7. Understanding the Other Party’s Perspective

I cringe when I see books and classes with titles like Dealing with Difficult Customers or How to Cope with Difficult People. The premise of these offerings, at least judging from the titles, is that it’s the person who is difficult, not the situation the person is in. These titles suggest that the people deemed difficult are unjustified in their behavior and that those with whom they interact are in no way part of the problem.

The fact is that most people want to get along. They want to do their job and to be acknowledged and treated with respect. They want to meet their goals and to be seen as successful by those who control the direction of their career path. They want to go about their daily rounds with minimal hassle.

Granted, people sometimes behave in contrary ways, such as by being grouchy, argumentative, obstinate, withdrawn, or short-tempered (you can insert the adjective of your choice). People sometimes act in ways that make you wish they’d find the nearest bridge and jump off it. At times, you might even be willing to give them a gentle push. But are they truly difficult people? Rarely. Usually, they’re people dealing with difficult, unusual, or stressful circumstances.

That was the case with Brian, an IT director who was judgmental, argumentative, and confrontational, at least during the first few months of our acquaintance. Gradually, though, this behavior abated and he became more relaxed and less contentious. Observing the “new” Brian during an informal meeting between the two of us, I commented on how much more relaxed he now seemed. He gave me a pained look and said he wanted me to know the cause of his previous behavior. He explained that the challenge of managing employees on two shifts in four locations had been much greater and more complex than he had anticipated when he took the job. Furthermore, he had had difficulty filling some key positions, and two longtime employees who had hoped to have his job had been overtly resisting his key initiatives. Compounding these pressures, customers were growling, dissatisfied with the service they were receiving.

That was the work side of Brian’s story. He added that, on top of everything else, he’d been pursuing an advanced degree in the evenings and had barely had time for his coursework. His family resented the work and school schedules because it meant he was rarely home. Yikes!

As he adjusted to his responsibilities and the demanding schedules for both work and school, he was able to spend more time at home with his family and his manner softened. As I had suspected, his former aggressiveness reflected not who he really was, but who he was when he felt super-stressed. He’d been through an extremely tough time, and the stress manifested itself in the form of aggressive behavior. It could happen to anyone.

When people behave in contrary ways, it’s natural to want to dismiss them as troublemakers. But a better approach, one with little to lose and much to gain, is to try to understand their perspective. Taking their viewpoint into account may help you choose more effective ways of interacting with them.

Ideally, you would simply ask the contrary person to describe his or her view of a particular situation. However, if you can’t or prefer not to, then other methods may help you better understand the reasons behind confrontational or unco-operative behavior. This chapter describes methods you can use to reduce communication gaps between yourself and others, showing you how to consider what their perspective might be, and in the process, helping them to better understand your perspective as well.

One way to gain an understanding of another person’s perspective is to use a clever tool I’ve invented called the Perspectoscope, a device that looks much like a kaleidoscope. To operate it, you point it at the person whose perspective you’d like to better understand. Then you look through the eyepiece and, voilà, you see the world as that person sees it! In becoming aware of the person’s attitudes, actions, and behavior, you can choose ways of interacting with the person that may be more effective than those you’ve used up to that point.

This perspective-enhancing tool would provide the ideal solution to the problem of how to see things as others see them, but at the moment, there’s one slight obstacle in the way of its widespread use: Perspectoscopes don’t exist. I’m hoping to announce a working prototype any day now, but until then, the next best thing is the imaginary Perspectoscope. Any of the several techniques that follow can serve as an imaginary Perspectoscope to help you gain insight into another person’s perspective.

For example, once you label someone as a “difficult customer,” you are likely to see that customer as difficult thereafter. You’ll be quicker to find evidence of difficult behavior to support your label, rather than evidence to support more positive attributes. You’ll also be more likely to describe that person to others as a difficult customer rather than as a person with whom you have had a difficult interaction. And you may very well pay more attention and provide better service to other customers—those you don’t view as difficult—than you do the difficult person, and, in the process, perhaps exacerbate the very situation that led you to declare the customer difficult in the first place.

