Page 61 - ConvinceThemFlip

neutralize the fight-or-flight response
I guess the company wouldn’t have given him this posi-
tion if he couldn’t do the job, Eddie thought, but he didn’t
find this thought all that comforting.
How can Eddie get past this sort of first impression,
in which his expectation has turned out to be quite coun-
ter to what he’s presented with? How can he communicate
openly with Pierre? Stop right there! Eddie’s problem isn’t
about communicating with Pierre; it’s about communicat-
ing with himself. Eddie is focusing on Pierre’s physical
appearance rather than his talent. He has lost sight of
what he wants—a creative director who doesn’t cause
problems for his printers, who doesn’t cause problems
by slowing everything and everybody down. Right now,
Eddie has no idea whether or not Pierre will do this—but
he does have plenty of assumptions.
The same thing is true for the notions you may have in
your own mind about people in the office that you see on
a regular basis but whom you don’t know well. The initial
impact a person made—one, twelve, or forty-eight months
ago—may still be affecting your perception of that per-
son today. That long-ago misimpression may be keeping
you from recognizing a potentially valuable resource.
Remember, when you like someone, you see the best in
them, but when you don’t, you may see only the worst.
Snap judgments set up filters in the mind, and everything
about the person is judged through these filters. Put your
53