Taking the point of view of others, and learning to view a situation from a "perspective-less perspective." It's easy to think you have people skills because y

Taking the point of view of others, and learning to view a situation from a "perspective-less perspective." It's easy to think you have people skills because you listen to others and repeat their point of view back to them before telling them they're wrong. And unfortunately you can get quite far in the business world simply by being good at demolishing other people's positions. As a mental exercise, a few years ago in meetings I started deleting the names from the running transcript I keep in my head. "Joe said X and Jane said Y and then I said Z" was replaced with "we said X, then Y, then Z." It was a remarkably effective device to rise above the "who's going to win?" attitude and instead think about the best way for everyone to proceed as a group. I suddenly started to get what people say about meditation and removing the "I" perspective from your life. If instead of being you, you're a quadcopter hovering near the person you call yourself, it's so much easier to get your ego to shut up and start listening for once.