Archive for May 17th, 2007
Winning With People #4 – The Hammer Principle
Targeted Audience: Entrepreneurs, Students, Recent Graduates
Background: Renowned leadership expert and author John C. Maxwell describes how anyone can improve his or her relationship skills with 25 principles in his book Winning With People.
I plan to cover each of his principle in this series.
Please read more principles here: Winning With People
John Maxwell’s “The Hammer Principle”
Psychologist Abraham Maslow observed, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” People require more judicious treatment than that. When little things bother us, our primary objective must be putting our personal agendas aside and building relationships. When tempted to use overkill, the following four Ts can help you temper your behavior:
Total Picture
If you come to conclusions long before the problem has been detailed, you should listen, ask questions, listen again, ask more questions, listen some more and then respond.Timing
Noted hostess and writer Lady Dorothy Nevill observed, “The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing in the right place, but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”Tone
People often respond to our attitudes and actions more than to our words. Many petty conflicts occur because people use the wrong tone of voice.Temperature
The size of a problem often changes based on how it is handled. If the reaction is worse than the action, the problem usually increases. If the reaction is less than the action, the problem usually decreases.
We all know that it takes tremendous efforts, care and love to create and maintain lasting relationships. We also know that it doesn’t even take a second to break these relationships. I don’t deny the fact that things don’t go wrong. Rather they often do. The catch is our main focus should not be only on “how to avoid things going wrong”. Knowingly or unknowingly, we do mess up the situation and we do hurt someone. The key is how do we react in such situations.
It’s so easy to loose the temper and curse or scold someone. Because it really doesn’t take any extra effort from our side. Its within us. So loosing temper is not at a challenging act.
The challenging and interesting thing is –
- To control the temper.
- To pause our reaction when we see things are worsening.
- To procrastinate our conclusion process for tomorrow.
- To open up our mind and not being prejudiced.
John has explained the key to achieve above interesting tasks by implementing 4 T formula mentioned above. This is a must implement strategy for all of us especially when we are dealing with people, either in our professional or in our personal life.
To read more principles from this series, please visit: Winning With People
