Advice

I was recently reading an article in the May 12, 2008 edition of Fortune. The article was entitled, "The Best Advice I Ever Got," and was an interview with several highly successful persons from the business world about the best, and for some the worst, advice they had ever been given. 

Indra Nooyi, chairman and CEO of Pepsico, was one of the interviewees and her best advice came from her father. He told her that, "whatever anybody says or does, assume positive intent." Her thought is that too often we assume the negative intent, get angry, and risk missing an opportunity to learn something from someone else. What also tends to happen in those situations is that both persons in the conversation become defensive and negative and nothing good comes from that. 

I once learned from William Glasser in his book, Stations of the Mind, that there is a gap of time between stimulus and response. (I may be paraphrasing greatly, but that is how I remember it.) Anyway, in that gap, we have the opportunity to choose our response. So often, we choose unconsciously and allow emotions to direct our response. By adopting Nooyi's philosophy of finding the positive intent, we begin to see opportunities to listen, build relationships, and find success.