one thing that outstanding leaders do that the rest of the leaders don’t tend to do as often or they don’t do ever. My name is Dan and I help people move into leadership positions and advance through leadership positions. If you need help personally doing that where you are, move into another company. Hit the link in my bio, find a spot on my calendar, let’s talk. I probably have a program that can help you get there. Really good leaders know how to take other people’s perspective and it’s not easy to do. So let’s look at this quick example. This poor guy has been stranded on this island. He’s all excited to see a boat. But then the poor guy on the boat’s all excited to finally see land. Totally different perspectives, same scenario. Here’s you, here’s somebody else. They have their thoughts and you have your thoughts and your objective is to figure out what is in their mind. I’m not talking about being a mind reader. I’m talking about trying to take the other person’s perspective. What are they thinking right now? What are they likely feeling right now? Why might they be thinking those things? What are those intentions? What’s their background that drove them to think and act this way? And that kind of thinking requires you to use many parts of your brain that are different than taking your own perspective, which comes automatically to you. We don’t naturally think about what is the other person’s perspective about a scenario. Here are three ways to get better at that. One, while you’re watching a movie, pause it from time to time and ask yourself, hmm, I wonder why each character is thinking what they’re thinking or I wonder what that person’s feeling as they’re acting and saying the things that I’m seeing, given what you know about the character in the movie. Another is to role play. Let’s say you have people around you and you take a look at them and you ask yourself, okay, what is likely their perspective given what I see going on right now? A third way to do this is take a current conflict that you’re in and think about the other person and yourself. Start with yourself and ask yourself, what is on your mind? What is bothering you about this interaction? What do you want to do as a result of this interaction? Then imagine yourself being them. Where are they coming from? What are they likely thinking? What is their intent? What are they likely feeling right now? And then go back and do yourself again, having done this, and ask, has anything changed? Would you do the same things? Are you feeling the same things given that you’ve just tried really hard to take their perspective? A technical term for this kind of thing could be theory of the mind or metacognition, thinking about thinking. What we’re trying to do is figure out where are other people coming from. For a lot of people, they’re not good at this. If you want to be good at sales, you have to be good at this. And if you want to be good at leadership, you have to be good at this. So you have to practice. If you can do that, your social bonds will be stronger. People who are good at this have a wider social network, have more productive and pleasant relationships, and are just happier and calmer themselves. They’re less likely to prejudge. They’re less likely to judge other people at all because they’re good at taking multiple perspectives. I’m Dan. I’ll see you in the next video.