the last time your partner lied to you. How would you have responded if they’d spoken the truth? Would you have reacted with anger—even yelling or starting a fight?

When your partner lies, focus first on the one aspect you have total control over: your reactions. Have a “trust chat” with your partner. With no suggestion of judgment or shaming them, reveal your concerns and talk to them about honesty, trust, and secrecy.

Nudge your partner to be more candid with you. Let your partner know you’d always prefer to know the truth, regardless of the situation. Then, when your partner speaks the truth, thank them for being forthright and telling you the truth, even when they know that the revelation may leave you disappointed or angry.

Idea for Impact: Negative reactions like criticism, contempt, sarcasm, or aggression can make your partner more likely to hide the truth, causing a relationship to embitter even further.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. The High Cost of Winning a Small Argument
  2. How to Have a Decent Discussion with Those You Love but Disagree With
  3. How to Mediate in a Dispute
  4. A Short Course on: How to Find the Right Relationship
  5. We’re All Trying to Control Others

Filed Under: Managing People Tagged With: Conflict, Conversations, Getting Along, Negotiation, Persuasion, Relationships

Quitting Something You Love But Isn’t Working

December 21, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Quitting Something You Love But Isn't Working Quitting something you no longer care about is more straightforward than something you’re spirited about but isn’t working.

To avoid quitting a passion too soon or too late, a basic rule of thumb is to give up when the outcomes aren’t improving, even after ample effort to turn things around.

That is to say, when things get difficult in school, business, relationships, or a project, increase your efforts and get help to improve it. If the results are still unacceptable after an adequate interval of much effort, maybe it’s time to throw in the towel on that course of action or rightsize your expectations, if not abandon the pursuit altogether.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Everything in Life Has an Opportunity Cost
  2. The Simple Life, The Good Life // Book Summary of Greg McKeown’s ‘Essentialism’
  3. Self-Care Isn’t Self-Indulgence, but Self-Preservation
  4. Books in Brief: “Hell Yeah or No” Mental Model
  5. Don’t Say “Yes” When You Really Want to Say “No”

Filed Under: Living the Good Life, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Assertiveness, Balance, Discipline, Negotiation, Time Management, Wisdom

Books in Brief: “Hell Yeah or No” Mental Model

November 15, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

'Hell Yeah Or No' by Derek Sivers (ISBN 1988575060) American entrepreneur and blogger Derek Sivers popularized the “Hell Yeah or No” mental model (YouTube Synopsis): unless you’re super excited about something, don’t commit to it.

If you’re ready to say ‘yes’ to the things that aren’t that great, you won’t have time, energy, and focus for the “hell yeah” stuff in your life. Sivers has summed up,

We tend to say yes to too many things. And because of this, we’re spread too thin. We’re so busy doing average things that we don’t have time for the occasional great thing.

So instead I propose raising the bar as high as you can, so that if you’re feeling anything less than, “oh, hell yeah, that would be amazing,” then just say, no.

By doing this, you will miss out on many good things, but that’s okay because your time will be quite empty. So then by saying no to the merely good things, you’ll have the time and the energy and the space in your life to throw yourself in entirely when that occasional great thing comes up.

Recommendation: Read this insight-dense book. The “Hell Yeah or No” mental model will reframe how you control impulses and consider life’s big decisions.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Everything in Life Has an Opportunity Cost
  2. Don’t Ruminate Endlessly
  3. Never Take the First Offer
  4. What Most People Get Wrong About Focus
  5. Quitting Something You Love But Isn’t Working

Filed Under: Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Assertiveness, Clutter, Decision-Making, Discipline, Negotiation, Persuasion, Wisdom

Never Take the First Offer

October 24, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Never Take the First Offer in Negotiations Gently push back, at least for one round. Especially if you’re a less-aggressive personality type and are programmed to answer ‘yes’ to the first reasonable offer someone makes.

People seldom offer the best they can offer right away because the first offer “anchors” the negotiation. They risk “showing their cards” and divulging some bargaining zones.

If you don’t push back even once, you’ll wind up with a less-than-optimal deal. A straightforward question such as “Can you do better than that?” will help you fend off the first offer politely without being a pushover.

If the counterparty says ‘no’ and you feel you can sustain the process for another round, inquire, “I’d like your help to learn why the first offer is the best you can do.” The key to being a better negotiator isn’t simply presenting your demands but asking detailed questions designed to better understand the other side’s interests.

