Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Persuasion

Don’t Ignore the Counterevidence

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Left to themselves, much of our opinions and judgments are subjective, imprecise, incomplete, narrow-minded, or utterly unapprised.

A good critical-thinker deliberates objectively about alternative world-views that may cause him/her to philosophize differently. The English philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill made an unparalleled case for this intellectual obligation in his treatise On Liberty (1859):

If the cultivation of the understanding consists in one thing more than in another, it is surely in learning the grounds of one’s own opinions. Whatever people believe, on subjects on which it is of the first importance to believe rightly, they ought to be able to defend against at least the common objections. … on every subject on which difference of opinion is possible, the truth depends on a balance to be struck between two sets of conflicting reasons. Even in natural philosophy, there is always some other explanation possible of the same facts; some geocentric theory instead of heliocentric, some phlogiston instead of oxygen; and it has to be shown why that other theory cannot be the true one: and until this is shown, and until we know how it is shown, we do not understand the grounds of our opinion. But when we turn to subjects infinitely more complicated, to morals, religion, politics, social relations, and the business of life, three-fourths of the arguments for every disputed opinion consist in dispelling the appearances which favour some opinion different from it. The greatest orator, save one, of antiquity, has left it on record that he always studied his adversary’s case with as great, if not with still greater, intensity than even his own. What Cicero practised as the means of forensic success, requires to be imitated by all who study any subject in order to arrive at the truth. He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. The rational position for him would be suspension of judgment, and unless he contents himself with that, he is either led by authority, or adopts, like the generality of the world, the side to which he feels most inclination.

Mill recommends anticipating the potential objections to one’s argument, coming to terms with the merits of opposing points of view, and establishing why the balance of reasons still supports one’s viewpoints:

Ninety-nine in a hundred of what are called educated men are in this condition; even of those who can argue fluently for their opinions. Their conclusion may be true, but it might be false for anything they know: they have never thrown themselves into the mental position of those who think differently from them, and considered what such persons may have to say; and consequently they do not, in any proper sense of the word, know the doctrine which they themselves profess. … So essential is this discipline to a real understanding of moral and human subjects, that if opponents of all important truths do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them, and supply them with the strongest arguments which the most skilful devil’s advocate can conjure up.

Idea for Impact: Consider objections to your viewpoints; Remain open to alternative interpretations.

Suspend your inclinations and commitments and ask whether any of the objections have some force against your argument.

Don’t argue merely from those premises that appear compelling to you; address the premises that appear compelling to your opponent.

As Aristotle counseled, “The fool tells me his reasons; the wise man persuades me with my own.”

Wondering what to read next?

  1. How to Gain Empathic Insight during a Conflict
  2. To Make an Effective Argument, Explain Your Opponent’s Perspective
  3. Rapoport’s Rules to Criticize Someone Constructively
  4. Presenting Facts Can Sometimes Backfire
  5. How to Argue like the Wright Brothers

How to Buy a Small Business // Book Summary of Richard Ruback’s HBR Guide

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Beyond the capital markets and startups, I’ve been exploring buying a suitable small business to invest in and operate. To inform myself with the process of searching and valuing privately-held establishments, I recently perused Richard Ruback and Royce Yudkoff’s resourceful HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business: Think Big, Buy Small, Own Your Own Company (2017.)

'HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business' by Richard S. Ruback (ISBN 1633692507) The authors of this HBR Guide teach a popular Harvard Business School class on “acquisition entrepreneurship.” Their curriculum trains self-employment-inclined MBA students to search, negotiate, and buy an established business and become an entrepreneur-CEO within a year or two.

According to the authors, MBA students are drawn to their class by the prospect of a meaningful leadership responsibility earlier in their careers, as opposed to slowly climbing the corporate ladder or taking on the great risk of starting a company from scratch and establishing a viable business model.

The first section of the HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business can help you decide if entrepreneurship is a good match to your temperament, lifestyle, work-experience, and career ambitions. The largest part of the book provides a comprehensive roadmap for all aspects of acquiring a business—bankrolling the search process, deal-sourcing, managing risk, organizing equity- and debt-financing, running due diligence processes, structuring the purchase, and closing the deal. The final section of the book discusses changing the leadership over and transitioning into operating management.