The author and authority on creative thinking Edward de Bono calls this tendency to label others “our category habit” and warns us to be alert to its impact on our perception. As he points out, “All ‘criminals’ are seen first as criminal.”¹ While labels can serve useful purposes, de Bono suggests that they contribute to constrained and clichéd thinking. To counter this tendency, he proposes that people challenge the labels by asking what they really mean: What does it mean to call a customer “difficult”? He suggests trying to do without the label as a means of looking at a situation in a new way and perhaps discovering what exists when the label is removed. For example, what else do you know about this individual? What other attributes can you use to describe the person?

¹ Edward de Bono, I Am Right—You Are Wrong (London: Penguin Books, 1991), p. 43.

As an alternative to doing away with the label, de Bono suggests establishing new labels to escape the distorting and polarizing effects of the old ones.² For example, how might your experience differ if you referred to the customer as a cooperative customer? Might the way you react to that person change? Might you actually start to see instances of cooperation that you might have previously dismissed or ignored? Contemplating how a change in labels would influence your view of the other party is an excellent way to begin using your imaginary Perspectoscope.

² Edward de Bono, Lateral Thinking: Creativity Step by Step (New York: Perennial, Harper & Row, 1990), pp. 214–17.

In Conjoint Family Therapy, Virginia Satir offers a clinical perspective of labeling that applies to organizational settings as well. She notes that when therapists label a person in terms of a particular condition, they may then base their prognosis on preconceived ideas about that condition and identify the person with the label. As a result, therapists may shut their minds to the possibility of other interpretations that different evidence might point to. Satir cautions clinicians to view any labels that they use as applying at the present time, in the present place, and in the current context. As she emphasizes, “Future times, places and contexts may show something quite different.”³

³ Virginia Satir, Conjoint Family Therapy (Palo Alto, Calif.: Science and Behavior Books, 1983), p. 133.

In fact, it could be because their problems were treated as not worthy of your attention that these customers became angry in the first place. Banishing negative, generalizing terms, like the term “irate,” is a critical step in reducing communication gaps with customers.

Along with “irate customers,” try to discard other overused labels, such as “resistant employee,” “problem team member,” “demanding vendor,” and “unreasonable manager.” Then toss such derogatory descriptors as “slacker,” “troublemaker,” and “liar.” Jerry Weinberg gets at the heart of the matter in An Introduction to General Systems Thinking: “In common speech, we apply the name ‘liar’ to anyone who tells a single lie—yet we have no word for someone who invariably tells the truth.”⁴

⁴ Gerald M. Weinberg, An Introduction to General Systems Thinking: Silver Anniversary Edition (New York: Dorset House Publishing, 2001), p. 207.

Once you characterize people with labels like these, you may become less inclined to try to understand the reason for their behavior—circumstances that might drive anyone (even you!) to react in exactly the same way. And you are likely to respond to those you’ve already classified as problems with a defensive, get-rid-of-’em attitude—even when they’re behaving in a meek and mellow manner.

When someone’s behavior leads you to negatively characterize him or her, a technique known as “reframing” may be used to reorient your perspective so you see that behavior in a positive light. In A Complaint Is a Gift, authors Janelle Barlow and Claus Møller encourage service providers to reframe the notion of a complaining customer.⁵ They note that a complaint is a customer’s way of describing an expectation that has not been met. The complaint gives the receiving organization an opportunity to correct a problem and to create a satisfied customer.

⁵ Janelle Barlow and Claus Møller, A Complaint Is a Gift: Using Customer Feedback As a Strategic Tool (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1996), p. 11.

⁶ Edward de Bono, de Bono’s Thinking Course (New York: Facts On File, 1982), pp. 93–95.

Note that de Bono isn’t saying that people always act logically within their logic-bubble. This technique is just one of the many that de Bono offers to help you challenge your thinking. The idea is to avoid the trap of automatically classifying others as stupid, obstinate, or difficult simply because they don’t see things your way. Instead, consider other possible explanations for their behavior.

When you consider other possible explanations, you are doing three positive things for yourself:

• You are avoiding the trap of automatically judging people based on what you see on the surface.

• You may come to see people in a different light, and thus become open to other ways of interacting with them.

• You may discover a way to apply a generous interpretation to their behavior.

