I received many grateful emails regarding my last Usable Insight: The Learned Person.  Several people said that what got to them most was not just seven specific qualities they could aspire to, but also the realization of how the opposite of these qualities could cause you to be a “golem.”  One person told me that perhaps a simpler word for having those negative qualities was being a “taker.” That response as well as rereading the chapter, “Steer Clear of Toxic People” in my new book, “Just Listen” Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone (AMACOM, $24.95) caused me to realize that before you can “Steer clear of toxic people” or “Just say, ‘No,’ to takers,” it would be helpful to recognize them before they take from you.

How do you recognize takers? The best way to recognize a taker is to make the most of the hindsight you will beat yourself up with, the next time you’re taken from by one of them.

Think of the last time this happened to you.  Was it when you paid money to someone for something you never received?  Was it when you gave someone who hurt you for the tenth time, an eleventh chance to do it again, and then they did?  Was it when you gave your employee a second chance to get their work in on time, and they again failed to do so?  Was it when you gave your boy friend or girl friend another chance to meet you on time and again they were thirty minutes late? Or was it when you truly believed that “sure fire” guaranteed offer that sounded too-good-to-be-true that turned out too good to be true?

Where do you find takers?  Takers cross all socioeconomic, age, gender, ethnic, personal, occupational, and familial boundaries.  There are taker husbands and taker wives; taker parents and taker children; taker brothers and taker sisters; taker friends and taker foes; taker neighbors and taker strangers; taker bosses and taker employees; taker young and taker old; taker Caucasians and taker African Americans; taker Asians and taker Europeans; taker New Yorkers and taker Californians; taker intellectuals and taker anti-intellectuals and taker writers and taker readers.  (Fortunately, givers also cross all these boundaries, but more about that later).

What are some of the qualities present in most takers?

25 Warning Signals That You’re Dealing With a TAKER

1. They act entitled to whatever they’re taking from you.
2. They treat you as an extension of themselves.
3. When they hurt or disappoint you they don’t experience guilt, shame or remorse.
4. They won’t apologize to you, but will expect you to apologize to them.
5. Their wish is your command, and if you don’t comply, you don’t love them.
6. They believe their problems are someone else’s fault.
7. They believe that you and everyone else are in this world to make them happy.
8. When you give to them, they don’t feel compelled to say thank you or be grateful.
9. If they feel taken from by you, they become outraged and entitled to become enraged.
10. They don’t regret taking from you, but they regret not taking even more from you.
11. They need to have the last word in conversations.
12. They don’t take turns well.
13. They are impatient and hate to wait.
14. They interrupt or butt into conversations.
15. They act as if they are always right.
16. They act as if they are never wrong.
17. When they’re frustrated, they feel justified in doing anything to make themselves feel better.
18. They won’t tell you specifically what you are doing wrong or ask you directly for what they need— they expect you to read their minds.
19. They are stubborn and you may confuse their stubbornness for strength and be attracted to them because of it.
20. They aren’t motivated to know, care or do anything unless it gets them something.
21. They are quick to ridicule or laugh at others, but have little ability to laugh at themselves or tolerate being laughed at.
22. They either cannot or will not put themselves in another person’s shoes.
23. They hold everyone else accountable, but evade being held accountable.
24. They talk much more than they listen.
25. They’ll expect a second, third and fourth chance from you when they hurt you; but they won’t give you a second chance when you hurt them.

This list can be discouraging.  You may be hard pressed to think of many people who don’t show at least some of these characteristics.  More upsetting is that you will probably find yourself owning up to at least a few of these qualities.  Take a breather now if this list is too upsetting, but come back later if in your heart, you know it’s true. Don’t become paranoid, but do become mindful of people with these qualities and just say, “No,” before you become involved with them.

Spread the Word

]]> http://markgoulston.com/uncategorized/1979.html/feed 16 http://markgoulston.com/insights/1847.html http://markgoulston.com/insights/1847.html#comments Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:51:43 +0000 Mark http://markgoulston.com/?p=1847 Empathy is a distraction and a waste of time when aiming at a goal,
but without it, you can end up wasting your life.

“You look like hell and I don’t think it’s because you’re dying; you’ve been dying as long as I’ve known you,” I said to Max (real name withheld) the terminally ill tough movie mogul I’d been doing house calls on and with whom I had developed a no b.s. rapport.