Reflection: Is Acquisition Entrepreneurship Right for You?

  • Self-employment is not for everyone. Entrepreneurs need to be smart, driven, business-savvy, self-motivated, strategic, resilient, persuasive, and be able to deal with uncertainty.
  • On top of the challenges of self-employment, acquiring and operating a small-business will require reaching out, projecting self-confidence, and persuading people you don’t know—business brokers, financiers, investors, regulators, sellers, employees, and customers.
  • During your exploration of what business to buy, you’ll have to quickly learn about unfamiliar industries, markets, and companies. As a leader, you must be able to develop cross-functional expertise quickly.

Searching: A Full-time Job in Itself

  • Plan to commit full-time for six months to two years to raise funds from financiers, identify and vet potential acquisition targets, and negotiate with sellers on a realistic purchase price. Afterward, plan for no less than three more months to perform due diligence and complete the transaction.
  • “When you are seeking out a business to buy, you might face months when you work 12 hours a day and simply not find a desirable prospect. It’s a frustrating experience with lots of effort and no reward.”
  • Arrange for debt and equity financing from potential backers and risk-sharing partners. Contact affluent folks in your network and investors who specialize in small-businesses. The networks of people you bring together to help your mission can also lend a hand during the deal making and the due diligence processes.
  • To find potential businesses to buy, try reaching out directly to businesses whose owners may be inclined to sell. Engage small business brokers (there’re some 3,000 small business brokers and intermediaries in North America,) or comb through databases of small businesses for sale.
  • For potential sellers, look for business owners who, after building their firms over the decades, are approaching retirement and don’t have an inheritor interested in running the business. Many aging business owners are determined to ensure that their businesses live on.

Seek Enduringly Profitable Businesses: Recurring Customers and Predictable Revenue

  • Look for “enduringly profitable businesses”—stable, slow-growth companies in dull-and-boring industries (such as sandblasting, equipment maintenance, industrial repair and overhaul, window-cleaning, service-providers) in small, defensible niche markets.
  • Seek businesses whose business-to-business customers are unlikely to switch vendors because the product or service their customers buy isn’t a big part of the costs of their business. Consequently, they’re not motivated to shop around for lower-cost vendors and squeeze margins.
  • Focus on businesses with yearly revenues of $5 million to $15 million and cash flows of $750,000 to $3 million.
  • Avoid promising start-ups and risky turnaround opportunities; “it is tempting to imagine buying a troubled business or one with uneven performance, because the purchase price would be very low. But we strongly advise against it, because you’ll have to reinvent the business model and doing so is a very difficult and risky endeavor. Instead, buy a profitable business with an established model for success—one that is profitable year after year.”
  • Avoid high-growth businesses because “high growth means that your new customers will quickly outnumber your existing ones. Because new customers bring new demands, there are many ways to get in trouble. New customers are, well, new; they have no loyalty to the company and no history. High growth requires great management effort. It also absorbs money rapidly, and raising that money puts a strain on the business and its owner. A rapidly growing firm also attracts competitors, which see the expanding market and the opportunity to attract new customers. So, in a high-growth business, you could work hard and still fail if you cannot keep pace with your competitors. And even if your business survives, you might find that competition has forced you to sell at low prices, so you enjoy little financial reward after all. Making this all the harder, the seller will demand a much higher price for a business that has the potential to grow quickly.”
  • Avoid technology-driven companies (they face shifting customer needs and therefore demand constant reinvention,) cyclical business, and businesses with well-established competitors.
  • Small business-owners usually don’t hire large consulting firms or investment banks to sell their businesses. Their businesses are too small to appeal to private equity firms. “We think it makes sense to buy a business with between $750,000 and $2.0 million in annual pretax profits. … At the upper end of our size range—$2 million or more in profitability—we find that institutional investors, like smaller private-equity firms, start to become interested and that competition raises the purchase price, reducing the financial benefits of owning the business.”
  • “EBITDA margin (EBITDA/revenue) ≥ 20% for services and manufacturing or 15% for distribution and wholesale”

A Checklist for Enduringly Profitable Businesses

Initial Filters:

  1. Is the prospect consistently profitable?
  2. Is it an established business instead of a startup or turnaround?
  3. Is it in the right size range?
  4. Is it located in a place you are willing to live?
  5. Do you have the skills to manage it?
  6. Does it fit your lifestyle?

