8IGNORE YOUR (TELLTALE) HEART
IT WANTS YOU TO TALK WITHOUT A PLAN
In a memorable passage from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice asks the Cheshire cat what direction she should take in the woods. The cat asks Alice where she wants to go, and when Alice replies that she doesn’t really care, the cat says, “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”
The cat put his paw on a lesson about communication: if we don’t care how an interaction turns out, it doesn’t matter how we approach it. But when conversations matter, it helps to have a destination in mind.
Casual conversations don’t need an underlying goal or even a direction. Work—and life—wouldn’t be much fun without the opportunity for friendly chitchat and informal banter. ...
Get Stop Talking, Start Communicating: Counterintuitive Secrets to Success in Business and in Life, with a foreword by Martha Mendoza now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
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