Mind Your Language!

The next time you are faced with a colleague or member of your team who is ‘being difficult’ try changing your language about her/him.

Substitute the word ‘difficult‘ for ‘different‘ and try and work out what makes them different. And then see if you can work with the difference, not the difficulty.

It’s the emotionally intelligent thing to do!

Swap Shoes Day!

Do you know the saying:

‘Grant that I may not criticise my neighbour until I have walked a mile in her moccasins’?

Try this for one day.

Next time someone is really driving you crazy at work or in your personal life, metaphorically swap shoes with them for one day.

Suspend your usual critical thoughts, voiced or not, and imagine the world from their viewpoint. Don’t put yourself under undue pressure to make changes; simply try and experience the world from their standpoint.

And see what the next day brings! You might find your empathy levels rising!

Be a Mind Reader! Tip 1

Whether you realise it or not you are probably ‘mind reading’ other people every single day!

There are some people who have a natural skill which pyschologists call ‘empathetic inference’. They aren’t actually mind readers but they do have a particular knack of fairly accurately understanding what others are thinking. It’s a great skill to have and will enhance all your relationships- work, career, and personal.

You don’t have to be born with it; if you understand the techniques and skills involved you can practise and improve

Here is the first tip in a mini-series to help you hone your own abilities in ‘empathetic inference’:

Your Framework

Make sure you understand the ‘frame’ from which you are operating, i.e context and your experience of life and upbringing.

Our personal framework, context and experience affects how we interpret what we are seeing and hearing and is a significant factor in understanding others.

For example, depending on our own personal experiences, we may be offended by a slightly off beat jocular comment, not realising the other person is simply joking. Our response may then be disproportionate and difficulties will ensue.

If you find yourself simply not sure, try and introduce some phrases into your conversation such as ‘Can I just check I’m understanding correctly…’, or ‘Oh, that sounds like you mean….have I got that right?’

After a few such clarifying questions you can begin to understand the other person’s frame of reference and ‘read’ them more easily!

I hope you’ve found this useful. Please do share any of your tips for ‘mind reading’ others!