Human interactions are complicated. We each have different temperaments, opinions, limitations, beliefs, worldviews, and childhood conditioning.

If you consider it, it’s amazing two or more people can communicate at all.

And the truth is we rarely do communicate well at work or home.

We can mitigate most workplace conflicts by applying a little more spirit and a little less ego.

Humans are hard-wired to be self-serving, but successful communication requires graciousness.

How to Be Gracious

The fastest way to achieve graciousness is to remember that the person you’re communicating with has inner tensions just like you.

They experience negative emotions like fear, anger, and guilt just like you. They have uncertainty about the future just like you.

Plato is often quoted saying, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a difficult battle.” He didn’t say it, but it’s still a good dictum.

Life is often challenging. Most of us have inner and outer turmoil. Or, as bestselling novelist Andy Andrews says, we’re either in a crisis, coming out of a crisis, or heading for a crisis.

We can call it the human dilemma.

So if you want to be a person of influence and an effective communicator, you need to focus on others instead of yourself.

Is it easy? Not usually, but you can train yourself to be more gracious. Then your relationships transform.

Principles of Effective Communication

Dale Carnegie’s classic How to Win Friends and Influence People provides many principles to help you communicate by focusing on others instead of yourself.

Here are six principles of effective communication inspired by Carnegie:

Begin in a friendly way.

Whenever possible, start your conversations with praise and honest communication. Smile. A genuine smile helps people relax. (It will elevate your mood too.)

Be inviting and open instead of serious and demanding. To accomplish this, we must first be friendly toward ourselves.

I’m not talking about feeling pride in our achievements. Instead, to be kind toward yourself means accepting yourself as you are (including your “lesser” qualities).

Give honest and sincere appreciation.

How often do you offer genuine appreciation to your colleagues versus the times you criticize and condemn them (even if you don’t say it out loud)?

It takes training to show appreciation. Research reveals that our brains have a bias towards negativity. It reacts more strongly to negative stimuli than it does to positive stimuli. We tend to look at what’s wrong with people, ideas, and situations.

Appreciation requires that we cultivate gratitude instead of criticism.

Keep a gratitude journal for the next month. It can make a measurable increase in your overall level of happiness. And it will also help you to focus on what you can appreciate about others.

Become genuinely interested in others.

Interest starts with curiosity. If we’re all self-interested, how can you be curious about others? Realize that everyone you meet is a reflection of yourself. We are mirrors for each other.

Learn to ask thoughtful questions that will show you interest in others. Conversations often stay on the surface. How’s it going? What do you do?

Instead, go deeper. For example, ask people what’s most important to them? This question underlines a person’s core values.

Ask them what they to create in the future. Discussing a person’s vision shows you’re interested in them.

Make the other person feel important—and do it sincerely.

Operate by this principle: you gain more influence by raising people up rather climbing over their backs. World class CEOs are masters at this.

Jim Collins’ research on what he calls Level 5 Leaders reveals that humility is one of the two defining qualities of outperforming leaders (personal will is the other).

Because these leaders have humility, they don’t need to elevate themselves. Instead, they invest in their people and guide them to become the best versions of themselves.

Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement.

Acknowledging improvement at the moment is also one of the principles of effective feedback.

Masterful coaches in athletics, music, and every other field are skilled at building on small improvements.

By bringing these improvements to a person’s awareness, you elevate them and help them build positive momentum.

It’s easy to see what’s wrong—everybody can do that. We all have a well-developed Devil’s Advocate and inner critic.

A skilled communicator, however, seeks out the bright spots in a person’s behaviors and abilities. They aren’t blindly optimistic, but they understand positive change comes from highlighting the positive.

Talk about the other person’s interests.

This principle is related to the one above. If you want to communicate effectively, talk about what’s in it for the recipient.

Remember, everyone is self-interested. Your job isn’t to change this, but to use it to your advantage in gaining influence in a benign, supportive way.

Effective Communication is a Skill

None of these principles are mind blowing or radically new.

But they are rarely practiced consistently. It takes skill to live by these principles of effective communication.

The more attention you give this area of development, the more your communication will flourish.

Originally published on scottjeffrey.com.