If their answers make no sense, share your confusion. Offer a strong counteroffer based on your ideal intended outcome and your appraisal of the counterparty’s options and their “reserve price.”

Idea for Impact: Beware of the trap of saying ‘yes’ too quickly. You’ll get farther with a bit of polite persistence than quick surrender.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. If You Can’t “Think on the Spot,” Buy Yourself Time
  2. The #1 Learning from Sun Tzu’s Art of War: Avoid Battle
  3. Competitive vs Cooperative Negotiation
  4. How to Make Others Feel They Owe You One: Reciprocity and Social Influence
  5. What Most People Get Wrong About Focus

Filed Under: Effective Communication, Mental Models Tagged With: Assertiveness, Conflict, Decision-Making, Likeability, Negotiation, Persuasion, Social Skills

How You Make a Memorable Elevator Speech

September 29, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

How You Make a Memorable Elevator Speech With an elevator speech, you not only have a short time to elicit someone’s interest but also the added challenge of standing out from the crowd.

Your only goal should be to say something intriguing, memorable, and unique, prompting the prospect to lean in and invite, “Wait … do tell me more.”

I’ve listened to hundreds of elevator languages, and the few that continued out are the ones that sparked a conversation. Sameness and clichés are boring—everything sounds more or less the same. If, on the proverbial elevator, one must decide between ‘different’ or ‘better,’ one would choose ‘different.’ People remember ‘different.’

So, presenting yourself in the best possible light involves saying something snappy and ditching the details. Be concise and coherent, but not vague. Appear mysterious and confident, but not arrogant.

Idea for Impact: With an elevator speech, you’ll be forgotten if you aren’t unique and memorable. Rehearse your message well and be ready to perform it flawlessly at a moment’s notice.

P.S. My elevator speech: “Hi, My name’s Nagesh. I’m an investor. I’m just like Warren Buffett, except that I deal with a lot fewer zeros than him.”

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Deliver The Punchline First
  2. Serve the ‘Lazy Grapefruit’
  3. Persuade Others to See Things Your Way: Use Aristotle’s Ethos, Logos, Pathos, and Timing
  4. Facts Alone Can’t Sell: Lessons from the Intel Pentium Integer Bug Disaster
  5. Here’s a Tactic to Sell Change: As a Natural Progression

Filed Under: Effective Communication, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Communication, Critical Thinking, Marketing, Meetings, Negotiation, Persuasion, Presentations, Skills for Success

Hooked on Feeling Needed?

September 23, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Hooked on Feeling Needed: Helicopter Parenting Fosters Failure If, like many people, you just can’t say ‘no,’ consider if you’re hooked on feeling needed.

Take a hard, long look at yourself and examine if you unwittingly encourage—even need—people to come to you for every little thing.

Do you find affirmation in feeling needed? Do you try to do too much for others? Faced with an unpleasant task, do you look to turn our attention elsewhere? Do others’ interruptions offer reasons to do what you needn’t do and excuses to avoid doing what you’re supposed to do?

Idea for Impact: The greatest gift you can give those who need you is carving out time for your own critical tasks so you can be available when they really need you.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Weak Kindness & The Doormat Phenomenon: Balance Kindness with Strength
  2. What Most People Get Wrong About Focus
  3. Don’t Say “Yes” When You Really Want to Say “No”
  4. Everything in Life Has an Opportunity Cost
  5. Don’t Over-Deliver

Filed Under: Living the Good Life, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Assertiveness, Balance, Mindfulness, Negotiation, Procrastination, Relationships

Competitive vs Cooperative Negotiation

August 24, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

'Bargaining for Advantage' by G. Richard Shell (ISBN 0143036971) Does a competitive person make a better negotiator than a cooperative person? Wharton professor G. Richard Shell’s insightful Bargaining for Advantage: Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People (2006) contends there isn’t a straightforward answer.

Competitive people don’t mind interpersonal friction and thus initially have the upper hand over less aggressive personalities with little appetite for friction. However, competitive people generally lack skills in managing relationships, which gives cooperative people an advantage in situations where interpersonal trust over the long term is crucial. It’s easier to negotiate against someone who has a similar personality. Negotiation gets dicier when different personality types mix.