“I don’t think I’ve ever done anything important in my life,” he told me.

“What?” I protested, trying to ease his mind as he closed in on the end of his life.  “Think of the hospital wing named after you, the jobs you created, the amazing films that will live on forever.”

“Don’t con a con man, especially when he’s dying,” he snapped back.  “I have all the love that money can buy and that’s all it’s worth.   I also have several ex-partners and two ex-wives I beat up on financially and a bunch of trust fund kids from three marriages, who I guess I love, but who are all selfish and irresponsible.”

“So if I continued the list of all your achievements, it wouldn’t work,” I asked.

“No, not now.  I think I just might have outsmarted myself,” Max concluded.

Now having trained FBI and police hostage negotiators and appeared on CNN and national radio stations on the day of the Columbine shootings and again on 9/11 to take calls, I am pretty quick on my feet.

“Really,” I said. “You know there are a couple of very uncomplimentary words in psychology that I’ve been thinking that might apply to you, but I didn’t think I’d get to use them given that you’re dying.  Those words are narcissist and psychopath.  And you know, you might just be getting exactly what you deserve.  You did use people for most of your life and took pleasure in doing it. You were a master manipulator.  In fact you made Citizen Kane look like a boy scout. And another thing,” I stopped when he abruptly interrupted me.

“Stop already! Okay! I get it.  You’ve made your point,” he said emphatically.

“And that point is?” I asked.

“This is not a good time for me to be asking these questions,” he said with a broad smile that indicated our rapport was still in tact despite my verbal assault.

“CORRECT! You weren’t perfect, but neither were you the most evil person on earth.  You messed up, but you did a lot of good.  Drop it already. Let’s go for pain control, morphine drip and then get out of Dodge,” I urged.

“Do I get to go out with my boots on?” Max quipped.

“Sure, it’s your movie,” I couldn’t resist having the last word.

Three weeks later Max died…with his slippers on.

Why is it that so many high achievers stink at relationships? High achievers are good at clearly selecting a goal and tenaciously staying on track until they achieve it and scattering anything that might derail them.  Other people’s feelings or being mindful of their own lack of tack (which taken together we refer to as Emotional Intelligence) would distract them.  Most high achievers are not insensitive, they are simply NOT sensitive.

To be good at a relationship, you need to listen to the other person, care enough to make the effort to understand what they are saying (i.e. “relate” to it) and then communicate back to them in a way that demonstrates you have taken into consideration what you have understood.  Not only is that off putting to a high achiever, but the “run on sentence” I just used to explain it was more than they could even pay attention to.

1. Go to bed at the same time
Remember the beginning of your relationship, when you couldn’t wait to go to bed with each other to make love? Happy couples resist the temptation to go to bed at different times. They go to bed at the same time, even if one partner wakes up later to do things while their partner sleeps.<!–more–>

2. Cultivate common interests
After the passion settles down, it’s common to realize that you have few interests in common. But don’t minimize the importance of activities you can do together that you both enjoy. If common interests are not present, happy couples develop them. At the same time, be sure to cultivate interests of your own; this will make you more interesting to your mate and prevent you from appearing too dependent.

3. Walk hand in hand or side by side
Rather than one partner lagging or dragging behind the other, happy couples walk comfortably hand in hand or side by side. They know it’s more important to be with their partner than to see the sights along the way.

4. Make trust and forgiveness your default mode
If and when they have a disagreement or argument, and if they can’t resolve it, happy couples default to trusting and forgiving rather than distrusting and begrudging.

5. Focus more on what your partner does right than what he or she does wrong
If you look for things your partner does wrong, you can always find something. If you look for what he or she does right, you can always find something, too. It all depends on what you want to look for. Happy couples accentuate the positive.

6. Hug each other as soon as you see each other after work
Our skin has a memory of “good touch” (loved), “bad touch” (abused) and “no touch” (neglected). Couples who say hello with a hug keep their skin bathed in the “good touch,” which can inoculate your spirit against anonymity in the world.

7. Say “I love you” and “Have a good day” every morning
This is a great way to buy some patience and tolerance as each partner sets out each day to battle traffic jams, long lines and other annoyances.