Deeper Filters:

  1. Is the prospect enduringly profitable?
  2. Is the owner serious about selling the business?

Valuing the Company and Negotiating a Deal

  • Use the company’s past financial information to project future earnings and your return on investment. Then decide on how much you should pay for a small business: “You’ll need to base the offer price on the general range of 3x–5x EBITDA.” Adjust the multiple for profit margins and growth prospects.
  • Run a primary due diligence—“a focused period of rapid learning in preparation for making an offer. This is when you’ll test the seller’s initial claims and verify the information that has made the business appealing to you. … You’re looking for any reason that you might not want to acquire this business.”
  • Finance using equity and debt. “Visit banks and approach your investor network to raise money for the acquisition. You should be prepared to provide information about the business and its industry, details on the due diligence that you’ve done, your financial projections, and the deal terms that you are proposing.”
  • Once your offer has been accepted after negotiations, run a confirmatory due diligence “in which the company’s records will be fully open to you. You will typically have around 90 days to work with your accountant and attorney to check for any inconsistencies and red flags. … This can be an extremely nerve-racking time for both the buyer and the seller, so it’s important to be patient and calm.”

Transitioning into Leadership and Emphasizing Business-as-Usual

  • As part of the negotiated deal, try to get the seller to stick around for 3 to 6 months to help you in the transition.
  • “After closing the sale, you should focus on four tasks: introducing yourself to all your managers and employees, meeting with external stakeholders, communicating the transition plan to everyone, and taking control of your cash flow.”
  • “The most common trouble for small firms under new owners is running out of cash. … So set up a process whereby you approve all payments before they go out, and review your accounts-receivable balances at least weekly. You should also implement a 90-day rolling cash-flow forecast.”
  • Meet with all the constituencies and reassure them that they won’t see any immediate changes. Lay emphasis on “your overarching goals for the company—for example, excellent customer service, commitment to quality, a satisfying work environment—and encourage people to stay focused on their work.”
  • Visit every major customer as soon as you can. Keep your ears open for ideas to improve your product- and service-offerings.
  • Don’t make any big changes early on, get to know the business, and be very respectful of all the constituents—they know more about the business than you do.

Recommendation: Read ‘HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business’ for a Very Good Introduction on How to Buy and Organize Finance for a Business

Richard Ruback and Royce Yudkoff’s HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business is excellent manual for prospective entrepreneurs, employees of small businesses, financiers, and value-seeking investors. You will also become acquainted about interactions with bankers, brokers, sellers, accountants, and attorneys you meet while searching for a business to buy.

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  5. Sony Personified Japan’s Postwar Technological Ascendancy // Summary of Akio Morita’s ‘Made in Japan’

We’re All Trying to Control Others

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We're All Trying to Control Others

One of the realities of the human condition is that we’re all operating our lives by trying to make the settings around us—the environments in which we live, work, and play—to be just the way we want them to be.

However, we share these settings with other people, who themselves are trying to make their settings just the way they want them to be.

And herein is the source of a great many conflicts: as we control our worlds and our lives with the purpose of making them transpire as we’d like them to, we intercede with the controlling of others.

Conflict is not necessarily bad. It is a normal, fundamental, and pervasive facet of life. It is a natural outcome of what happens when our expectations, interests, viewpoints, inclinations, and opinions are at variance with those of others.

Every relationship is a minefield of conflict, and each instance of contradictory viewpoints brings new challenges.

The key to getting along amicably and resolving the problems of the world is working out how we can wisely facilitate our control of what is important to us without interfering with other people’s efforts at doing the same thing.

