Why Most Advice About Dealing with People Doesn’t Work - and What I Focus on Instead
Why Most Advice About Dealing with People Doesn’t Work - and What I Focus on Instead For years, I did what everyone does when they struggle with people: I consumed advice. Books. Podcasts. Articles. Frameworks with neat acronyms. Lists of “things emotionally intelligent people never do”. Scripts for difficult conversations. Techniques for influence, persuasion, boundaries, confidence, empathy, assertiveness, charisma - you name it. I tried them earnestly. I applied them carefully. And, more often than not, they failed. Not always dramatically. More subtly. Conversations still went sideways. Relationships still drained energy. People still misunderstood me, resisted me, or reacted in ways that advice promised they wouldn’t - if only I said the right thing the right way . After sorting through hundreds of failed attempts - my own and other people’s - I eventually accepted an uncomfortable truth: Most advice about dealing with people doesn’t fail because it’s wrong. It fai...