8. Say “Good night” every night, regardless of how you feel
This tells your partner that, regardless of how upset you are with him or her, you still want to be in the relationship. It says that what you and your partner have is bigger than any single upsetting incident.

9. Do a “weather” check during the day
Call your partner at home or at work to see how his or her day is going. This is a great way to adjust expectations so that you’re more in sync when you connect after work. For instance, if your partner is having an awful day, it might be unreasonable to expect him or her to be enthusiastic about something good that happened to you.

10. Be proud to be seen with your partner
Happy couples are pleased to be seen together and are often in some kind of affectionate contact — hand on hand or hand on shoulder or knee or back of neck. They are not showing off but rather just saying that they belong with each other.

Happy couples have different habits than unhappy couples. A habit is a discrete behavior that you do automatically and that takes little effort to maintain. It takes 21 days of daily repetition of a new a behavior to become a habit. So select one of the behaviors in the list above to do for 21 days and voila, it will become a habit…and make you happier as a couple. And if you fall off the wagon, don’t despair, just apologize to your partner, ask their forgiveness and recommit yourself to getting back in the habit.

To my faithful supporters, check out my other blog venues at:

Psychology Today

Minyanville

Huffington Post

You’ll have much more chance for success in your relationships
if you leverage a future that nobody has messed up
than if you bring up an event that has already happened
and stay stuck in rehashing it to the point where everybody is frustrated

Maybe it’s me, but I see and hear more and more people talking at or over each other and less and less just listening to each other. I’ve also noticed that much of these debates — for I wouldn’t call them discussions or dialogues — center on some event that is happening and one person being in the criticising role and the other being in the defensive or hunkered down role. Something that I’ve learned from my good friend Marshall Goldsmith, executive coach and author of the WSJ #1 best selling book, What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There and use extensively is what I call “Leveraging the Future.” It is quite magical to help all relationships. All it requires is the desire to make a situation better, willingness to focus on a solution instead of staying hopelessly stuck in a problem and most importantly, the willingness to proactively take responsibility for your actions. It usually starts with: “Going forward…” Here are some examples:

To improve your chances for success in your job:

Say to your boss: “Going forward, I would like to increase the chances of my getting a promotion or a raise at my next review. To do that what is something I should always do and something I should never do to make that happen?”

To improve your marriage:

Say to your spouse: “Going forward I want to be a better husband/wife. What is something I should always do and something I should never do that would help me to be that to you?”

To improve your relationship with your children:

Say to your child or children: “Going forward I want to be a better mom/dad. What is something I should always do and something I should never do that would help me to be that to you?”

To improve your relationship with your aging parent:

Say to them: “Going forward I want to be a better son/daughter. What is something I should always do and something I should never do that would help me do that?”

In a webcast that Marshall did a while back, he told the story of asking his aging mom the last question. She responded that she thought he was a great son, but that one thing that always lifted her spirits was when she would receive a card in her mailbox (don’t you remember feeling the same if you received a “care” package at overnight camp?). Marshall promptly started doing that regularly. Some time later when she was dying she told him that one of the things that made her later life happy was going down and receiving those cards. The key of course in making all of these work is the desire to make things better (vs. needing to be right) and invest in your relationships by your being the one to go first.

BTW I am a great fan and appreciative friend of Marshall’s who in addition to his many activities has some great Leading News webcasts available. I was fortunate enough to do one recently that you can hear at Leading News. I was interviewed by one of the “best listeners” I have ever met, Patricia Wheeler. Patricia is a top executive coach in her own right and you can hear her live interview at Leading News about: “Executive Transitions: What Senior Leaders Need to Know and Do” by Larry Levin on November 3, 1 PM EDT/1 AM PDT.

Also just out: Your Brain at Work by David Rock. “This is the best, the most helpful, and the brainiest book I’ve read on how the brain affects how, why and what we do and act. After reading only the first four chapters, I felt roughly 100% more efficient in organizing my work and personal life.” – Warren Bennis, Distinguished Professor of Business and University Professor, University of Southern California and author of “On Becoming a Leader.

And finally be sure to check out: Business Relationships that Last by Ed Wallace. “In Business Relationships That Last, Ed Wallace captures the immediate need for organizations and individuals to build relationships of integrity and confidence. That trust benefits every aspect of service and will help grow your business and generate superior performance.” —Stephen M. R. Covey, author of the New York Times bestseller The Speed of Trust

Try to see your partner at their worst before you get married,
because you will certainly see them at it afterwards

In the 1980’s one of my specialties and claims to fame was that I was the creator of “Recoupling Therapy”* where I helped couples that had divorced to remarry their ex- and live happily ever after.