When I was a systems development manager, one of my project teams undertook the development of a highly complex system for a division run by a manager I’ll call Mr. Tough Guy. Although the project was on time and on target, Mr. Tough Guy was far from appreciative. Indeed, he struck just about everyone on my staff as mean-spirited, arrogant, aggressive, distrustful, demanding, pushy, constantly on the offensive, and resistant to ideas that weren’t his own. I wrote him off as an impossible customer and a truly nasty person.

Many years later, after I began writing and leading seminars, I wrote a case study using Mr. Tough Guy to illustrate the technique of considering other possibilities. I asked seminar participants to imagine what might have accounted for Mr. Tough Guy’s behavior. Here are some of the possibilities they suggested:

• He feared a lack of control over his work.

• He was passionate about his work and unintentionally came on too strong.

• He felt uncomfortable about his limited technical knowledge, and used a belligerent style to mask his insecurity.

• He was really a sweet, lovable guy who just didn’t realize how he came across.

• He was ambitious, and saw this behavior as the means to an end.

• He expected to receive a big bonus as the result of driving everyone hard.

• Beat-’em-up behavior was the norm at his previous company, and that style had become a habit.

• He modeled his behavior on that of his superior, Mr. High-Level Tough Guy.

• He was raised to believe that if you don’t use a domineering style, people won’t listen.

• His prior experience with systems development teams that missed deadlines left him highly distrustful.

• He had a troubled childhood that made him quick to find fault with others.

• Contending with his teenage children affected his behavior at work.

• He didn’t like working with women and considered them a threat.

In other words, the possibilities were numerous, but many other possible reasons could have been listed. The point of the exercise is that although you may never know which ones truly account for someone’s behavior, the process of acknowledging the possibilities will, if you’re open-minded, lead you to explore alternative ways of interacting with that person.

Unfortunately, I didn’t come to understand Mr. Tough Guy’s behavior until long after the project ended (successfully, by the way) and he had moved to another division. One day, after no contact with him for many months, I saw him in the train station. He looked calm and at ease. He actually smiled—the first time I’d ever seen him smile—and he seemed pleased to see me. I asked him how things were going. “Fine,” he said, “absolutely fine.”

He then related his saga of the politics, pressure, and priority-juggling that plagued his previous division. Describing how he faced huge demands with unyielding deadlines mandated by external authorities, he told me that the system my team developed was only a tiny piece of what he’d been responsible for. The IT organization my department was part of didn’t have the best reputation, and he confessed that he was genuinely scared that we wouldn’t deliver on time. He said the stress he experienced was overwhelming and he was so happy to finally be in an area where he had some control over his existence.

Mr. Tough Guy? No way. I could now see that he had really been Mr. Nice Guy Under Pressure, a warm and friendly fellow who’d had to contend with circumstances that made him act tough. The entire time I was suffering in reaction to him, he was suffering as well, never realizing how his behavior affected everyone around him. His situation didn’t justify inappropriate, aggressive behavior, but it did help to explain it.

If I’d thought back then to consider the possibilities, I might have changed the way I interacted with him to better understand his situation and to help relieve some of his (and my) stress. I might have tried harder to create a foundation of understanding, trust, and respect. At the least, I might have given him the benefit of the doubt.

Then, as a group, consider alternative ways of working with the individual based on some of the possibilities you’ve come up with. Don’t be surprised if, as a result, the annoying aspects of the person’s behavior disappear, and the relationship becomes as positive as it was once negative.

That was the experience of a team that speculated that one possible factor causing an overly aggressive member of another team to act that way was a need to have his views acknowledged. Since their work required regular contact with this other team, they decided to give it a try. In subsequent interactions, team members gave him ample opportunity to offer his views, and they listened and acknowledged his perspective. Over the course of a few months, his aggressiveness diminished significantly; to their amazement, he started becoming attentive to the problems they were facing.

The result: The stress the team members had felt in their interactions with this individual vanished, and the negative relationship they had with him turned positive. That’s the beauty of techniques like this: When you become more open to considering the perspective of others, they tend to become more open to considering yours as well.

For the duration of the project, Al’s teammates were quicker to find fault with his ideas than with the ideas of other team members, even when the same ideas were voiced. The unfortunate short-term result was that the project experienced numerous squabbles and struggles that his recommendations could have prevented. The long-term ramifications were even more serious: The project fell woefully short in selling its benefits to prospective customers, resulting in a financial loss to the company. Sadly, this situation is hardly unique; few people excel at honoring the sound ideas of someone on whom they’ve heaped negative labels. And in this situation, neither party ever stopped to consider the other’s logic-bubble.

