Try honestly to see things from the other person's point of view

A Formula that Will Work Wonders for You

1. Only wise, tolerant, exceptional people even try to understand others instead of condemning them.
2. There is a reason why the other man thinks and acts the way he does.
3. Ferret out the reason – and you have the key to his actions, perhaps to his personality.
4. Try honestly to put yourself in his place
5. You will save yourself time and irritation, for “by becoming interested in the cause, we are less likely to dislike the effect.”
6. Stop a minute to contrast your keen interest in your own affairs with your mild concern about anything else.
7. Realize then that everybody else in the world feels the exact same way!
8. Success in dealing with people depends on a sympathetic grasp of the other persons’ viewpoint
9. It never occurred to him that she might want a compliment on her diligence
10. Cooperativeness in conversation is achieved when you show that you consider the other person’s ideas and feelings as important as your own.
11. “Getting Through to People” by Dr. Gerald S Nirenberg - Start your conversations by giving the other person the purpose or direction of your conversation, governing what you say by what you would want to hear if you were the listener, and accepting his or her viewpoint will encourage the listener to have an open mind to your ideas.
12. Seeing things through another person’s eyes may ease tensions when personal problems become overwhelming.
13. Tomorrow, before asking anyone to put out a fire or buy your product or contribute to your favorite charity, why not pause and close your eyes and try to think the whole thing through from another person’s point of view?
14. Ask yourself, “Why would he or she want to do it?”
15. This strategy will avoid making enemies and will get better results – and with less friction and less shoe leather.
16. “I would rather walk the sidewalk in front of a person’s office for two hours before an interview,” said Dean Donbarn of the Harward business school, “than step into that office without a perfectly clear idea of what I was going to say and what that person- from my knowledge of his or her interests and motives – was likely to answer.”
17. If you only get one thing from this study – an increased tendency to think always in terms of the other person’s point of view, and see things from that person’s angle as well as your own – it may easily prove to be one of the steppingstones of your career.

Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers

How to get cooperation

1. Don’t you have much more faith in ideas that you discover for yourself than in ideas that are handed to you on a silver platter?
2. Its bad judgement to ram your opinions down the throats of other people.
3. Let the other person think out their own conclusion
4. Ask people what they expect of you, then ask people what you can expect from them
5. No one likes to feel that he or she is being sold something or told to do something.
6. We like to be consulted about our wishes, our wants, our thoughts.
7. Urge people to give you their ideas, then you won’t have to sell them. They’ll buy.
8. Letting the other person feel that the idea is his or hers not only works in business and politics, it works in family life as well.
9. Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay “Self-Reliance” stated: “In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”
10. Colonel Edward House spoke about President Woodrow Wilson: “After I got to know the President, I learned the best way to convert him to an idea was to plant it in his mind casually, but so as to interest him in it – so as to get him thinking about it on his own account”
11. House didn’t care about credit. He cared about results. He even gave Wilson public credit for these ideas.
12. Let a person sell themselves on an idea
13. “The reason why rivers and seas receive the homage of a hundred mountain streams is that they keep below them. Thus they are able to reign over all the mountain streams. So the sage, wishing to be above men, puts himself below them; wishing to be before them, he puts himself behind them. Thus, though his place be above men, they do not feel his weight; though his place be before them, they do not count it an injury.”

Let the other person do a great deal of the talking

The Safety Valve in Handling Complaints

1. Most people trying to win others to their way of thinking do too much talking themselves.
2. Let the other people talk themselves out
3. So ask them questions. Let them tell you a few things.
4. If you disagree, don’t interrupt.
5. They won’t pay attention to you while they still have a lot of ideas of their own crying for expression.
6. Listen patiently and with an open mind.
7. Encourage them to express their ideas fully.
8. Listening to a person and hearing what they have to say, creates a cooperative relationship
9. Almost every successful person likes to reminisce about his early struggles.
10. Encourage the other person to do most of the talking
11. Even our friends would much rather talk to us about their achievements than listen to us boast about ours.
12. La Rochefoucauld, the French Philosopher, said: “If you want enemies, excel your friends; but if you want friends, let your friends excel you.”
13. When our friends excel us, they feel important; but when we excel them, they – or at least some of them – will feel inferior and envious.
14. Ask people to share their joys and accomplishments, and only mention your achievements when asked

