How to get around the Expectations

Recall, until this point in your life, personal or professional, how many times have you expected something to happen and when it didn’t you were heartbroken. You were discouraged so bad that you swore never to expect anything like that in future again, from your friends or colleagues. Did you or did you not expect again? I did that to myself so many times, I wondered why, until I realized – 

 

“Expect the Least Expected and the Unexpected will happen.
Expect the Unexpected and the Unexpected will happen.
Be Optimistic and Nothing Unexpected will happen ever again.”

 

 

It’s not at all about “Me”

I stumbled upon this book, It’s Not All About Me: The Top Ten Techniques for Building Quick Rapport with Anyone, while searching for something interesting to read about human nature. Most of you, I am sure, would have faced awkwardness when approached by a stranger or struggled to talk to a stranger in the phases of utter boredom.

Following ten techniques are taken as it is from the book itself. Before getting into the techniques itself, I would like to highlight what the author, Robin Dreeke, thinks in his words how powerful these techniques are –

“I would be remiss if I did not highlight this warning once more. Once you have rapport then compliance with requests is easy.  **Warning – the content in this book is so effective that I warn the reader to think carefully how it is used.  I do not endorse or condone the use of these skills in malicious or deceptive ways ** Go forth, enjoy your new skills and “enter the Arena!” Make the world a better place.”

The Top Ten Techniques for Building Quick Rapport with Anyone:

1. Establishing artificial time constraints: Allow the person being targeted to feel that there is an end in sight.
2. Accommodating non-verbals: Ensure that both your body language as well as your voice is non-threatening.
3. Slower rate of speech: Don’t oversell and talk too fast. You lose credibility quickly and come on too strong and threatening.
4. Sympathy or assistance theme: Human beings are genetically coded to provide assistance and help. It also appeals to their ego that they may know more than you.
5. Ego suspension: Most likely the hardest technique but without a doubt the most effective. Don’t build yourself up, build someone else up and you will have strong rapport.
6. Validate others: Human beings crave being connected and accepted. Validation feeds this need and few give it. Be the great validator and have instant, great rapport.
7. Ask… How? When? Why? : When you want to dig deep and make a connection, there is no better or safer way than asking these questions. They will tell you what they are willing to talk about.
8. Connect with quid pro quo: Some people are just more guarded than others. Allow them to feel comfortable by giving a little about you. Don’t overdo it.
9. Gift giving (reciprocal altruism): Human beings are genetically coded to reciprocate gifts given. Give a gift, either intangible or material, and seek a conversation and rapport in return.
10. Managing expectations: Avoid both disappointment as well as the look of a bad salesman by ensuring that your methods are focused on benefiting the targeted individual and not you. Ultimately you will win, but your mindset needs to focus on them.

Click here to order the book or download for kindle.

 

IN A NUTSHELL – How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie

I recently finished reading “How To Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie, again. His principles sound so simple and profound that you start questioning yourself, “why am I not doing it already?” I felt the same the same way and started pacing towards the path of winning friends and influencing people.

In this post I have consolidated his principles in a nutshell, as given in the book itself –

IN A NUTSHELL—FUNDAMENTAL TECHNIQUES IN HANDLING PEOPLE

Principle 1—Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.

Principle 2—Give honest and sincere appreciation.

Principle 3—Arouse in the other person an eager want.

IN A NUTSHELL—SIX WAYS TO MAKE PEOPLE LIKE YOU

Principle 1—Become genuinely interested in other people.

Principle 2—Smile.

Principle 3—Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.

Principle 4—Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.

Principle 5—Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.

Principle 6—Make the other person feel important—and do it sincerely.

IN A NUTSHELL—WIN PEOPLE TO YOUR WAY OF THINKING

Principle 1—The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.

Principle 2—Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say, “You’re wrong.”

Principle 3—If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.

Principle 4—Begin in a friendly way.

Principle 5—Get the other person saying “yes, yes” immediately.

Principle 6—Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.

Principle 7—Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.

Principle 8—Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.

Principle 9—Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires.

Principle 10—Appeal to the nobler motives.

Principle 11—Dramatize your ideas.

Principle 12—Throw down a challenge.

IN A NUTSHELL—BE A LEADER

A leader’s job often includes changing your people’s attitudes and behavior. Some suggestions to accomplish this:

Principle 1—Begin with praise and honest appreciation.

Principle 2—Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.

Principle 3—Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.

Principle 4—Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.

Principle 5—Let the other person save face.

Principle 6—Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be “hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.”

Principle 7—Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.

Principle 8—Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.

Principle 9—Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.

IN A NUTSHELL—SEVEN RULES FOR MAKING YOUR HOME LIFE HAPPIER

Rule 1: Don’t nag.

Rule 2: Don’t try to make your partner over.

Rule 3: Don’t criticize.

Rule 4: Give honest appreciation.

Rule 5: Pay little attentions.

Rule 6: Be courteous.

Rule 7: Read a good book on the sexual side of marriage.

 

Father Forgets, W. Livingston Larned

Listen, son: I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me. Guiltily I came to your bedside.

These are the things I was thinking, son: I had been cross to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when you threw some of your things on the floor.

At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table. You spread butter too thick on your bread. And as you started off to play and I made for my train, you turned and waved a hand and called, “Good-bye, Daddy!” and I frowned, and said in reply, “Hold your Shoulders back!”

Then it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I came up the road I spied you, down on your knees, playing marbles. There were holes in your stockings. I humiliated you before your boy friends by marching you ahead of me to the house. Stockings were expensive—and if you had to buy them you would be more careful! Imagine that, son, from a father!

Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library, how you came in, timidly, with a sort of hurt look in your eyes? When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption, you hesitated at the door. “What is it you want?” I snapped.

You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous plunge, and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, and your small arms tightened with an affection that God had set blooming in your heart and which even neglect could not wither. And then you were gone, pattering up the stairs.

Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding fault, of reprimanding—this was my reward to you for being a boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too much of youth. It was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years.

And there was so much that was good and fine and true in your character. The little heart of you was as big as the dawn itself over the wide hills. This was shown by your spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me goodnight. Nothing else matters tonight, son. I have come to your bedside in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed!

It is a feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours. But tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: “He is nothing but a boy—a little boy!”

I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother’s arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much.