I think it’s safe to assume that many of the people reading this post have gone through the StrengthFinders assessment. For those that haven’t you should. It’s a fabulous tool that will take you about 45 minutes at the most and will reveal your top 5 strengths. I did this a couple years ago and was surprised at one of my top 5. . . Empathy. (Please hold the laughter) What I love about this tool is that it defines different traits differently depending on who it assigns them to. For example, Empathy for you could be defined one way while Empathy for me was defined another.

I don’t remember the specifics of how it defined it for me, however, one of the descriptions was that I am able to anticipate what others are going to do or say by putting myself in their shoes. What this allows me to do is to give thought to and hopefully address their objections / concerns before they bring them up.

If I have an important meeting coming up and you happen to pull up next to me at a stop light. The chances are very high that you will see me engaged in a very animated conversation. There could be a couple different participants in that conversation but I am the only one in the car. It is a one man show and I am playing all the parts. I do this out loud and I have even been known to talk myself, with passion, out of a direction I was going to go. What this allows me to do, however, is to think through and anticipate other points of view so I can address them. It also allows me to think about my co-workers. Their personality, how they communicate, do I need to speak fast or slow it down? Do I need to get to the point or give more background? It also gives me an advantage in that I have already had the meeting, in it’s entirety, several times before it ever happened. How can I lose?!

Successful meetings don’t happen on accident. You can’t wing them. If you want to get more of what you’re wanting spend more time thinking about what the other party wants / needs out of the discussion. What is it they are wanting to make sure you’ve thought about? Address those desires before they even come up and you will find yourself walking out of the room more often than not with the decision going your way.