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

Telling others about your preferences makes you more self-aware.

Verbalizing your preferences makes you more aware. What exactly is my preference? Has my preference changed since I thought about it last time?

Bossing people around without being considerate of their feelings is unlikely to be successful.

everyone has a different user manual — everyone has built their own set of algorithms.

ask if they are willing to take your algorithms into account and say that you realize that they may have different preferences.

I would overthink every word I wanted to say. “Is this valuable enough for the conversation?”

I found out there is a lot of value in sharing more context instead of one-word answers.

there is a lot of value in sharing more context instead of one-word answers. I also realized I’m not an attention-seeker when I tell people more about myself. That’s why I started to talk more without overthinking every word. As a result, I started planting more conversational seeds, and I became less mysterious, more interesting. I didn’t just give the “correct” answer. Instead, I gave an answer that told others more about me.

When people don’t know about your algorithms, they will make assumptions — and that’s what we want to avoid.

Receiving feedback isn’t easy, but giving feedback in an effective way is difficult too.

a specific compliment has more emotional impact on the other person.

most people think in a way that’s totally different from your way of thinking. They see and experience the world from a totally different perspective. Other people don’t just look through a different pair of glasses; they see things from a totally different angle too. This

mistakes I’ve made. Many, many times I didn’t understand other people and I made assumptions about them. This only drove me further away from understanding and getting the results I was looking for.

Even if there is only one correct answer and you are 100% sure you are right, it can still help to walk to the other side of the table. This is true even if it’s only to show that you’re willing to see the world from the other person’s perspective. However, that doesn’t mean that you agree with what the other person is saying.

Many people have a strong urge to feel understood, because it makes them feel valued and important. When you pay attention to their perspective, people will usually become less defensive and more open to your point of view.

helps you to positively influence other people, whether it’s to get colleagues to take your ideas seriously or to persuade your boss that it’s time for a salary raise.

thought I could influence others by giving more arguments. I gave all the reasons why I was right, but the other side was still not convinced.

Ask, “What is important to you in this situation? What is your goal? When would you be satisfied?”

In the first step, you need to understand what’s important to you.

when you show consideration to the perspective of the other person, you build trust.