How to Have a Good Day: Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life pdfdrive com

Assumptions:
Second, check your negative expectations regarding the other
person, because they’ll shape what you notice. Instead, decide to look for
something positive or interesting about that individual.
Peter’s answer to the first question (“What do you 
really
want from the
conversation?”) was obvious once he stopped to think about it. He needed to
build a trusting relationship with his clients so that he could speak openly with
them about the difficult work they were doing together. He wanted his clients to
feel good about working with him, and to look forward to meetings with him
rather than dreading them. And as to the second point, Peter realized he needed

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to stop assuming that his clients just didn’t “get it.”
The first big experiment was a dinner with the CEO of a business where he’d
already made some enemies while working for the head of IT. The CEO was
fairly new in his role and Peter was, as usual, tempted to quickly label him as
being out of his depth. In the past, Peter would have highlighted all the ways that
he was more knowledgeable than his client so the CEO would see just how much
he needed Peter around. But instead, Peter set a clear, collaborative intention for
the dinner, which was to better understand the CEO’s hopes for the new role,
and where he saw the biggest opportunities and concerns. “I found it really
difficult not to wheel out my data, to show him how badly his business was
doing, but I held back,” Peter said. And it was worth it. “It really was a great
conversation, much better than I expected.” Peter also found that when he
invested upfront in building rapport, he earned the right to show off a little.
“Near the end of the dinner, the CEO actually did ask me for my views, so I had
a chance to strut a bit of my stuff. And he seemed to like it.” So much so that it
marked the start of a better relationship between Peter and the CEO’s company.