Get the other person saying “Yes, Yes!” Immediately

The Secret of Socrates

1. In talking with people, don’t begin by discussing the things on which you differ. Begin by emphasizing – and keep on emphasizing – the things on which you agree.
2. Keep emphasizing, if possible, that you are both striving for the same end and that your only difference is one of method and not of purpose.
3. Get the other person saying “Yes, Yes” at the outset.
4. Keep your opponent, if possible, from saying “no”
5. A “No” response, according to Professor Overstreet, is a most difficult handicap to overcome. When you have said “No” all your pride of personality demands that you remain consistent with yourself.
6. Hence it is of the very greatest importance that a person be started in the affirmative direction.
7. The skillful speaker gets, at the outset, a number of “yes” responses.
8. This sets the listener in the affirmative direction.
9. When a person says “Yes”, the organism is set in a forward-moving, accepting, open-attitude.
10. It often seems as if people get a sense of their own importance by antagonizing others at the outset.
11. Get someone to say “No” at the beginning… and it takes the wisdom and the patience of angels to transform that bristling negative into an affirmative.
12. Giving ultimatums may make us feel good at the time, but later we are ashamed of that sort of attitude – especially when the person receiving the ultimatum is a potential customer. It doesn’t make them feel welcome and important.
13. I resolve not to talk about what I want, but about what the customer wants.
14. Above all else, I get the other person saying “Yes, Yes, Yes” from the very start.
15. It doesn’t pay to argue.
16. It is much more profitable to look at the thing from the other person’s viewpoint and try to get that person saying ‘yes,yes’
17. Socrates was one of the wisest persuaders who ever influenced this wrangling world. His technique was based on getting ‘yes, yes’ admissions until he had an armful of yeses. His opponents found themselves embracing a conclusion they would have bitterly denied a few minutes previously.
18. So remember – ask a gentle question that will get the “yes, yes” response, rather than telling the person they are wrong.
19. “He who treads softly goes far” Chinese proverb

If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically

If You’re Wrong, Admit it

1. If we know we are going to be rebuked anyhow, isn’t it far better to beat the other person to it and do it ourselves? Isn’t much easier to listen to self-criticism than to bear condemnation from alien lips?
2. Say about yourself all the derogatory things you know the other person is thinking or wants to say or intends to say – and say them before that person has a chance to say them.
3. The chances are a hundred to one that a generous, forgiving attitude will be taken and your mistakes will be minimized.
4. You can have a grand time criticizing yourself and not letting the other person get a word in otherwise. You may actually find that person defending you.
5. My eagerness to criticize myself took all the fight out of him.
6. There is a certain degree of satisfaction in having the courage to admit one’s errors. It not only clears the air of guilt and defensiveness, but often helps solve the problem created by the error.
7. Admitting your mistakes creates respect.
8. Any fool can try to defend his or her mistakes – and most fools do – but it raises one above the herd and gives one a feeling of nobility and exultation to admit ones’ mistakes.
9. It takes a noble man to blame himself
10. The benefit of applying a principle may be more advantageous than maintaining an old tradition
11. When we are right, let’s try to win people over gently and tactfully to our way of thinking, and when we are wrong – and that will be surprisingly often, if we are honest with ourselves – let’s admit our mistakes quickly and with enthusiasm.
12. Believe it or not, it’s a lot more fun, under the circumstance, than trying to defend oneself.
13. “By fighting you never get enough, but by yielding you get more than you expected.” An Old Proverb

