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The 5 Rules to Effectively Manage People 👦

8th May 2019

how to manage people

Managing people isn’t easy. 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦

And yet, if we want to live in a society, have friends and family, we’re going to always be in touch with other people. Along with finance, people management is something no one teaches how to do. Whether you’re an employee, freelancer or business owner, people management is an essential skill that is much more valuable than may first appear… 

So far I’ve figured out two skills that can be life changing (yes!) to be building in your twenties: technology skills and now, people management. I’m basing this article on the people management book How to Win Friends and Influence People and parts of other business books. The book is a little outdated and might have some odd techniques which are over simplistic and two sided, but the base message is pretty mind blowing. Personally, the book changed my life when it comes to understanding why people act the way they do, and how I should act if I want to learn how to manage people. It’s not easy, but it’s surprisingly simple…

 

1. Be genuinely interested

It probably comes to no surprise that we love talking about ourselves. 💁‍♀️ Everyone’s favourite topic is ourselves. So showing a genuine interest in someone literally means the world to them. And therefore if you really want someone to like you, simply asking questions about them and listening will get you very far.

Show appreciation and genuine interest. Fake appreciation is easy to see through so don’t even try. When meeting someone new, ask and listen. 👂

Snazzy How to Win Friends quote:

“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”

 

2. Use empathy 

When trying to understand someone or working with someone, empathy is key. You’d think this is obvious, but believe it or not, lack of empathy is what causes most arguments. This is especially true if you want someone to do you a favour. Carnegie explains that instead of giving orders, you want to be giving ‘suggestions’, and use empathy by putting yourself in their position and thinking ‘What is it that will make them want to do this?’. Once again, if you applied the ‘be genuinely interested’ rule, you know this person enough to understand them, and you can put yourself in their position.

A classic example is a mum ordering her child (#me) to clean his room. Instead of shouting, punishing and putting deadlines, the mother needs to put herself in the position of her child ‘What will make him want to clean his room?’. The answer to that varies from child to child, but a solution might be to give him a ‘fine reputation to live up to’. She tells her child he’s in charge of the cleanest room in the house, and she knows he’s going to do a great job. Now the challenge is his and his only, and he’s not willing to fail that. Try it… you may be pleasantly surprised 😉

“People are more likely to accept an order if they have had a part in the decision that caused the order to be issued.”

how to manage people
surprise surprise – most of us don’t like receiving orders.

 

3. Remember names

Remembering the names of people makes another world of a difference 🌎. Why? Because everyone nowadays says they’re ‘bad at remembering names’. Everyone is obviously bad at remembering names because it’s a memory issue – and most of us don’t work on our memories. Which is why actually remembering names can be hugely influential. By remembering names you are showing someone appreciation just because you are actually making the effort of memorising their name. By calling them by their first name, you immediately give a positive tone to the conversation. Win win.

Calling someone by their name is like paying them a very subtle compliment. Conversely, forgetting or misspelling someone’s name can have the opposite effect and make them feel as though you are distant and disinterested in them. Remember the last time someone misspelled your name. Did you feel a slight irritation? Yep, doesn’t feel great. 

“Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language”

 

4. When in disagreement, hear them out first 👂

This strategy has helped me hugely in my personal life.

The most important reason that disagreements are uncomfortable is because of emotions, and many times those emotions include frustration and impatience with the other party. Many times, we enter disagreements and get angry simply because the other party is not listening, or we feel they don’t care. You know exactly what I’m talking about.

Carnegie explains that if you want a discussion/argument to go well, here are a few steps you can follow:

  1. Let the other person say everything they want to say and make sure they know that you’re listening and paying attention – this will most likely solve the emotions part.
  2. Once they are finished, look for areas where you agree, and start with those.
  3. If you still disagree, let them know you need time to think over the ideas, and what your points of disagreement are.

Simple, and yet mind blowingly effective. Try it next time you’re in an argument.

Other tips from the book:

  • Never tell people they are wrong
  • Admit that you are wrong, quickly and openly
  • Don’t blame others, show empathy: ‘I don’t blame you for feeling that way, I would feel the same’

“Remember that other people may be totally wrong. But they don’t think so. Don’t condemn them. Any fool can do that. Try to understand them. Only wise, tolerant, exceptional people even try to do that”

how to manage people
surprise surprise, violence doesn’t work either

 

5. Praise, do not criticize

The most important of the 5 rules.