It’s not necessary to wait for conflict to erupt before you consider another party’s logic-bubble. The approach can be applied effectively in almost any situation in which individuals or teams need to interact to achieve shared goals—that is, it is universal in its usefulness.

We (IS) view ourselves as: responsive, technically competent, having limited resources, more aware of corporate needs than our customers, hardworking, service-oriented, essential, inundated with requests, skilled, trying too hard to please, excessively structured, inadequately managed.

We (IS) view our customers as: unrealistic about system complexity, having a tendency to over-automate, unable to specify requirements accurately, demanding, unforgiving, needing services, not knowing what they want, not being satisfied with what they get, thinking everything is easy.

The managers in the second group, acting as customers, described their role:

We (in the role of customers) view ourselves as: responsive, responsible to our external customers, wanting a good and responsive product from IS, adaptive to business trends, knowledgeable about our work, compromised by the inability of IS to meet our needs, trying to do our job, forced to depend on IS more than we would like, under outside pressure, insufficiently recognized, caught up in politics.

We (in the role of customers) view IS as: incompetent, overpaid, unresponsive to our needs, behind schedule, overly complex, insensitive, concerned only with technology, quick to say no, slow to deliver, poor communicators, bogged down in paperwork.

The lists proved that human nature influences our ability to be objective in an adversarial setting. Both groups viewed themselves in positive terms and saw the other side in negative terms. You are likely to discover the same proclivities if you try a similar exercise with your own staff. Try to look through your customers’ eyes: You will undoubtedly identify much that is complimentary but if you see yourself as incompetent, insensitive, and unresponsive, you might want to take immediate action to understand the source of these perceptions and what you need to do to change them.

In Getting It Done: How to Lead When You’re Not in Charge, authors Roger Fisher and Alan Sharp suggest a similar but more structured approach, which they call “escaping your biases.” Fisher and Sharp suggest looking at important issues from three different positions: your own side, the other side, and a neutral third party’s side.⁷

⁷ Roger Fisher and Alan Sharp, with John Richardson, Getting It Done: How to Lead When You’re Not in Charge (New York: HarperBusiness, 1998), pp. 85–88.

From your own perspective, ask yourself questions about how things look to you: your opinions and biases, the data available to you, your priorities, your emotions, and so on. Fisher and Sharp caution: “You want to be aware of the extent to which looking from your position shapes the data.”⁸

⁸ Ibid., p. 85.

The second position investigates the view of key people with whom you interact. What are their worries, standard approaches, and biases? Imagine how it would feel to actually be that person. What decisions would you (as that other person) have to make to go along with your own perspective (as yourself)? Fisher and Sharp state that adopting this perspective will help you become aware of different aspects of the situation you’re both in.

The third viewpoint is one Fisher and Sharp call “high in the stands.” This perspective helps you imagine how the situation might look to a spectator—that is, to someone who is not actively involved. This “fly on the wall” perspective helps you to stand back and see the big picture, giving you a better chance to consider information that you could miss if you focus strictly on your immediate involvement.

Some years ago, I viewed a televised program about Dr. George Blackburn, a Harvard professor and leading obesity doctor who wondered how feasible a prescribed daily diet and exercise regimen was for his seriously overweight patients. Like his peers, Dr. Blackburn had routinely given his patients advice long considered sound, such as: “Take a walk every day.” “Limit your intake.” “Use the stairs instead of the elevator.” “Ride an exercise bicycle.”

Curious about how readily his patients could adhere to his advice, Dr. Blackburn designed what he called an Empathy Suit, a cumbersome outfit that distributed twenty-five pounds of additional weight over a person’s frame. Wearing the outfit, he tried to follow the advice he’d so frequently given to patients. He discovered that just getting around was difficult, and that even the simplest form of exercise left him breathless. For the first time, he realized that his instructions, rather than helping overweight patients to lose weight, were probably discouraging to them and demeaning as well.