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

A Sure Way To Make Enemies – and How to Avoid It

1. Theodore Roosevelt once confessed, “that if he could be right 75 percent of the time, he would reach the highest measure of his expectation.
2. If you can’t be sure of being right even 55 percent of the time, why should you tell other people they are wrong?
3. You can tell people they are wrong by a look or an intonation or a gesture just as eloquently as you can in words – and if you tell them they are wrong, do you make them want to agree with you? Never.
4. You have just struck a direct blow at their intelligence, judgement, pride and self-respect. That will make them want to strike you back. But it will never make them want to change their minds. You have just hurt their feelings.
5. Never begin by announcing “I am going to prove so and so to you” That’s really bad. That’s the same as saying, “I’m smarter than you are. I’m going to tell you a thing or two and make you change your mind”
6. That is a challenge.
7. It arouses opposition and makes the listener want to battle with you before you even start.
8. If you are going to prove anything, don’t let anybody know it. Do it so subtly, so adroitly, that no one will feel that you are doing it.
9. Men must be taught as if you taught them not / And things unknown proposed as things forgot – Alexander Pope
10. “You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to find it within himself” Galileo
11. “Be wiser than other people if you can; but do not tell them so” Lord Chesterfield
12. “One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing” Socrates
13. I can’t hope to be smarter than Socrates, so I have quit telling people they are wrong. And I find that it pays.
14. “Well, now, look. I thought otherwise, but I may be wrong. I frequently am. And if I am wrong, I want to be put right. Let’s examine the facts.”
15. There’s magic in such phrases
16. No one will every object to your saying, “I may be wrong. Let’s examine the facts.”
17. “Our company has made so many mistakes that I am frequently ashamed. We may have erred in your case. If so, Please tell me about it.”
18. Most people will thank you for being so understanding. Showing respect for all customers’ opinions and treating them diplomatically and courteously will help beat the competition.
19. You will never get into trouble by admitting that you may be wrong.
20. This will stop all arguments and inspire your opponent to be just as fair and open and broadminded as you are. It will make him want to admit that he, too, may be wrong.
21. Most of our so-called reasoning consists of finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.
22. Very rarely do we permit ourselves to understand precisely what the meaning of the statement is to the other person.
23. When we are wrong, we may admit it to ourselves. And if we are handled gently and tactfully, we may admit it to others and even take pride in our frankness and broadmindedness. But not if someone else is trying to ram the unpalatable fact down our esophagus.
24. Assignment: Read Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography
25. Ben Franklin was big enough and wise enough to realize that it what was said to him was true, to sense that he was headed for failure and social disaster. So he made a right-about-face and began to change his insolent, opinionated ways.
26. “I made it a rule,” said Franklin, “to forbear all direct contradiction to the sentiments of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbade myself the use of every word or expression in the language that imported a fix’d opinion, such as ‘certainly,’ ‘undoubtedly,’ etc., and I adopted, instead of them, ‘I conceive,’ ‘I apprehend,’ or ‘I imagine’ a thing to be so or so, or ‘it so appears to me at present.’ When another asserted something that I thought an error, I deny’d myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing immediately some absurdity in his proposition: and in answering I began by observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appear’d or seem’d to me some difference, etc. I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engag’d in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I propos’d my opinions procur’d then a readier reception and less contradiction; I had less morifications when I was found to be wrong, and I more easily prevail’d with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I happened to be right.”
27. At first, this mode was against every natural inclination… then it became almost second nature… a habit of my integrity
28. The benefit was that I earned so much weight among my fellow citizens….
29. In business, “I am convinced that nothing good can be accomplished and a lot of damage can be done if you tell a person straight out that he or she is wrong. You only succeed in stripping that person of self-dignity and making yourself an unwelcome part of any discussion.”
30. “I’ve found by asking questions in a very friendly, cooperative spirit, and insisting continually that they were right, I got him warmed up, and the strained relations between us began to thaw and melt away.
31. A little tact, and the determination to refrain from telling the other person they are wrong, saved my company a substantial amount of money and no dollar value could equal the good will that was saved.
32. Martin Luther King once remarked, “I judge people by their own principles – not by my own.”
33. Do not speak with malice toward any, only the good will you know of all.
34. “The president asked my opinion of him,” replied General Lee, “he did not ask for his opinion of me.”
35. “Agree with thine adversary quickly.” Jesus
36. “Be diplomatic,” counseled King Akhtoi of Egypt. “It will help you gain your point.”
37. In other words, don’t argue with your customer or your spouse or your adversary. Don’t tell them they are wrong, don’t get them stirred up. Use a little diplomacy.

