Quotes About Interaction

They talk. You act.

We had just paid the check when Dimitri's cell phone rang. "Hello?" he answered. And like that, his face transformed. That fierceness I so associated with him softened, and he practically glowed. "No, no. It's always a good time for you to call, Roza." Whatever the response on the other end was, it made him smile.

What was the correct procedure here? Was he supposed to kiss me? Was I supposed to let him? Had that been the real price of my salad?

When the trucks halted for a moment and GIs tumbled out to urinate in squirming echelons on the road shoulders, civilians rushed up to plead for cigarettes with two fingers pressed to the lips, a gesture described by Forrest Pogue as the French national salute.

And whenever your difficult people behave in a manner that you would like to see repeated, learn to say, "That's one of the things I like about you. You ...," and describe their positive behavior as a way of reinforcing their identification with it.

Blending always precedes redirecting, whether you're listening to understand or speaking to be understood. Only after establishing some rapport with your difficult people through blending will you be able to redirect the interaction and change the trajectory toward a worthwhile outcome.

If you fail to blend with other people's voice volume and speed, you will probably end up talking to yourself or dealing with serious misunderstanding.

Step 2. Backtrack. One form of giving feedback is backtracking, or repeating back some of the actual words that other people are using. This sends a clear signal that you are listening and that you consider what the other people are saying to be important.

Backtracking is particularly important when dealing with problem people over the phone because the only visual information they have about you is what they extrapolate from the sound of your voice and the words that you use.

These repetitions of name or gender create an irresistible force that so distracts the Tanks, Know-It-Alls, Grenades, or Whiners that they must stop talking to find out what it is you want! Once you have their attention, you can move forward by stating your intent, by clarifying something they were saying, or by using any of the other choices suggested in this chapter.

We are all, to some extent, actors. We act in order to get what we want and need from the world.

I]t is things that make us happy when conversation begins to reveal itself as a paltry substitute.

The head of Goldwater's California operation "what was so uncomfortable around people that he worked up a routine to deal with employees with whom he was forced to share an elevator: "Taken your vacation yet?" he would ask when they entered; answer took just long enough to deliver him to his fourth-floor office.

It's not even the other kids, because fuck them. It's me. My anxiety. I do this thing after I'm around people where I obsessively overanalyze every interaction to see where I went wrong or who I offended.

It's useless to lecture a human.

Self-consciousness kills communication.

Always trust computer games.

MEN, Charlene said. Leave that to you! Willa quipped.

Then we quit jokeing and he says You have improved a hole lot

Don looked up from his plate of bacon and eggs with an amused smile.

co-location of its teams with its clients.

Saying "please" without saying it to someone you don't want to say "please" to in the first place tops the list of hard.

For the most part, people live their normal lives. Except when at parties, in a group or away from home, then a different person emerges.

How many times have we encountered a person that states, "can I ask a question," and proceeds to ask the question before you can respond. In these cases, they've given us a choice and then take it away. What they're really doing here, is making a statement and not asking you to decide.