Idea for Impact: Life is negotiation. Getting what you want out of life is all about getting what you want from—and with—other people. Learning how to engage in conflict to get what you want without inflicting damage on the opportunities and the relationships is one of life’s essential and practical skills.

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  5. Don’t Lead a Dysfunctional Team

To Micromanage or Not?

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Micromanagement—any unnecessary meddling in someone else’s responsibilities, decision-making, and span of authority—is one of the most common gripes that employees have about their managers. No manager’s participation, influence, and authority should chip value away from an employee’s work.

Nobody Likes a Meddling Boss

There’s a thin line between appropriate questioning and micromanaging. What characterizes micromanaging is not whether a manager is questioning the minutiae, but whether the fine points are significant enough to be probed into and to what end the manager is probing.

For instance, is a manager making a point of a certain inconsistent operating expense, or is the manager examining bookkeeping details that may help bring to light a bigger-level problem such as a defective accounting system? Asking questions doesn’t in and of itself signify micromanaging, as long as those questions lead to insights of some substance.

If a manager hones into some trivial detail and challenges it with an intention of establishing an employee’s error, it’s reasonable to assume that the manager is micromanaging.

When micromanaging happens in the area of the manager’s expertise, his nitpicking is usually provoked by an egotistical need to emphasize his knowledge or experience on the subject, especially if the manager is insisting on his pet course of action.

Idea for Impact: When tactically applied, micromanaging can be a powerful tool to get the right things done

The ability to pose broad, open-ended questions (try the Socratic Method) and help an employee uncover crucial details—and to do this without creating the perception of micromanaging—is a particularly valuable managerial skill.

The smartest managers I know of do away with as many unnecessary reports, reviews, and approvals as possible. They ask the right questions about the right subjects in the right tone to help refocus an employee’s attention while deferring to the employee’s decision-making prerogative. They don’t delve into the fine points of everything—they selectively micromanage only if they must.

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A Sense of Urgency

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The most successful managers I know are highly attentive of their colleagues’ sense of urgency and incessantly adapt to them.

In his excellent Steve Jobs biography, Walter Isaacson evokes Apple CEO (and operations wizard) Tim Cook’s responsiveness and a sense of urgency:

At a meeting early in his tenure, Cook was told of a problem with one of Apple’s Chinese suppliers. “This is really bad,” he said. “Someone should be in China driving this.” Thirty minutes later he looked at an operations executive sitting at the table and unemotionally asked, “Why are you still here?” The executive stood up, drove directly to the San Francisco airport, and bought a ticket to China. He became one of Cook’s top deputies.

Idea for Impact: Bosses and customers often respond more positively to your focus on creating a sense of urgency before emerging problems erupt in a crisis.

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Fight Ignorance, Not Each Other

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We live in a era of hyper-polarization and hyper-politicization. Studies suggest that we Americans have mostly devolved to two political groups that fervently believe that all wisdom resides in their particular standpoints and therefore care less and less to empathize with the other side.

People loathe the “other” ideological group with such visceral obsession that their hate pollutes their minds. Thanks partly to social media, self-organized tribes are isolating themselves into geographic, religious, ideological, educational, ethnic, and media bubbles of like-minded crusaders.

As I wrote previously, studies have shown that hanging around a group of likeminded folks can make people even more scornful of differing viewpoints, than they are as individuals. They demonize anyone who disagrees with them. They neither account for the case against their positions, nor find middle ground.

In the wake of the 2011 Tucson shooting (where perpetrator Jared Loughner shot and killed six individuals, and injured 14 others at a political gathering,) meditation teacher James Baraz of wrote a Huffington Post essay underscoring the ignorance that brings about the aforesaid demonization:

The real villain is in this story is not Jared Loughner. It’s not the media. And it’s not the gun rights advocates. The real villain is ignorance. Because of ignorance, people project their fear and turn those who are different into enemies—both in their minds and in actuality. Once you demonize the “other” they become less than human and you can inflict pain on them without guilt or shame.

Wondering what to read next?

