Making the Connection: Strategies to Build Effective Personal Relationships (Collection) (48 page)

On the other hand, you do need to know who’s buying the milk. So you need to get into the habit of at least summarizing the conclusion before you go your separate ways. “Right. So I’ll buy the milk and I’ll see you back here at about 6:30 then.” This is even more important when you’re working toward something you really want. It’s crucial you’re clear about whether you’re calling someone back or waiting for their call. Did your boss ask for your report by this Friday or next Friday? You’ll only know if you summarize what’s been said, and listen to yourself summarizing it. (I know that sounds foolish, but it is possible to summarize on autopilot and not actually know what you’ve said—I’ve done it myself.)

If the discussion is at all important, and especially if it’s official or work-based in any way, it’s also sensible to email your understanding of the decision to the other person—so they can reply if they don’t think they heard what you thought they thought they heard. (See how easy it is to get confused?) Drop your boss a quick email: “Thanks for the chat this morning, and I just wanted to confirm that I’ll get my report in by next Friday at the latest.”

Pick Up the Signals

People don’t always say what they’re thinking—at least not in words. But that doesn’t mean you can’t work it out. We say a lot more with our bodies than we do with our mouths, and if you learn to look for the signs, you will generally have a pretty good idea of how the other person really feels. Maybe the person you’re talking to is silently angry, or nervous, or just plain uninterested but trying to hide it.

Just ignore everything you’ve been told about some people being intuitive and others just not. Anyone can learn to read body language. In fact, if you’re
not especially intuitive, you really need to learn how. It’s just a matter of training yourself to remember to look for signals.

If you’re on the lookout, it’s not hard to read body language. And I’ll tell you something else—when it conflicts with the words someone is saying, it will be the body language that’s telling the truth. You can bet on that.

So what are you looking out for? Well, broadly speaking, relaxed confident people look relaxed and confident. I’m sorry if that sounds too simple, but it really is simple. They sit or stand in a relaxed stance, arms by their sides or in their laps (if they’re not holding anything), and they smile readily (and properly, so it reaches their eyes). Tense people (who are angry or anxious or in a hurry, or whatever) are more likely to cross their arms and their legs, fidget, strum their fingers and hold themselves more rigidly. Angry people sound tense, lean forward, and often clench their fists. Bored people will look over your shoulder or check their watch—even while telling you they’re interested in what you have to say.

The only challenge here is looking for the signs. Reading them is honestly simple.

Sympathize with Other People’s Anger

It’s no fun being angry, and it’s not something to subject anyone else to if you can help it. But sometimes people are justifiably angry, and sometimes you’re in the firing line. If you’re at fault, the only thing to do is fess up and apologize, and do what you can to put it right. But what if it isn’t your fault? Maybe a customer is angry with your organization, and you just happen to be the person on the end of the phone or across the counter. Or perhaps your neighbor is livid that your tree surgeon cut down the tree on their side of the fence, when actually you’d never asked them to do any such thing. How are you going to deal with that?

The first thing you’re going to do is stay calm. However bad the confrontation, it will get a whole lot worse if you get angry, too. What you need to do is recognize
why
people get angry—and that’ll be because they don’t think they’ll get the response they want any other way. So show them they don’t need to raise their voice. You can start by listening. If you don’t shout back, or incessantly tell them to “calm down,” they’ll realize you actually want to hear what they have to say. And they’re likely to start calming down quite fast.

Now you need to sympathize with them. That doesn’t mean apologizing if it’s not your fault—it just means letting them know you understand why they feel angry, and you consider it justified: “I can see how upsetting that must be.” OK, you’re doing well. Deep breath. Now, don’t waste their time with long explanations—that’s not what they want to hear. Just a quick one-liner will do if it’s really essential: “I certainly never asked them to cut that tree down.”

Nearly there. They should be feeling a lot happier now. But they still want something done, so do whatever you can to help. Give them a refund, or even a gift certificate as well. Offer to replace the tree with a new sapling of their choice. If you can resolve someone’s anger effectively enough, you can actually strengthen your relationship with them.

Don’t Respond to Tactical Anger

OK, everything I just said about dealing with anger—forget it. At least when the anger you’re dealing with
isn’t
justified. Some people use anger to manipulate, threaten, bully, intimidate, or bludgeon you into doing what they want. This is completely different from justified anger and needs a totally different response. This is toddler-tantrum world, and should be dealt with just as you’d deal with a toddler.
⁸

In case you don’t have children I’ll explain the technique (and possibly put you off ever having kids). First you tell them, calmly, that you’re not prepared to be shouted at/spoken to like this/abused/bullied/intimidated (delete as applicable), and tell them you’ll leave if they don’t calm down. Then you carry out the threat if necessary, and leave if they don’t stop shouting. If they start up again next time they see you, just keep giving them the same response.

I know this is tough if you’re dealing with someone who is—or seems—senior to you. Your boss or your father-in-law or the head of the homeowners’ association. But hey, we’re all equal on a human level, and you deserve respect as much as anyone else. What can they do to you? You can’t discipline someone for refusing to be cowed by your manipulative intimidation. What actually happens is that these people learn fast that their prima donna tactics don’t work on you, and in time they’ll stop trying it because they’ll be the ones who look bad when you don’t react the way they’d planned.

Give Other People Results

I once had a personal assistant (yes, I used to be the sort of person who had a personal assistant) who was such a hard worker. She came in on time every day and slaved away until going-home time. Whenever I asked her to do anything, she’d be right there, pen in hand, taking notes.