The doctor began to use the Empathy Suit in his work with primary-care physicians, encouraging them to wear the suit so they could try to walk a mile in their patients’ shoes. The result: They couldn’t. Armed with this new awareness of the reality of their patients’ lives, doctors changed both their advice and their empathy to acknowledge their patients’ reality.⁹

⁹ See www.usatoday.org/life/health/diet/lhdie144.htm and other Web listings for more information on Empathy Suits.

What would it be like if more of us could spend time in an Empathy Suit—one specifically designed to help us better understand the reality of those we so easily dismiss or discount? Whether the suit gave us insight into another person’s physical reality, personal plights, or professional pressures, the experience would help us to better understand the context behind that behavior.

This notion of an Empathy Suit nicely complements Edward de Bono’s logic-bubbles. The logic-bubble approach asks: What factors drive another person to function as he or she does? The Empathy Suit approach asks: How would it feel to actually be that person?

Unfortunately, none of us has a closet full of Empathy Suits that we can put on so as to better appreciate the plight of others. But sometimes, circumstances in the workplace enable us to achieve the next best thing. In Managing Expectations, I describe the experience I had as a manager striving to improve the negative attitude held by a group of internal customers about IT. As an experiment, I set aside space in our department within which customer team members could conduct acceptance testing on a series of major modifications we had made to their system.

Early on the first day of the experiment, the members of the customer team showed up, eager to complete the job and depart. However, as they worked side by side with us, they came to see how readily what they had viewed as simple changes could have a significant impact on the rest of the system. They began to appreciate the complexity of the debugging process, and saw firsthand the seriousness with which my staff members tackled the job of making their highly complex system work accurately. What started as a simple testing experiment resulted in our customers’ gaining insight into our world, and caused them to change their attitude about IT itself.¹⁰

¹⁰ Naomi Karten, Managing Expectations: Working with People Who Want More, Better, Faster, Sooner, NOW! (New York: Dorset House Publishing, 1994), pp. 137–38.

In Project Retrospectives, author and retrospective facilitator Norm Kerth describes witnessing a similarly enlightening epiphany experienced by a project’s vice president when he visited the retrospective site. Eyeing a project-task chart that spanned one entire meeting-room wall, he asked whether he could have the chart when the retrospective ended. He explained that he wanted the chart because it so superbly communicated what goes into a complex project. He added that the chart would enable him to provide better support to software initiatives whose value he had previously underestimated and then commented, “This shows me that building professional software is much more complicated than what we were taught in my college courses.” For nearly a year thereafter, the chart was on prominent display in the corporate boardroom.¹¹

¹¹ Norman L. Kerth, Project Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team Reviews (New York: Dorset House Publishing, 2001), p. 127. For more information, see www.retrospectives.com.

There’s nothing quite like firsthand experience to enable a person to empathize with others in difficult circumstances. When a knee injury forced me to hobble around on crutches for a month, I came to see the world differently. Bending over to pick something up became impossible. The distance between two sides of a room seemed like miles, and molehills literally became mountains. My most stressful experience occurred when a hotel I was staying in sounded the fire alarm and a loudspeaker warned against using the elevator, forcing me to place a panicky call for help. Fortunately, help came quickly, and soon thereafter, it was found to be a false alarm, but I came to truly appreciate what people for whom such a condition is not temporary experience daily. I’d much rather have gained that insight by using a Perspectoscope.

• to persuade

• to dissuade

• to make a sale

• to address a complaint

• to resolve a dispute

The following sections suggest approaches you can use in these situations to understand and accommodate another party’s perspective. In the process, a win-win relationship can be created in which both parties achieve their goals.

Clarify in your own mind what you are seeking. People often grouse about a lack of management support or executive sponsorship, but when I ask them what they mean, they sometimes have trouble being more specific. In advancing your case, think about what you want. Perhaps you want a 15 percent increase in funding to be used for certain specified benefits? Do you seek the authority to proceed with a high-payoff project? Would you like management intervention to help you deal with a relentless squeaky wheel? It’s not enough to demand more of whatever you feel you need. You must be able to articulate precisely what you want and need. Don’t expect others to see it your way if you don’t see it yourself.

Focus on the other party’s WIIFM. Pronounced “wiffum,” the acronym stands for What’s In It For Me. WIIFM means that if you want to be persuasive, you need to articulate how other parties will benefit from your proposal. Take time to understand what’s in their logic-bubbles: their priorities, fears, and concerns. If you can’t yet say how the other party will benefit, it might be better to pay another visit to your drawing board.