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  4. Couldn’t We Use a Little More Civility and Respect in Our Conversations?
  5. The Streisand Effect: When Trying to Hide Only Makes it Shine

Don’t Lead a Dysfunctional Team

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The difference between functional and dysfunctional teams often boils down to effective team leadership. If you’ve been asked to lead a team, you’ll get more from your team members if you know what’s expected of the team, and manage your roles and responsibilities.

  1. Define the charter. Find out what your customers want. Find out how much latitude your team has—decision-making, reporting procedure, access to resources and information. Make sure there’s organizational support for these matters.
  2. Build on strengths. If team members are selected for you, determine what each person can contribute to the team’s effort. Ask members to identify their strengths.
  3. Set ground rules. Discuss how the team will operate. Be clear about performance expectations. If necessary, write down the rules agreed upon by team members.
  4. Develop a mission and goals. Get your team talking about what needs to get done, by whom, and when.
  5. “Herd the sheep.” Part of your job is to be a sheepdog. Keep people together and herd them toward goals.
  6. Break up conflicts. Disagreements are fine, even healthy, but outright hostility or anger is counterproductive. Stop the discussion, clarify positions, and try to find areas of agreement.
  7. Avoid groupthink. Don’t compromise too much for the sake of consensus, harmony, and “esprit de corps.” Don’t settle on the lowest-common-denominator decision upon which everybody agrees.
  8. Build bridges. Keep your sponsor, your manager, and each team member’s boss informed of the progress of the team’s assignment.
  9. Be visible. Any crisis calls for constant, candid communication. Knowing how to step up your communications efforts to the right levels during confusion is a powerful tool in managing a crisis.
  10. Captain the ship. You’re responsible for your team’s every outcome—good or bad. You are wholly accountable for everything that happens under your authority. Never pass the blame should things go wrong.
  11. Make the work fun. Give your team lots of recognition. Celebrate the team’s accomplishments.
  12. Establish freedom and autonomy. Empower team members to innovate and make decisions. Encourage all ideas and make sure that they are respected, no matter how strange they may sound. Micromanage only when you must.
  13. Assess performance. Periodically, ask the team to rate its performance. Resolve any problems as quickly as possible.
  14. Get stuff done. Don’t lose sight of your goals and your mission. The only thing that matters is the relevant results.

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  2. Why Your Employees Don’t Trust You—and What to Do About it
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  5. We’re All Trying to Control Others

Rewards and Incentives Can Backfire

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Rewards and Incentives are Gateways to Behavior-Change

One of the great struggles of life is to get others to do the things they should, but don’t want to—getting your daughter to cleanup her bedroom or do homework in her least favorite subject, convincing your employee to do a task in the manner that your company expects, and so forth.

One tried-and-true technique to get reluctant people to do what they should is to hold back an incentive. For example, parents who want children to eat vegetables at dinner could stipulate that they eat their vegetables (the non-preferred behavior) before they can eat their desserts (the preferred behavior.)

Preferred Behaviors Can Be Used to Reinforce Unpreferred Behaviors

This motivational rule was formally studied by the American psychologist David Premack. The Premack Principle, or the “relativity theory of reinforcement,” makes it easier to do an unpleasant activity by putting a pleasant activity right after it. In this manner, a reinforcer could observe what an individual chooses to do voluntarily and offer that favored task as an incentive to gain compliance or to increase the likelihood of another less-favored behavior occurring.

As expected, although an academic, Premack enjoyed a very successful vocation as a highly paid “productivity expert” dispensing age-old techniques. He traveled around the country and advised thousands of corporate executives to manipulate themselves into becoming more motivated and more productive by organizing their day such that they schedule first anything that’s unpleasant and important and then reward themselves with something they really like doing.

Grandma’s Rule: “Johny, Finish Your Homework Before You Watch TV”

That a high probability behavior could be used to reinforce participation in a low probability behavior is the unassuming “Grandma’s Rule”—arguably the most universally recognized principle in the field of behavior change. Workplaces use the grandma’s rule by offering future “plum” assignments for employees who “pay their dues” by doing “dull and dirty” work in the present.

The grandma’s rule anchors in the fact that people, including children, are willing to do something they don’t really want to do if that’s the only way they can do something that they really want to do. Absent this established reinforcement, people left to their own devices tend to do what they like doing instead of doing things they don’t like doing even though latter are more beneficial.