I’ve no idea what she did all day, but she did whatever-it-was diligently. The reason I don’t know what it was she did is that somehow there was never much to show for it. She could place a call for me, or retrieve something from the filing cabinet, but then I could do that for myself. Other than that not a lot seemed to happen unless I was extremely specific about what I wanted and when and how and so on. Then it mostly happened. On a good day.

I have a feeling she organized things constantly. Trouble was, I actually wanted things to happen. I wanted my car serviced or a difficult customer sorted out or a meeting with four other busy people fixed, or a train ticket to appear magically on my desk the day before I traveled. Nope. None of that.

The filing system was immaculate though.

Your boss wants results. Targets met—or preferably exceeded. Your partner wants that vacation booked, or the lawn mower serviced. Your kids want the cinema tickets arranged. The school committee wants the white elephant booth organized. People want things to happen. Not just to sound cool and look good, but actually to happen. You know what you have to do. Do it.

Be Part of Your Organization

You’re part of a team. The family, the company, the committee—I don’t know what teams you belong to but you certainly should. The word team may not be the one that springs to mind when I mention some of those things, but it should be. You need to view any cohesive group you belong to as a team. This comes more naturally to some people than others, but you can learn to do it.

The rest of the group all like a team player. So do you, when it comes to the other people involved. You’ll be far better regarded if people can see that you’re one of them. Because what’s the alternative? To see the group as a separate entity, to refer to the company or the committee as “them” rather than “us.” People notice these things, you know. If you’re not part of the team, not talking about “we,” not identifying with its successes—and its failures—you’re distancing yourself from it. That’s not friendly is it? Nor is it loyal.

This is important but usually easy with your family. Hopefully you’ve always felt like one of the clan. It can be more of a challenge at work though, and with other “official” commitments. But that’s where it matters most. If you want to get the best out of other people, and get them on your side, it’s crucial that you don’t give the impression that there’s more than one side to be on. If you’re all pulling together, all part of the same gang, they’ll appreciate your input and want to give you all the support you need.

Work Hard

There’s no substitute.

People want to help those who help themselves by working hard. If you want support you need to show that you’re making most of the running yourself. No one’s going to work hard on your behalf if they can see you twiddling your thumbs.

I’m not telling you to work 24 hours a day without respite. You need to do other things as well as work. Rest and play, obviously—everyone knows that. But you should put in plenty of working hours, and when your time is allocated to work, that’s precisely what you do.

Listen, no one owes you anything. We get what we want by a combination of a bit of luck and a lot of hard work. If you want stuff, you work. Simple as that.

Work Right

Hard work is crucial, but it has to be the right kind of hard work. No, I can’t tell you what that is because it’s different for everyone. And many’s the hard worker who feels aggravated at not being promoted because they put in more hours than anyone else on the team (but didn’t actually meet their targets).

If you want things, you need to make sure that you’re investing your energy in the right direction. It’s not about effort in, but about results out. How you spend your working time should be determined by the results you need to achieve. If you can achieve those results without trying, you’ve set your targets too low. Remember, people must see you working as hard as they do, or they won’t want to work even harder to help you when it’s needed.

So work out what you need to do to get what you want—the evening classes you need to attend, the sales you need to achieve, the bills you need to pay off, the qualifications you need to gain, the weight you need to lose. Then think about exactly where you need to put the effort in to make it actually happen. What will be crucial? That’s where you need to invest all that hard work.

Be Worth It

There are lots of things you might want—lots of reasons you may have picked up this book—and many of them have nothing to do with work. A lot of them do though, and of those the most frequent ambitions people tell me about are getting pay raises and promotions. Indeed, even if it’s not top of your own personal list, you probably wouldn’t say no if a raise or promotion was in the offing.

I’ll tell you where most people go wrong, too. There’s a kind of assumption that if you’re doing a good job and you’ve been there a long time, you somehow deserve it. Wrong. Listen, times are hard.
Your boss can’t give you an upgrade of any kind without a damn good reason. So you’d better give her one.

This is a perfect example of not only working hard but also working at the right things. You are only going to get that raise or promotion if you can demonstrate that you are giving your company more value than they expected when you started the job, or last had a raise. That means you have to show them how you’re doing one of these things:

• You are exceeding the targets that were set.

• You are earning, or saving, the organization significantly more money than it expected.

• You are more valuable because you’ve gained qualifications or experience.

• You have additional responsibilities that weren’t in your job description before.

• You give as much (or greater) value than other employees who earn more than you.

That’s what gives your boss the excuse to increase your recognition from the company. Hard work on its own is no more than you were originally contracted to provide. But demonstrating increased value gives you a strong case.

Part 3: Help Them to Say Yes

The more you can help someone say yes to you, the less you actually have to ask for what you want, in so many words. You know that some people are easy to say yes to, for all sorts of reasons. Maybe the request is straightforward, maybe it doesn’t require much effort from you, perhaps they’ve asked at just the right moment, or in a particularly charming way, or maybe you owe them a favor, or perhaps you just like them and want to help.

Whether you feel comfortable asking directly or whether you want to find an indirect way to get what you want, the easier you can make it for the other person to help you, the more likely you are to get what you want. And the key to all that is to put yourself in their shoes and see it from their perspective. So that’s what we’ll do next.

Make Sure You’re Getting Through to Them

No one is going to give you what you want if they don’t know what it is—not on purpose anyway. And some people just don’t listen properly. You may be asking for something big from them, or they may just be giving you a bit of help along the way, but either way you need to make sure they’ve taken on board what it is you need.