The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it

You can’t win an argument

1. There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will
2. Why prove to a man that he is wrong? Is that going to make him like you?
3. How much better it is not to become argumentative
4. I have come to the conclusion that there is only one way under high heaven to get the best of an argument – and that it to avoid it.
5. Avoid it as you would avoid rattlesnakes and earthquakes
6. Nine times out of ten, an argument ends with each of the contestants more firmly convinced than ever that he is absolutely right
7. You can’t win an argument
8. You can’t because if you lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it.
9. A man convinced against his will, Is of the same opinion still
10. My immediate task is to train a person not to talk and to avoid verbal fights.
11. Again, be agreeable… what you say is true, it is a reputable company, it is a great product, you can’t go wrong,
12. You will leave no room for debate
13. Then you can move on to the finer points of your own product
14. I lost years of my life scrapping and arguing.
15. Now I keep my mouth shut. It pays.
16. If you argue and rankle and contradict, you may achieve a victory sometimes; but it will be an empty victory because you will never get your opponent’s good will.
17. Which would you rather have, an academic, theatrical victory or a person’s good will? You can seldom have both.
18. Here lies the body of William Jay, Who died maintaining his right of way, He was right, dead right, as he sped along, But he’s just as dead as if he were wrong
19. So I decide to avoid the argument, change the subject, and give him appreciation
20. I mean every word I say
21. Most people want to feel important
22. Give them the feeling, expand their ego and watch them become more sympathetic and kindly human beings
23. Buddha said, “Hatred is never ended by hatred but by love.” And a misunderstanding is never ended by an argument but by tact, diplomacy, conciliation and a sympathetic desire to see the other person’s viewpoint.
24. “No man who is resolved to make the most of himself,” said Lincoln “can spare time for personal contention. Still less can he afford to take the consequences, including the vitiation of his temper and the loss of self-control. Yield larger things to which you show no more than equal rights; and yield lesser ones through clearly your own. Better give your path to a dog than be bitten by him in contesting for the right. Even killing the dog would not cure the bite.”
25. Welcome the disagreement. Remember the slogan, “When two partners always agree, one of them is not necessary.”
26. Perhaps this disagreement is your opportunity to be corrected before you make a serious mistake.
27. Distrust your first instinctive impression. Our first natural reaction in a disagreeable situation is to be defensive. Be careful. Keep calm and watch out for your first reaction. It may be you at your worst, not your best.
28. Listen first. Give you opponents a chance to talk. Let them finish. Do not resist, defend or debate. This only raises barriers.
29. Try to build bridges of understanding.
30. Look for areas of agreement. When you have heard your opponents out, dwell first on the points and areas on which you agree.
31. Be honest. Look for areas where you can admit error and say so. Apologize for your mistakes. It will help disarm your opponents and reduce defensiveness.
32. Promise to think over your opponents’ ideas and study them carefully. And mean it. Your opponents are probably right. It is a lot easier at this stage to agree to think about their points than to move rapidly ahead and find yourself in a position where your opponents can say: “We tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen.”
33. Thank you opponents sincerely for their interest. Anyone who takes the time to disagree with you is interested in the same things you are. Think of them as people who really want to help you, and you may turn your opponents into friends.
34. Postpone action to give both sides time to think through the problem. Suggest that a new meeting be held later that day or the next day, when all the facts may be brought to bear. Be prepared to ask yourself the hard questions.
35. Could my opponents be right? Partly right? Is there truth or merit in their position or argument? Is my reaction one that will relieve the problem, it will it only relieve my frustration? Will my reaction drive my opponents further away or draw them closer to me? Will my reaction elevate the estimation good people have of me? Will I win or lose? What price will I have to pay if I win? If I am quiet about it, will the disagreement blow over? Is this difficult situation an opportunity for me?
36. Opera tenor Jan Peerce, after he was married fifty years, once said, “ My wife and I made a pact a long time ago, and we’ve kept it no matter how angry we’ve grown with each other. When one yells, the other should listen – because when two people yell, there is no communication, just noise and bad vibrations.”