Five People Skills That My Sister Uses to Land Opportunities
Do you know that you don’t succeed if your people skills are terrible?
My people skills are nightmare & other humans are a mystery to me. I’ve always had a difficult time figuring out & liking people. It’s like this for many of us.
We disguise our painful human interactions as other problems, but our atrocious people skills are at the core of our wounds.
My sister is different. She loves people. It’s a quality that has helped her be legend at her corporate job & later at her start up.
There are five people skills she tells me, that we blunder at when young.
When we embrace these skills, we win at work & relationships. Here they are:
Compassion for others
Our father is a businessman. When we were young girls, he told us that to win in life, we must study people to exploit their weaknesses. My sister did study people’s weaknesses, but she didn’t exploit them. My dad was taken aback & proud when she showed people compassion.
When you overlook people’s flaws & be kind to them you win hearts. But would you show compassion to a person who has been mean to you? Yes & this is why.
Insecurity & judgment are demons that possess us against our will & make us mean. People don’t hate you, judge you or spite you because they are bad. They hate, judge or spite themselves & you become a victim of their self-flagellation. When you unleash kindness on them in their bad times, they feel understood & heard. You have their heart, trust & loyalty for life.
Empathy
My sister once witnessed a bloody accident scene. People gathered in crowds to sympathize with the victim. But she bravely took action. She called an ambulance, controlled the crowd, pulled the victims out of the wreck & gave them first aid (she is trained).
I’ll tell you another popular Indian folklore to illustrate why poor people skills cripple us into bad situations our entire lives.
A guy falls in a hole. A passer-by out of sympathy jumps into the hole to join his suffering brother. Now there are two idiots stuck in the hole. Along comes a guy with empathy who pulls his brothers out of the hole. He gathers a tribe of those who take action to get themselves unstuck.
My sister is that gal. The one who has empathy. She has mastered this skill to gather a tribe of loyal followers who help her progress.
Focusing on the inner circle
Those who are clueless about their worth try to make everyone happy. Of course, others devalue them.
My sister was never that girl. She knows the rings of trust.
She puts people to test before trusting them. You feel you have to earn your right to be in her inner circle. But once in she lavishes attention & kindness on you.
Those in her circle have her back. She is their backbone, no matter what. When you enter her circle, it is for keeps.
Leveraging ‘free will’: the most valuable of people skills
I come from India. Here women are not supposed to have agency over their bodies, minds & lives.
But my sister knows that control is an illusion. Everyone has free will. We need to break out of childhood conditioning that keeps us bound to silly rules. She adulted a long while back so doesn’t wait for permission. She knows free will, so she does not expect others to do stuff that makes her happy. Instead, she asks them what they want & if their goal matches hers, she teams up. She endears herself to others with this most valuable of people skills.
Identifying an ask from an opportunity
My sister had a mind-blowing revelation when she was just 25. When she was younger, she got herself into situations that seemed like opportunities. All of them fizzled out & she did not get what was promised to her. She then figured out that the situations were only asks for others, not opportunities for her.
People disguise their asks as opportunities to get you to fall in line. Acquire this most useful of people skills of identifying an ask from an opportunity so you can decline politely. Saying ‘NO’ gains you respect & frees your time for actual opportunities.
These five people skills are difficult to learn & implement. If you are convinced my sister has got them right, may you accept them so you can be badass at handling the curveballs of life.
I am a freelance writer who writes human interest stories. If you are a Coach who is looking for a writer to ghost write a book, chat here about hiring me.
