Last Word

Reading People’s Minds

Women have unique abilities to decode how others think and can harness the skill to succeed in male-dominated environments. BY LINDA SMITH

Ican read people’s minds. No, not literally – but like all women, I have the inherent ability to decode what’s called the perceptual screen of those around me.

A perceptual screen isn’t just one belief or attitude, like political affiliation or religious orientation. It refers to someone’s subjective consciousness, a summation of their experiences, beliefs, opinions and personality traits. How they view the world is inherently influenced by these factors.

When I’m interacting with a man, I’m evaluating how he thinks and what he cares about.

Does he value impeccable integrity, or feel like the end sometimes justifies the means?

Would he rather talk it out, or see it written down in black and white? Can he laugh at himself, or is he humorless and arrogant?

Is this someone who categorizes people by their status in the social hierarchy? Does he believe that he has no equals?

Once you figure out someone’s screen, you can adjust your approach to complement it. I don’t mean that you compromise your personality or values to act in accordance with their beliefs or thinking. It’s a question of modulating your approach so you avoid triggering a negative reaction or misunderstanding.

BusinessInsider.com summarized Wall

Street executive Cara Fleisher’s view on this: “Successful women often learn to be ‘multilingual’ within their language, meaning being observant and learning to communicate with different people in ways that make them feel comfortable.”

By the time I joined my firm,

O’Melveny & Meyers, I’d honed my own multilingual skills to a much finer edge.

This was fortunate, because I needed to put them to use right away.

The men I worked with cut me very little slack, and a lot of them had no idea how to deal with a woman as a professional. I had to read their minds, because they certainly weren’t going to try to figure out what I was thinking.

On my first big case, Transamerica’s antitrust lawsuit against our client, IBM, I was assigned to help prepare and present several witnesses at trial with a senior partner named Patrick Lynch. Working with Pat was challenging. To his credit, he’s a brilliant trial attorney, and I soaked up invaluable knowledge working with him. But he did have his quirks.

Pat was famous for one particular behavior whenever he asked an associate to prepare a draft of a brief. The associate would labor over that draft for days, working long, stressful nights, only to have Pat look at the draft and then dismiss it, saying, “That’s not what I asked for!” He’d then use the draft as scratch paper on which to prepare his own brief.

I saw this happen repeatedly. Whatever

we junior attorneys would submit to him never matched up with his expectations. I decided I was no longer going to fall into the trap of wasting my time or his. The next time he gave me an assignment and had already turned to something else, I simply stayed in his office until he looked up at me, clearly wondering why I was still standing there. I said, “I understand you are looking for this and this.” “No, that’s not right,” he would say. Then I would begin the process again, always in a non-combative way. “Did you mean that you wanted this and this instead?” "Values Integrity" “No. That’s not right.” After several rounds, we’d eventually reach an understanding of what he actually wanted. The key was to get inside that brilliant but idiosyncratic legal mind to understand the very particular way it "Humorless and Arrogant" worked. Once I started asking Pat questions, he was willing to keep In recent years, empathy has at long last begun to be recogclarifying his request until I managed to hit upon the exact approach he wanted. The kind of mindreading I’m outlining nized as a crucial management flows directly from empathy, or one’s skill, one sought after by top ability to understand and share the companies worldwide. feelings of another. In recent years, empathy has at long last begun to be recognized as a crucial management skill, one sought after by top companies worldwide. The new gold standard of effective leadership skills – emotional intelligence – has empathy at its core. This column is an edited excerpt from Smashing Glass & Kicking Ass, by Linda Smith, one of the top litigators in the U.S. In the book, Smith seeks to empower ambitious women with sound advice. It can be purchased on Amazon or wherever fine books are sold.

“Can Laugh at “Focuses on Himself” Social Status” “Ends Justify the Means”

Collecting MORE for you requires a blend of strength and delicacy.

There is an art to collecting media receivables. Not everyone can do it or do it well. Some accounts need a firm approach during the collection process. A show of strength. Other accounts react better to gentle persuasion. A softer MORE delicate touch. The trick is not to be so firm or so strong to lose future business opportunities or too soft as you may never collect the debt.

The true art of debt collection lies in knowing when and how much of each technique to use, blending the approach to the account. At Szabo Associates, we’re masters at being hard as steel or soft as a feather. We know what to say and when and how to say it. It’s because we have MORE experience and MORE training than anyone in the industry. Not to mention a proprietary database that has chapter and verse on thousands of media clients and their payment histories. Szabo has been successfully collecting media receivables longer and better than anyone else. Is it any wonder we collect MORE for our clients?

Szabo Associates, Inc. 404-266-2464 www.szabo.com info@szabo.com