Would you accept that it is just as easy to do either! Which you achieve is pretty well entirely down to you! You can control your approach to get the Best or the Worst out of people. Now will come the shouts from readers that this is rubbish because some people are always intent in bringing out the worst in others! True, but aren't they still proving the point? Aren't they proving it is easy to do. Just because they decide not to try to bring the best out in people, why should you give up on it!
Take complaining, (which we all have to do from time to time)! This offers a great chance to vindicate our behaviour. Suppose you have an issue with an energy supplier. You ring their call centre angry about the problem. Be honest, is the person taking the call likely to be the first or last person to have been briefed on the cause of your problem. Is he or she likely to be all set to give you the information you need? Answer: No. Is he or she paid to try to help you? Yes!
Now the crucial question - again be honest and fair - do you think he or she vowed privately while on the way to work at the call centre that day, "I am going to screw up as many peoples problems as I can today?" Realistic answer: "No!"
Believe it not, even the people working in these front line complaint roles want to do a good job. They want to achieve a result for you. They can be just as frustrated that they themselves have yet to be given an explanation.
So does blasting and bad-mouthing them help or hinder them when resolving your complaint? Of course, tell them you are very angry and desperately inconvenienced - assuming it is true - but don't be angry with them and watch what happens!
Isn't the reaction: 'Oh Dear! Tell me more about it and and let me see if I can sort it out'.
Now you have a small team working on your problem.
If instead you blast them down the phone, surely all you get is a self-protective, defensive, classic job manual response for difficult callers.
Doctors, hospitals, police, airlines, telephone companies, holiday companies and many more, all employ people like you. Like you they too are busy, trying to simplify things. They have children with chicken pox or mumps, a parent ill, financial worries, or may not be feeling too great themselves.
Really! Is any of this, you ask, an issue for you and your complaint? You may say, after all the bother you have had, that there is absolutely no justification for accommodating any of this. Yelling at them is the only way, given the scale of the trouble..
So what would I say to that? OK! You choose! Adopt an approach asking for help and apologising for your aggravated state and watch how the helper's own sense of justice kicks in. But multiply the problem by verbally assaulting the person in the call centre and who gains?.
This same simple psychology can be used with employees too. All managers work related surely have problems, disappointments and annoying issues. They too can deal with those in the part of the business that caused. There they can bring the worst out of the staff involved. It is so easy but solves nothing either.
Even more true is that some people who have caused us grief can be innocently unaware of the problem they have caused us. When told in civil manner they can be more horrified than we are as the sufferer. Yet when blasted out they can in ignorance deny it and exacerbate the whole affair.
What's the simple ploy then? With the Psychology Simplified, just adopt a frame of mind to bring the best out in people. You won't ever achieve 100% success but you will be astonished how it simplifies your life. More to the point still - watch your blood pressure drop!
Gerry Neale is a mentor, an artist and a writer of many articles on Psychology published on Ezine and copied elsewhere. He is the author of a recently published cognitive novel called "Squaring Circles" ISBN 9780956868824. The book is a paperback available on line and soon to be available in UK book shops. More details are available at http://www.squaringcircles.co.uk/ or via the publishers at http://www.pearlpress.co.uk/
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