8. Learn to be strategically vulnerable

I'm sure you can envision this: Their voice trends upward during the course of a sentence? So that even though they're making a statement, it sounds like a question? And it's been stereotypically associated with younger people, and perhaps with women?

While I think this habit requires care and calibration, it comes from a place of high emotional intelligence. There's an astute recognition that someone has less power in a conversation (a junior employee, for example). So, he or she has to guide others through their points, chalking off small points of agreements and understandings along the way.

In a difficult conversation, for example, perhaps you can learn to structure what you're saying so that the emotional undercurrent becomes, "we all face this common problem sometimes, let's solve it ," as opposed to, "you did something wrong and you need to fix it ."

• "I wonder if you might have forgotten about our meeting Monday? I've done this a few times myself; I know it's tough to start the week that way."
• "You promised you'd be there Monday, and you skipped it. What gives?"