How to improve your results? Practice. Prepare through information-gathering and setting achievable but optimistic targets for the negotiation process.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. When One Person is More Interested in a Relationship
  2. The High Cost of Winning a Small Argument
  3. Is The Customer Always Right?
  4. The #1 Learning from Sun Tzu’s Art of War: Avoid Battle
  5. Never Take the First Offer

Filed Under: Effective Communication, Managing People Tagged With: Assertiveness, Conflict, Getting Along, Likeability, Negotiation, Persuasion

The #1 Learning from Sun Tzu’s Art of War: Avoid Battle

July 11, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The #1 Learning from Sun Tzu's Art of War: Avoid Battle

The Art of War, Chinese strategist-philosopher Sun Tzu’s treatise on military strategy, is studied not so much for the advice it gives but for the state of mind it encourages. Developed in only six thousand Chinese characters and 25 pages of text, this way of thinking has held vast sway in such fields as military planning, strategic management, and negotiating. “Every battle is won or lost before it is fought.”

Something exceptional about the Art of War is the extent to which it’s devoted to methodically avoiding battle altogether. War isn’t something to be entered rashly or for petty reasons. “A sovereign should not start a war out of anger, nor should a general give battle out of rage. While anger can revert to happiness and rage to delight, a nation that has been destroyed cannot be restored, nor can the dead be brought back to life.”

'The Art of War' by Ralph D. Sawyer (ISBN 081331951X) Nor is war’s dominant purpose to cause physical destruction to an enemy. Instead, the pinnacle of military skill is to conquer one’s opponent strategically—by penetrating his alliances, rattling his plans, and coercing him diplomatically—without ever resorting to armed combat. “Why destroy,” Sun Tzu poses, “when you can win by stealth and cunning? To subdue the enemy’s forces without fighting is the summit of skill.”

Sun Tzu’s insistence that an enlightened strategist can attain victory without fighting echoes the foundational Taoist doctrine of “non-action (Wu-Wei.”) Armed conflict, therefore, is the last resort. War in itself represents a significant defeat. As a matter of course, Sun Tzu allocates a good chunk of the Art of War to the line of combat and attack. A savvy general must, however, take every accessible measure to gain victory swiftly, with minimal casualties and suffering for both sides. “The best approach is to attack the other side’s strategy; next best is to attack his alliances; next best is to attack his soldiers; the worst is to attack cities.”

Again and again, through implication, Sun-Tzu’s war document posits peace and restraint—the avoidance of battle—as the utmost victory. To fight at all, Sun-Tzu insists, is already a substantial loss, much worse than losing in war.

Idea for Impact: The Art of War is a worthy course on conflict management because avoiding confrontation requires more remarkable skill than winning on the battlefield.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Making the Nuances Count in Decisions
  2. How to Have a Decent Discussion with Those You Love but Disagree With
  3. How to Mediate in a Dispute
  4. Never Take the First Offer
  5. Competitive vs Cooperative Negotiation

Filed Under: Managing People, Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Assertiveness, Conflict, Critical Thinking, Getting Along, Negotiation, Persuasion, Social Skills

Deliver The Punchline First

May 12, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Deliver The Punchline First = Get to the Point

When Sergey Brin and Larry Page set about to secure early funding for Google, they initiated a presentation at Sequoia Capital, one of the world’s premier venture capital firms, with the logline “Google organizes the world’s information and makes it universally accessible.”

Most busy executives don’t want to sit through a 50-slide presentation. They don’t have the patience to wait for the punchline.

Begin with the conclusion and then go through the rest of your slide deck: your proposals, theses, assumptions, your line of thinking, and the arguments, pro and con.

Meaning, Then Details

Cognitive psychologists have argued that the brain pays more attention to the core of an idea than to its details.

According to the University of Washington molecular biologist John Medina, the human brain craves meaning before details. In Brain Rules (2014,) Medina notes, “Normally, if we don’t know the gist–the meaning–of information, we are unlikely to pay attention to its details. The brain selects meaning-laden information for further processing and leaves the rest alone.”

When listeners comprehend the overarching idea of a pitch, they’ll find it easier to synthesize and digest the information.

Begin Your Next Executive Presentation with the Final Summary Slide First

Most executives have limited willpower and suffer “decision fatigue.” Don’t overload them with less-important details before asking them to decide in your favor. Your “executive summary” slide may be the only one that will get full attention. So make it perfect!