Remember the importance of timing. Certain times are less conducive to successful persuasion than others. For example, someone who has just returned from vacation to find an in-box overflowing with demands requiring immediate action may not be disposed to appreciate the merits of your case. Similarly, knowing whether someone is a morning person or an afternoon person could help you time a visit appropriately. Finally, when you sense stress all around you, it might be best to refrain from submitting proposals for which you’d prefer an answer other than “Absolutely, positively NO!”

Consider what you’re willing to give in return for what you get. In other words, what’s it worth to you? What are you willing to do to get what you want? What concessions or compromises are you willing to make? Be prepared for a certain amount of give and take. Nice though it might be, you can’t count on having everything your way. Furthermore, if you’re not willing to do a little giving in order to do the getting, it may be a sign that the issue isn’t all that important to you.

Don’t expect immediate acceptance of your idea. If your proposal requires a commitment in time, effort, or resources from the other party, or a major change (or perhaps even a minor change) in someone else’s thinking or functioning, it’s unrealistic to expect an instantaneous go-for-it. Many people need time to accept new ideas. Recognizing this fact can keep your frustration meter from veering into the red zone. Give your ideas a chance to take root and grow. Be persistent in making your case, but above all, be patient.

Seek realistic outcomes. You may not be able to get exactly the outcome you want, no matter how convincing your case. So, your best bet may be to seek outcomes that will move you in the right direction, even if they don’t take you all the way to your target. Remember, getting some of what you want now is better than getting everything you want a century from now. By then, you’ll probably be looking forward to retirement.

How do you dissuade DoIt from making a colossal mistake? Ideally, you need only present the facts—that the product is nonstandard, incompatible, overpriced, buggy, and miserably documented—and DoIt will respond favorably and gratefully to the exquisite logic of your argument. But if that doesn’t work, the following suggestions may help:

No matter how compelling your case, remember that it’s your case. Resist the urge to heap negatives on DoIt’s decision, or you’ll discourage him from communicating further with you. If that happens, not only will you not get another chance to sway him about this decision, you also won’t get to have your say the next time DoIt makes a decision that concerns you. If you must present your view, do so in a low-key fashion. But first show that you have an open mind by expressing interest in DoIt’s decision.

Try to learn why DoIt made that particular choice. His decision may strike you as ill-considered, but the reasoning behind the decision may have been sound when considered in terms of DoIt’s logic-bubbles. For example, the decision may have been based on how things were done at DoIt’s previous company, or perhaps a respected peer recommended the product. Possibly a vendor touted its strengths and somehow forgot to mention its 1,001 glaring weaknesses. It’s even possible that DoIt is implementing a decision foisted on him by his superior. So, ask some questions such as those suggested below—and try to be genuinely curious, rather than suspicious:

• How did you arrive at this particular choice?

• What alternatives have you had a chance to consider?

• How do you anticipate using this product initially?

• Do you have any thoughts on how you’ll be using it a year from now?

• What sorts of things have you heard from others who have used this product?

Analyze how DoIt sees things. To change someone’s mind about a strongly held opinion, look through your imaginary Perspectoscope, and try to see things as that person does. You may know positively that the desired product will wreak havoc and require endless support, but forget that for a moment and consider what you know about DoIt. For example, what issues matter to him? What must he accomplish to be successful in his job? What makes him feel good or important or powerful? Now put yourself in his place and ask: What would make me abandon my current viewpoint for this vastly different one?

Consider DoIt’s communication preferences. Focus not only on the issues, but also on how you’ll present those issues. How does DoIt like to receive information? For example, if he likes information in written form, write up your key points. If he’s enchanted by multicolored charts, prepare some in his favorite colors. If he likes snappy, ten-minute presentations, give him one. Remember, in dissuading someone of a favored approach, how you make your case may be as important as the case itself.

Allow DoIt to save face. Some people cling to their viewpoint because of pride, ego, upbringing, or the absolute certainty that they are right. If you want DoIt to change his mind, you have to make it palatable for him to do so. Try to identify people whom DoIt respects but who support your particular viewpoint. Their gentle prodding may help sway DoIt, while sparing him from feeling that he’s caving in to you.