There’s a difference between constructive criticism and just plain criticism – the latter is much more destructive. Instead of criticising and punishing when someone does something wrong, the best strategy is doing the opposite; praising when they do something right, even the slightest improvement.

Let’s go back once again to the example of the mother trying to get her child to clean his room. What should she really do? Give him a fine reputation to live up to, and praise even the smallest improvements. Every time he cleans even part of his room the mother will praise and encourage him to keep going.

Anyone who owns a dog knows that it’s the same deal – you train dogs by giving treats every time they do something right. Shouting and punishing only causes distrust and dislike, and does not work in the long run. Us humans aren’t too different.

“I will speak ill of no man and speak all the good I know of everybody.”—Benjamin Franklin

Practicing people management skills

Managing people is a very valuable ‘soft skill’, and you get good at it as you do with everything else: by practicing. Learning the strategies mentioned above will help learn how to negotiate, will help you get jobs, will help you get clients, funding and help in the business world. They are essential if you’re ever going to be starting a project which involves people (which most do), and it’ll make things a little easier when working with difficult people.

How to practice? By starting now. Maybe even going to networking events, or local meetups in your area. When you meet someone new this time listen carefully, ask about them, and make sure to remember their name. When in a disagreement, let the other person hear themselves out completely before putting forward your arguments. When giving orders, use suggestions, and always praise improvements rather than punish mistakes. And trust me, you’ll see a difference.

how to manage people
if this chimp can pretend he’s thinking, then you can memorise a name

This is a skill that takes a long time to develop, which is why starting it early on can make a huge difference. Personally, I am far from having mastered the skill of people management, but simply by being aware of its importance and just practicing has been very useful. What is even more interesting and informative is observing; I see the mistakes other people commit when trying to manage people. They don’t listen, they punish, they critisize and most of all, they never try to put themselves in the position of the other. Just by playing detective, you can also learn a lot. 🧐

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My name's Araminta and I'm freelance FinTech Copywriter.

I started Financially Mint to help other 20 something year olds learn about money and fix their finances early in life 💪

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  • How Life Design Interviews Will Help Get Your ‘Dream Career’
  • How Career Building and Exploration Allowed FG to Earn a $500,000 Salary
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Financially Mint is on another break! ☕ I will Financially Mint is on another break! ☕

I will be living in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for the next few months, and then hopefully heading to Australia. 
My plans for the next year:

I'm putting the career testing theory into practice. My next career test is working for an NGO here in Kuala Lumpur. This week will be my first week. I will be working with sex trafficking survivors and I've also been asked to do some financial education presentations to help the staff.

After that the plan is to move to Melbourne, Australia, and do my next career test: consulting. If that doesn't work out I will try another career test which may be more achievable: business development in a startup. Thanks to the amazing career books that I've read, I'm pretty confident I can get an interesting job. We'll see how it rolls. 🏀

How am I funding this? I'm very excited to say that I've managed to grow my part-time freelancing income to a full-time income that can sustain me in South East Asia (I would need to work full-time in Europe). I'm calling myself a 'Freelance FinTech Writer'. Rent is crazy cheap (like 300€/month) and it's literally cheaper to eat out than cook. I'm still able to save 15% of my income. 🎉🎉 The increase in clients and pay has been thanks to all the effort I put into Financially Mint, and to some crazy cold emailing and networking in the past few months. 
After some thought, I concluded that learning mark-up language (HTML + CSS) was a more efficient use of my time than writing blog posts and working on FM... so I am now taking a break to learn some basic coding and decide what to do next.

I will still be podcasting and taking part in the FI community on Twitter and everywhere else... so I'll still be seeing you around 😉

To our success 🎉🎉
Only 30% of jobs are posted online. 🙄 Let's sa Only 30% of jobs are posted online. 🙄

Let's say you've got a list of career paths to test. You've figured out a direction, you know which sector you want to work in and you've got some cool companies in mind.

But then what? How do you get an internship in the company you really want to work for? How do you get a job in that specific NGO? How do you get them to notice you? 🤔

In FM's latest post I share a strategy that I am still testing but seems to work - copied from a book titled 'Designing your Life' by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans:

The strategy: Conducting 'Life Design' Interviews. .
A Life Design Interview is basically meeting the person that has your 'dream career' for coffee. ☕

You find someone who is working at the company you want to work for, in the sector you want to work for or simply has a position you're interested in, and you reach out to them (LinkedIn helps). You ask about their story, their position, how they got to where they are and their advice to people starting out. 
This is what I've been doing for the past month in Edinburgh, and of the 40 people I contacted, I met 8 of them for coffee, my goal to simply learn about their story.

