People Skills for Analytical Thinkers: Boost Your Communication and Advance Your Career - and Life

The best you can do is show that it’s safe to tell the truth. Open the gate to feedback and tell others you appreciate honesty.

Your rider knows that asking for feedback is valuable in the long run, but your emotional elephant wants comfort now.

Do you choose comfort or courage?

Every year, I unwrapped the gift paper, knowing that I would not care much about the present. But my parents taught me to say “thank you.” Always. When people buy you a present, they invest their time and energy.

The same is true when you receive feedback. You won’t always like the message. You won’t always understand it. However, that person made an effort to share the gift of feedback with you. The least you can do is thank them.

people you work with the following three questions: What should I keep doing? What should I start doing? What should I stop doing?

I encourage you to discuss the answers face to

discuss the answers face to face, as this leads to a deeper understanding. Try not to defend your behavior. Only listen, ask questions, and take notes.

even if you feel that the feedback you receive is completely inaccurate, feedback is valuable. At the very least, it will inform you of how other people perceive you.

you will find this challenging. If that’s the case, asking for feedback on a specific task can make the step smaller.

Sitting down still felt counterproductive. Trying to focus on my breath seemed stupid.

Meditation helps me to assess when my emotional elephant is being lazy and when my elephant has a valuable message to share.

we can change our Joker algorithms in three steps: Catch yourself. Pause. Experiment with different behavior. Repeat and monitor the results.

The first step is to catch yourself by recognizing that this is a situation that triggered your Joker algorithm in the past.

This step is crucial because when you let your algorithm respond automatically, it’s likely that you’ll get the same negative results.

When you recognize the situation, stop. Don’t move; keep your mouth shut. Try to breath slowly and deliberately for at least three cycles of inhalation and exhalation.

Instead of giving an auto-response, ask yourself “How do I feel?”

Being an analytical person who used to disregard feelings, I found this a daunting task. I thought, “What do you mean, how do I feel? I don’t know. I guess I don’t feel much.”

When you take the time to ask yourself such questions, you train yourself to read your emotions.

Over time, you learn to recognize which kind of physical discomfort comes with each type of emotion.