Practice infinite patience. You won’t have the luxury of time if DoIt wants to complete the purchase by tea time. But if the purchase is to be made some time in the future, present your case a little at a time. Don’t expect DoIt to change his mind overnight. Even if you’re ultimately successful in influencing him, achieving that success could take weeks, months, or even a year or more, so be gently persistent. DoIt may not hear your points initially, but if you drop a hint here and a tip there, over time your ideas may seep in so that DoIt’s thinking eventually comes around to your own. If this happens, be generous and let him think it was his idea.

If DoIt proceeds with the purchase and it creates a million headaches exactly as you predicted, resist the temptation to shout, “I told you so!” Instead, do a personal retrospective of your dissuasion strategy and plan how you might handle things differently next time.

Understand past history. Often, there’s more to a situation than meets the eye. For example, some people are leery of buying because they’ve been burned in the past. Take the time to learn about their history and take their negative experiences into account when you present your proposal. Ask what would need to change in order to complete the sale (anticipating, of course, that the answer could be “You!”).

Find relevance. Be cautious about presenting benefits in terms that are irrelevant to the buyer. What’s important to the buyer may be very different from what’s important to you. It’s your job to understand these differences, and to frame the benefits accordingly.

Appreciate how people react to new things. Some people are threatened by anything new or different. Hitting such a person over the head with the benefits of what you’re selling will get you nothing but a person with a sore head. Instead, focus on the similarities between what you’reselling and what is already familiar to the person.

Give credit to others. Some people are willing to buy provided that they are credited with having made the decision to buy. Therefore, avoid presenting the sale as if you alone initiated it. Instead, try to reorient the transaction so that it becomes the buyer’s idea. Remember that you may be more successful in getting the outcome you want if you’re willing to “allow” a sale to happen without getting credit for “making” it happen.

Sell by not selling. Some people prefer to buy rather than be sold to, and so the harder you try to sell, the more likely you are to fail. With such people, your job as salesperson is to plant the seeds, so as to trigger interest, curiosity, and the eagerness to know more. When the buyer makes the decision to proceed, you won’t have to say another word.

Allow time for decision-making. Some people simply need time in which to make decisions. The bigger the decision, the longer the sale will take. For certain individuals, every decision is a big one and there’s not a thing you can do to expedite the process. The key is patient persistence. Don’t give up, but don’t be pushy either.

Avoid miscommunication. Consider whom you are communicating with before making your pitch. For example, be careful not to get overly technical when speaking with a nontechnical person or highbrow when talking with someone who is very down-to-earth. Make sure you first build a relationship or at least seek some level of human connection before seeking the sale.

Identify pertinent parties. Sometimes, the obstacle isn’t the buyer, but the people above and around the buyer who also need to approve the decision. In other words, your buyer may need to do some selling before you can make your sale. Find out how you can help the potential buyer prepare a persuasive case to present to other decision-makers.

Don’t interrupt. Sometimes, the most powerful communication technique is silence. When a customer is voicing a complaint, don’t say a word; just listen, and take in what you’re hearing as a legitimate expression of the person’s perspective. While sounding off, people sometimes defuse their own anger or figure out their own solutions. Often, they reveal what they’d like the solution to be—and it may be simpler than any solution you might have offered. Listening to the entire grievance gives you information to work with as well as more time in which to consider your response.

Demonstrate that you’ve really listened. People often protest that their views aren’t being heard. Avoid this reaction by restating or summarizing what you heard, emphasizing the points that seemed most important. Ask for confirmation that you understood the intended message. If the person knows you were listening and that you care about the message, he or she is more likely to find your ideas acceptable.

Resist the temptation to disagree. Not disagreeing is even harder than not interrupting, especially if you feel you’ve been misunderstood or unfairly accused. It’s natural to want to defend your position, but if you challenge the validity of the customer’s perspective, you risk escalating the argument. People who express complaints are telling you how the view looks from within their logic-bubble. Accept that perception as real and valid for them, even if you see the situation differently.

