Relationships; Reverse Negative Assumptions for Success?

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After a recent sales training workshop, a sales engineer took me aside and asked my advice on dealing with a difficult customer. He took on the account one year ago from a senior engineer and, starting with the first meeting, things unraveled. The customer was not interested in giving him any time to introduce himself, was not willing to show him the company and talk about his goals and needs and always demanded the impossible.

Sounds familiar? Have you encountered a new co-worker, a new neighbor or just met somebody at a store towards whom you had an immediate negative feeling? Or do you have a co-worker who just plainly cannot do anything right?

We need to remember, that when we create an impression of something or someone, we take our own experiences, the hearsay we are in most cases introduced to prior to meeting somebody and maybe some observations we made and form a mental picture of the person or issue. And from now on we see this mental picture as the true representation of the person. We forget, however, two important facts:

We see and judge issues and persons through our own behavior style. As an example, if we are direct and assertive, we easily label persons, who have a need to look at all the facts prior to making a decision, as slow and indecisive.
When we form our mental picture, we tend to distort, delete or generalize everything, and most information is more reflecting what a Monday morning quarterback would say about a game or issue rather than telling facts from the players' perspective.

If you agree that our mental pictures are made up to a certain extent, why not change them to get to a different outcome?

If we could exchange in our mind the image of the person we have challenges with, with the image of a person we like and whose advice we value, what do you think the outcome would be? Yes, we would be less judgmental, more caring, focusing on the positive rather than finding the negative and I bet the relationship would significantly improve. So, coming back to the sales situation, we made a list of assumptions the sales engineer held about the customer:

Troublemaker
Never satisfied
Rude
Opinionated
Undisciplined

Then we replaced the negative assumptions with positive ones:

Troublemaker à Courageous
Never satisfied à Sets high standards
Rude à Direct
Opinionated à Passionate
Undisciplined à Goal oriented

Replacing the negative assumptions with positive ones will allow you to start all over again with a person. You will see that some facets of your mental picture of the person are wrong and you have a chance to record the positive image of the person. This process will create the possibility for different interactions and a better understanding of the person. Try it on your "difficult customer" today. After all, you have nothing to lose and who knows what possibilities you might create.

© 2009 Copyrighted by Dr. Joe Mayer, Managing Partner of The Growth Coach, who helps business owners, professionals and their key employees to grow their businesses by focusing on vision and strategy. Joe can be reached at J.Mayer@Thegrowthcoach.com; http://www.mayerbusinessgroup.com/