the best way to please is not to please

on managing people

Gustave Courbet, The Trellis, or Young Woman arranging Flowers, 1862

I actually don’t know where I first learned it. No one taught me explicitly. When I was a kid I was so shy, it was hard for me to talk, and when I did talk what I said seemed to be wrong. I was more comfortable with adults because it was easy for me to impress them—I was precocious, good at math competitions, and spelling bees. Adults like smart kids. Kids, on the other, want someone who can… just hang out.

It took me a long time to understand the building blocks of conversation. But once I did, I really took what I learned and ran with it. I wanted to master what I was bad at and made other people happy. I realized that it was:

• bad to talk too much about yourself

• good to show interest in other people’s hobbies, problems, and interests

• important to pay attention to body language

• my job to make sure that whatever social situation we were in was a delightful experience for everyone involved

I wanted to take care of everyone’s feelings. If I made them feel good, I would rewarded with their affection.

For a long time, socializing involved playing a weird form of Mad-Libs: I wanted to say whatever you wanted to hear. I wanted to be assertive, but also understanding and reasonable and thoughtful.