  • Practice, practice, practice. Few people, if any, have the rhetorical ability to make a persuasive 15-second speech about their significant ideas. The best speakers are the best because they rehearse and get feedback.
  • Less is more. After getting prized facetime with executives, many talented young professionals produce large slide decks to dazzle the executives with their intelligence and ingenuity. Don’t.
  • Simplify your “executive summary” message. Perceptive executives tend to be somewhat skeptical of things that ought to be simple but have become too complicated.
  • Meaning, then detail. The brain processes meaning before detail, and the brain likes hierarchy. Start with the general idea and then present information in a structured, hierarchical approach. Make sure that each detail you communicate traces back to the core concept of your presentation.

Idea for Impact: Get to the Point

Tell busy people what they need to know upfront. Communicate like a newsperson: What’s the number one thing your audience needs to know? Say that first. Then build out from there, keeping the most essential particulars up top.

There’s another smart—if devious—benefit of putting the cart before the horse: delivering your “punchline” first can hook your audience with a compelling proposal first, and then cash in on the confirmation bias to sway them to your case.

Spy thriller novelist Graeme Shimmin offers this excellent guide to writing a killer punchline, logline, or elevator speech.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. How You Make a Memorable Elevator Speech
  2. Serve the ‘Lazy Grapefruit’
  3. Persuade Others to See Things Your Way: Use Aristotle’s Ethos, Logos, Pathos, and Timing
  4. Facts Alone Can’t Sell: Lessons from the Intel Pentium Integer Bug Disaster
  5. What Happens When You Talk About Too Many Goals

Filed Under: Effective Communication, Mental Models Tagged With: Communication, Critical Thinking, Meetings, Negotiation, Persuasion, Presentations

What Most People Get Wrong About Focus

May 5, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

'Choose Wonder Over Worry' by Amber Rae (ISBN 0385491743) In Choose Wonder Over Worry (2018) self-help author Amber Rae recalls novelist Elizabeth Gilbert’s interaction with a wise older lady who was helping Gilbert with her struggles as a writer:

Lady: “What are you willing to give up in order to have the life you keep saying you want?”

Gilbert: “You’re right—I need to start saying no to things I don’t want to do.”

Lady: “No, it’s much harder than that. You need to learn to start saying no to things you _do_ want to do, with the recognition that you have only one life, and you don’t have time and energy for everything.”

This anecdote is such a powerful illustration of how saying ‘no’ is so much easier when you’re clear about your priorities.

Saying 'no' is so much easier when you're clear about your priorities That’s what focus really is—saying ‘no’ to things you’d like to do so that you can free up your time to focus on the pursuits that truly matter—even tasks you have to do, even if they don’t energize and excite you.

Idea for Impact: Setting boundaries isn’t always easy, but it’s essential to establish an overall sense of well-being. Every ‘no’ is a ‘yes’ to something else.

  • Don’t find any excuse to say ‘yes’ to what shouldn’t be done.
  • Don’t find any reason to say ‘no’ to what should be done.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Don’t Say “Yes” When You Really Want to Say “No”
  2. Here’s a Tactic to Sell Change: As a Natural Progression
  3. This Manager’s Change Initiatives Lacked Ethos, Pathos, Logos: Case Study on Aristotle’s Persuasion Framework
  4. Everything in Life Has an Opportunity Cost
  5. How to Make Others Feel They Owe You One: Reciprocity and Social Influence

Filed Under: Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Assertiveness, Balance, Communication, Decision-Making, Likeability, Negotiation, Persuasion, Relationships, Time Management

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About: Nagesh Belludi [hire] is a St. Petersburg, Florida-based freethinker, investor, and leadership coach. He specializes in helping executives and companies ensure that the overall quality of their decision-making benefits isn’t compromised by a lack of a big-picture understanding.

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RECOMMENDED BOOK:
The Art of War

The Art of War: Sun Tzu

The ancient Chinese master Sun Tzu reveals the essence of conflict and how to win by knowing yourself, knowing your enemy, and fighting only when you can win.

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Unless otherwise stated in the individual document, the works above are © Nagesh Belludi under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. You may quote, copy and share them freely, as long as you link back to RightAttitudes.com, don't make money with them, and don't modify the content. Enjoy!