Interpersonal Skills: The New You—Personality Plus
“I’m in here because I’m boorish and tick people off pretty often.” That’s a comment we rarely hear from attendees walking into our interpersonal skills training program. On second thought, I’ve never heard that from anyone in the workshop.
Typically the opposite is true. Boorish people seem never to recognize themselves. And pleasant people have the life-long habit of learning, growing, and winning more and more friends as they move through life.
How do they do it? By continually identifying and polishing their rough edges. You may want to review this list of bad habits to identify goals for the new year and the new you.
Identify the Rough Edges
- Having to have the last word every time
- Judging people with too little information
- Showing emotional outbursts—anger or tears—to get your way
- Withholding information so that others fail and you can “save the day”
- Passing off others’ ideas as your own
- Being undependable—not following up when you promised to do something
- Punishing the bearer of bad news
- Refusing to change and hiding behind the idea that “your faults endear you”
- Making excuses for failures or mistakes
- Breaking confidences
- Gossiping
- Lying
- Flattering for self-serving purposes
- Being confrontational “just because”
- Delaying in passing on bad news that leads to even worse consequences
- Procrastinating
Post the Positive
Conquer the interpersonal clutter in your life by selecting one or two habits that may be stalling your career or threatening a key relationship. Then rather than focusing on the negative wording, rephrase it so that it’s a positive statement. For example, “Passing off others’ ideas as your own” becomes “Give others credit for their ideas.” Then write it down and post on your bathroom mirror, your calendar pad, or your dashboard.
Forming a new personality pattern will take longer than the typical 21-day routine for habit formation that psychologists promise for, say, something like daily exercise.
But then motivated people are purposeful.
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