The Hidden Costs of Rewards and Incentives

Rewards and incentives can guide and modify behavior. The goal of offering rewards for positive reinforcement is to have the unpleasant tasks become less and less unpleasant. Therefore, the true measure of the effectiveness of any reward is how well the preferred behaviors become internalized. For example, offering rewards to children for reading books is not merely to get them to read books inside the classroom, but to internalize the reading behavior with the goal that they read even during the summer when they don’t have to read for school.

Offering rewards for motivating people to do unlikable tasks could sometimes become counterproductive. In what psychologists call “the overjustification effect,” a reward, instead of motivating, could fortify a person’s revulsion for the task. In other words, the reward could reinforce the belief that the task can’t be worth doing for itself.

Rewards Can Backfire

Overjustification effect is controversial because it disputes the general principles of motivational psychology and behavioral reinforcement—especially in the contexts of parenting, education, and the workplace.

Idea for Impact: Locating the pleasure in the future, when the reward will be imparted, could turn the present-moment doing of an unpleasant task into tedium. For example, insisting that your child eat broccoli for being rewarded with dessert could make her hate broccoli even more.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Why Incentives Backfire and How to Make Them Work: Summary of Uri Gneezy’s Mixed Signals
  2. People Do What You Inspect, Not What You Expect
  3. Master the Middle: Where Success Sets Sail
  4. Don’t Reward A While Hoping for B
  5. Incentives Matter

Think of a Customer’s Complaint as a Gift

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When managers become comfortable with the idea that complaints are gifts, they do not hesitate in responding to them.

'A Complaint Is a Gift' by Janelle Barlow (ISBN 1576755827) According to A Complaint Is a Gift: Recovering Customer Loyalty When Things Go Wrong, the idea of complaints as gifts must be reinforced at every staff meeting and training session. The company’s policies must be aligned to support this philosophy. A Complaint Is a Gift‘s authors, management consultants Janelle Barlow and Claus Moller, restate some fundamental techniques for handling complaints:

  1. Don’t get defensive. When managing complaints, managers can be their own worst enemies! Instead of taking complaints personally, managers should focus on the particulars of a problem. Then, complaints become less disruptive and constructive.
  2. Say “thank you” and explain why you appreciate the complaint. Say something about how hearing the complaint will allow you to better address the problem. You create a more powerful rapport with customers by saying “thank you” than apologizing.
  3. Apologize for the mistake and empathize when appropriate. Acknowledge the customers feelings You do not have to see eye to eye with the person to acknowledge how they are feeling. Saying “I can see you are upset,” or “I understand why this ordeal has been frustrating for you,” will go a long way toward diffusing any complainer’s anger.
  4. Listen for what the customer wants to happen next, because it’s often easy to accommodate requests, as long as they’re not totally unreasonable. Promise to do something about the problem immediately. Then do something to fix the situation.
  5. Ask for necessary information and correct the mistake promptly. Look at the problem from all perspectives and ask the customer to explain his or her expectations and the reality of what he/she experienced. Ask what it will take to meet their needs or to satisfy them. Rapid responses disclose you are serious about service recovery and customer service.
  6. Check customer satisfaction. Call your customers back to find out if they are satisfied with what you did for them.
  7. Initiate changes to prevent future mistakes, make the complaint known throughout the organization so this kind of problem can be prevented. Fix the system without rushing to blame staff or policies.

Idea for Impact: Managers who ask for complaints will find that customers express their concerns more openly and objectively. Inviting complaints reduces the likelihood a customer will be upset or emotional. It is a way to nip problems in the bud and solve problems before they can aggravate.

Wondering what to read next?

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  3. Thirteen Phrases Your Customers Don’t Want to Hear
  4. Avoid Telling Someone in Trouble “Be Positive” … It Denies Their Reality
  5. Think Twice Before You Launch That Truth Bomb

Office Chitchat Isn’t Necessarily a Time Waster

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When Employees are Happy, They Work Better

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

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.

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