With an added bonus: Trust. ✅

Not only did I learn stuff about working in a startup, or as a content writer or working in an NGO, but I also built a trusted connection. It's those connections that help you find the hidden jobs, the dream careers and the best opportunities.

Check out FM's latest post for a proper run down on Life Design interviews. 💪 (Last week we organised the FI Europe podcast retreat! An amazing 4 days doing speeches, masterminds, debates, boat trips, beach and surfing. Post on this coming soon 🔥)
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#financiallymint #budget #budgeting #personalfinance #savinghacks #makemoney #savemoney #money #shoestringbudget #moneyhacks #moneysavinghacks #financialeducation #financialfreedom #adulting #savingtricks #earnmoney #lifeadvice #counsel #careeradvice #retirement #investing #careerbuilding #skillbuilding #career #selfimprovement #inspiring #fieurope #lifedesign #interviews
Investing in yourself now will return bucket loads Investing in yourself now will return bucket loads in the future. 🔮

I talk a lot about this on Financially Mint - how taking the time to build career capital and explore career paths will allow you to find a career of best personal fit, which will then make you the money you need.

But it is true that I am personally at the very start of this journey, and so can't offer many examples of this working. 🤷‍♀️ Well today, this changes as I interview the Financial Gladiator, who did exactly that.

He went to university to study business in Poland, and finished his masters in Australia. In the meantime, he was doing internships, making connections, building skills and beefing up his portfolio. 
He says it himself: ' I always looked to add experience and skills to my repertoire rather than dollars' 💸.
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7 internships later in several different countries and industries and a lot of hustling, moving around and learning about what career fitted him best, FG ended up in a job that paid him a six figure salary. This kept on snowballing, and in his early thirties he hit a salary of over $500,000. .
That goes to show how much investing in yourself can return in the future.
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$500,000 annual salary doesn't need to be your goal, but it still goes to show that you'll make the bulk of your money after investing in your own career. 📈

A great interview filled with actionable career advice and FG's complete story, check out FM's latest blog post! (Edinburgh castle 🔥)
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#financiallymint #budget #budgeting #personalfinance #savinghacks #makemoney #savemoney #money #studentmoney #studenthacks #studentlife #shoestringbudget #moneyhacks #moneysavinghacks #financialeducation #financialfreedom #adulting #savingtricks #earnmoney #lifeadvice #counsel #careeradvice #retirement #investing #careerbuilding #skillbuilding #career #selfimprovement #inspiring #work
Most of us don't know what we want to do in our tw Most of us don't know what we want to do in our twenties 🤷‍♀️. And that's absolutely normal.

But that's why we don't want to be committing to one thing - who know what you might want to do in 5 years? 🧐

Instead of committing, why not be exploring, investigating and testing career paths. But how can you do this cleverly without being a typical 'millennial-career-hopper'? By building career capital at the same time.

This means that every career test you do will help you build skills, connections and a more solid portfolio. If you have no idea where to start, here are some examples of jobs/activities that can help you build career capital:

1. Working for a growing organisation with a growing performance: this could be consulting, a startup - anywhere with a good mentor and team 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦
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2. Graduate studies - for those who want to work in research, a think tank, etc.
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3. Building a valuable and transferable skill - skills such as writing, programming, designing, data science, etc will always be useful in the future 💻
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4. Creating content - you don't always need a shiny piece of paper or a medal to show that you've done something. Creating your own thing can be just as useful.
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And much more amazing career advice... in FM's latest blog post 🤓
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(I’m running out of pictures to post so here’s one of a beautiful evening in Edinburgh) .
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#financiallymint #budget #budgeting #personalfinance #savinghacks #makemoney #savemoney #money #studentmoney #studenthacks #studentlife #shoestringbudget #moneyhacks #moneysavinghacks #financialeducation #financialfreedom #adulting #savingtricks #earnmoney #lifeadvice #counsel #careeradvice #retirement #investing #peoplemanagement #skillbuilding #career #selfimprovement #inspiring #work
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