This research from Adam Grant, Francesca Gino, and David Hofmann suggests that introverts can make better bosses—and that extroverted leaders, who sometimes speak first and think later, can actually lose the respect of their team, leading to poorer results. However, any leaders who listen carefully and are receptive to smart and useful suggestions from their team, whether they’re introverted or extroverted, can build the trust required to earn cooperation.

Anyone who sells—whether they’re trying to convince customers to make a purchase or colleagues to make a change—must contend with wave after wave of rebuffs, refusals, and repudiations.

How to stay afloat amid that ocean of rejection is the second essential quality in moving others. I call this quality “buoyancy.” Hall exemplifies it. Recent social science explains it. And if you understand buoyancy’s three components—which apply before, during, and after any effort to move others—you can use it effectively in your own life.

Listening without some degree of intimacy isn’t really listening. It’s passive and transactional rather than active and engaged.

But emotionally intelligent signage goes deeper. It achieves those same ends by enlisting the principles of “make it personal” and “make it purposeful.” It tries to move others by expressing empathy with the person viewing the sign (that’s the personal part)...

If you don’t have confidence in the diagnosis, you won’t have confidence in the prescription. This principle is also true in sales. An effective sales person first seeks to understand the needs, the concerns, the situation of the customer. The amateur salesman sells products; the professional sells solutions to needs and problems. It’s a totally different approach. The professional learns how to diagnose, how to understand. He also learns how to relate people’s needs to his products and services. And, he has to have the integrity to say, “My product or service will not meet that need” if it will not.