When someone comes to you for advice, it’s tempting to tell them what to do. After all, having your opinion sought-after is a great ego stroke. But chances are the person asking already has an idea in mind and is looking for confirmation, or has no idea where to go. […]
Category: trust
Sixth Sense
I recently started watching Sixth Sense, a Korean variety show where the producers show the hosts three different restaurants, experiences, or people based on a theme (eg. non-traditional foreign workouts, or innovative chicken restaurants). The producers find two existing entities, and create a third one from scratch, going so far […]
Stepping On a Stranger’s Foot
If you accidentally step on a stranger’s foot, it’s probably a reflex to take ownership, apologize, and just move on with your life. If you accidentally forget to send out meeting details to a VIP, or forget a sales call with a client, or hit another car with your own, […]
Changing Other People
When I’m asked what super power I would want, I often think about mind control. That way, I could be a benevolent* dictator and mind whammy people into world peace and acceptance and understanding. But the reality is that no one can change other people. All we can do is […]
Pit Stops on the Rainbow
What’s at the end of the rainbow for you? Money? Fame? Love? A gaping hole of always wanting more? The tricky thing with having an idealized goal in mind is that you’ll never know if you’ll achieve it until you do, as every other moment until then is less than. But […]
Hall Pass
In high school, due to my somewhat extensive extracurricular activity list and sports involvement, I was often walking around school during class with a hall pass. I would often see the hall monitors, with their sunglasses and walkie-talkies, patrolling the halls. And as your typical “stay-out-of-trouble-Valedictorian-club-president” type, I was always […]
Credibility Shortcuts
We often use shortcuts to measure the effectiveness, quality, or value or something. We don’t want to test out the speaker system that we see online, we want to buy it and have it work just as we’d imagined when it arrives. So, we use online rating systems, review articles, […]
Fixing Others
Often, I find the impulse to try and “fix” other people. And “fixing” others usually is shorthand for getting them to behave or think in a way that I agree with. Interestingly enough, the quickest way to get others to agree with you is to fix yourself, so that your […]
Absolutes
In most cases, thinking in absolutes is a recipe for disaster. Rarely do absolutes serve us, especially if it has anything to do with people. Absolutes often blind us to nuance, and it is here in nuance that all of the skills that build trust live.
“Good Job”
You can tell someone “Good job,” but how you say it, when you say, and the context of where you say it all matter. “Good job?” when an excited intern dares to suggest something in the middle of a meeting sends a very different message than “Good job!” sent to […]