If the complaint is valid, say so. Customers are so used to hearing others deny responsibility for problems that you can surprise them by saying, “Yes, you’re absolutely right.” When a repairman came to our house on a service call, he agreed that my husband or I could have fixed the problem days earlier had we only been given accurate information by his company’s service department. The repairman apologized and said that his job often included “protecting the customer from the company.” Hearing his apology made a crummy situation a little less so. Just as anger often feeds anger, reasonableness begets reasonableness, paving the way to working together to seek a resolution.

Personalize your attention. It’s hard to ooze enthusiasm for resolving a problem when you’ve just heard your three-hundredth complaint of the week. But that’s not the fault of the latest person with a complaint. Therefore, treat every customer as if he or she is your most important customer, and never minimize the seriousness of the problem. Use you phrases, such as, “Let me check on that for you,” or “I’ll see what I can find out for you.”

Do something. The person who has a complaint needs to feel that you share his or her concern and that an effort is being made to solve the problem. Fortunately, many complaints don’t call for a grand solution, so start by suggesting a simple solution. Offering to do a little—and then doing it—will earn you far more credibility in the long run than promising to do something large and falling short.

Listen carefully to the other person. With disputes, as with complaints, listening is key. If your goal is to trigger the other person’s anger, then interrupting after every five words will do the trick. Otherwise, clamp down on your vocal cords and let the person state his or her case—difficult though it may be when you hear outrageous claims being made about you, your work, or those you care about. Listen with the genuine intention of trying to understand the other person’s perspective. You’ll gain a much better sense of the person’s concerns. And different though those views might be from your own, to the person who holds them, they’re real, valid, and important.

Ask for clarification. Don’t assume that you understand everything the other person is saying. In a heated situation, with an overlay of emotion, it takes triple the effort to really hear what the other person is saying. Ask questions to clarify your understanding of both terms and ideas, and to avoid serious misinterpretation. Asking questions shows your good intentions and gives you time to digest what you’ve heard before responding.

Present your case calmly. Don’t become a master intimidator. Make your points calmly and concisely so that the facts are not overshadowed by your demeanor or by a negative attitude. Watch both your tone of voice and your body language—speaking in a blaming tone or with blaming gestures can make the other party not at all disposed to considering your ideas. In fact, the more successful you are at speaking in a calm, congruent tone that acknowledges the validity of both perspectives, the more receptive the other party will be to what you have to say.

Explain, don’t argue. If you’re puzzled or upset by something the other person has said or done, resist the temptation to hurl accusations. Instead, explain your reaction. Providing an explanation is important: Disputes often arise because of an innocent misunderstanding that can be easily rectified. If you can clear up the confusion, you may even discover that you’re both on the same side of the issue.

Let the other person save face. Although the urge to humiliate can sometimes be strong, people are more likely to accept your viewpoint if you don’t make it embarrassing for them to do so. Once you scream, “You’re an idiot!” loud enough to be heard on Jupiter, it’s a lot harder to reorient the discussion so that the other person can save face. You may not agree with the other person’s ideas, but try to respect his or her right to have an opinion that differs from your own. See this as an opportunity to practice being empathetic. Rare is the situation in which you can’t find merit in the other person’s views. If you can avoid being vehemently one-sided, you’re more likely to resolve the dispute to your mutual satisfaction.

Swap places. Trading places with someone else provides a way for both of you to put on an Empathy Suit. For some agreed-upon duration, discuss the issues as if each of you were the other person. Using your imaginary Perspecto-scope, try to peer into each other’s mind, and then explain the other person’s viewpoint as if it were your own. Another approach is to get together with colleagues and create a scenario in which you take on the role of that other person and ask someone else to stand in as you. Or simply imagine yourself as that person, and make a case for his or her perspective. Don’t be surprised if you actually begin to see the other person’s perspective in ways you hadn’t been able to imagine previously. With awareness of that perspective, you may see a new way of presenting your ideas—one that takes that perspective into account.

Seek a win-win solution. You’re more likely to find a win-win solution if you actively seek one. Even if you are adamant that your position is the only acceptable one, look for ways for the other person to benefit. If you’re determined to fight till you win, you may succeed, but you may also pay a price. The grapevine has a way of turning today’s victories into tomorrow’s losses. What does it say about you if the only way you can succeed is by bludgeoning the other person into submission? If you are both willing to give a little, together you can gain a lot.