I appeared on Oprah, Today (see mini-videoclips) in the New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Rebook, Los Angeles Magazine , the Los Angeles Times to discuss my work along with couples who had “recoupled.”

In actuality it was much easier to recouple a divorced couple than keep a miserable one together.

All that it required was that each partner:

1. had learned how they contributed to the problems in the marriage and took full responsibility for it.
2. had learned what they would to do different to deal with disagreements, disappointments and hurts before they deteriorated into a “scorched earth” War of the Roses and was actively using those approaches.
3. was willing to agree on a set of ground rules for managing disagreements that were more important to each of them than being right or winning.
4. made forgiveness rather than begrudging their default mode even when they couldn’t sort out the issues behind a conflict.
5. routinely expressed gratitude and appreciation to each other.
6. (and pertaining to the “”usable insight” above) realized that during the divorce they had seen and knew the other person at their worst, whereas that was something they had yet to discover in any new relationship.

What can you learn from this if you are going the first time around or even before you get married?

Don’t make a commitment to each other until you have gotten into three full scale arguments where each or both people have felt disappointed or hurt by the other to see how each person handles it. The more quickly either person goes from disappointment or hurt to anger, defensiveness, or emotional withdrawal and remains stuck there, the less that person is capable of having a relationship and the more the other person will have to walk on eggshells. Over time, doing that will have a cumulative effect, suck the vitality out of the relationship and corrode it from the inside out until it caves in on itself and dies. My advice just say “Goodbye” to such a “high maintenance” (easy to upset, difficult to please) person and if that person is you, fix it.

* I didn’t stay with that specialty because at that same time I was also involved intervening with suicidal and violent individuals, which seemed more critical at the time.  I often feel that I may have done more good had I continued with “Recoupling Therapy” given the families it would have saved and future suicides and violence it would have prevented.

ALSO Sign up and heck out the latest “Two Questions to Get Closer to Your Partner” at FREE RESOURCES

AND stayed tuned for the launch of HappierCouples.com, “coming to a relationship near you” in September and where I am thrilled to be the Chief Relationship Officer.

Pseudo-independent – You act un-needy, but you’re really prideful, don’t believe anyone else will do it right and don’t want to be beholding to anyone. You can’t really do life without other people. Your “empire” is no more than a Glass Menagerie, but as long as you don’t see it that way, it doesn’t seem to matter to you that everyone else does.

Independent – You are needful. You lean into people. You get input from others, but keep your problems as your responsibility. You are mature enough to realize that until you can be effectively interdependent, you can’t be independent.

Also: How to Become Independent

(c) 2009 Mark Goulston

Here are some tips for starting one of the best conversations you will ever have with your partner.

For Men Only:

Say to your partner, “Have I ever made you feel that you were not worth listening to?” (If you’ve been together less than five years, their hurt at your having done this will be stronger than their anger; if you’ve been together more than five years, their anger will be stronger than their hurt.) Regardless of their emotional reaction, add: “Just because I don’t know how to listen in the right way without either trying to minimize what you’re saying or fix things doesn’t mean that you’re not worth listening to. And don’t you let anyone, including me, make you feel that way. AND I AM SORRY.”

Don’t say it, if you don’t mean it. But if you do mean it and do say it, you might get “lucky” (according to women in audiences I have given to couples at corporate retreats).

For Women Only:

Say to your partner, “Have I ever made you feel that I don’t admire and respect you more today than when we first met?” After your partner finishes picking his jaw up off the floor, add: “Look, just because I take out the stress I feel from our kids, my job, your and my parents, etc. on you because you’re safe, doesn’t mean that I don’t feel lucky to have you in my life. And if I’ve never let you know that, I’ve been wrong. AND I AM SORRY.”

If you mean it and say this, your partner may feel like he died and went to heaven (as some men have said in those couple audiences and retreats mentioned above) and at the very least will want to return the favor by being more loving towards you.

For more relationship help check out: The 6 Secrets of a Lasting Relationship: How to Fall in Love Again…and Stay There.

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