One day last week I got home late from work looking forward to a drink and quiet dinner in front of the TV – my wife was on a video call using a conferencing service Zoom – when the internet suddenly stopped working and her call crashed. Our neighbour had some rather over enthusiastic workmen clearing their front garden and digging a trench who had accidently cut our Virgin Media cable.
 
So I had to suspend my dinner plans to argue with the workmen and call out an engineer. The cable was fixed the next day, but for a short time we did not have all singing all dancing internet access. We got round the problem to an extent by tethering laptops to mobile phones and watching traditional television. However, we had no Netflix or Amazon Prime programmes on our TV and Hive which controls our central heating could not be adjusted because it links to our router which had stopped working.
 
This experience reminded me how dependent we have become on internet related technology in our work and private life and how we miss it when it isn’t there for some reason. This article even suggests we may have become over dependent on technology Maybe you felt a sense of anxiety when you couldn’t find your phone, or maybe you realized you don’t know how to navigate to your friend’s house without the help of your phone-based GPS app.
 
Think of those days or hours or even minutes when your firm’s IT systems break down and you cannot access any on line material or IM or email colleagues? Have Millennials already forgotten how to fall back from their iPads to pen and paper as a communication tool? Will the iGen remember they can actually go and talk to somebody? 
 
This blog How Dangerous is Technology? cites  Albert Einstein who said “I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.” I sometimes wonder if we have already reached that time.
 
Here is an interesting BBC Article What if the Internet Stopped Working for a Day? which  quotes William Dutton at Michigan State University, who is the author with Mark Graham of the book Society and the Internet “One of the biggest problems with the internet today is that people take it for granted – yet they don’t understand the degree to which we’ve allowed it to infiltrate almost every aspect of our lives. They don’t even think about not having access to it.”
 
This is not a new challenge - Edgar Degas the French artist from the impressionist era said “So that's the telephone? They ring, and you run.”– however it is becoming all pervasive. Perhaps we should take breaks from our smartphones if we can and actually talk to people. And maybe just maybe in our work environment we should run disaster recovery like exercises to simulate what might happen if there was no internet.
 
Technology is of course wonderful and enhances our lives. We cannot as in Samuel Butler’s novel Erewohn try and prevent the advance of machines Another feature of Erewhon is the absence of machines; this is due to the widely shared perception by the Erewhonians that they are potentially dangerous.
 
However, I do think we are in danger of taking the internet and all that comes with it too much for granted and assuming it will always be there and indeed always be a force for good. As C-3PO in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back advises:   R2-D2, you know better than to trust a strange computer.

One of the most underrated and under taught skills in professional life, that is I suggest nevertheless vital for success, is preparing for and seeking to understand the people you will meet or deal with. This means anticipating who you will be seeing and how they are likely to react and behave. Thinking in advance not just about what you may want or need but what the person you are meeting is feeling, thinking or needs.
 
It sounds incredibly simple and obvious, but tendency to assume that everybody else thinks like we do, coupled with the pressure of other activities in day to day working life, often means that lip service is paid to this critical task. It is easy just to assume that say the other side in a deal will have an immediate understanding and empathy with our point of view. The truth is often the polar opposite. They are only looking at things from their perspective. 
 
I came across this apt quote in Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People by the then Dean Donham of Harvard Business School:
 
I would rather walk the sidewalk in front of a person’s office for two hours before an interview than step into that office without a perfectly clear idea of what I was going to say and what that person – from my knowledge of his or her motives – was likely to answer. 
 
If somebody genuinely has a point of view no matter how stupid or wrong you may consider it, you just cannot discount it because it will affect their behaviour and how they react to what you want. If a person believes the earth is flat, you do not have to agree with them but understanding this may help deal with them. TS Eliot said There is no absolute point of view from which real and ideal can be finally separated and labelled.
 
The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius suggested that Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.
 
Here is an interesting Forbes article Why Understanding Other Perspectives Is A Key Leadership Skill which concludes:
 
We live in a professional world that goes fast and where people do not always take the time to step back. When going fast, leaders often confuse their perspectives with reality and have difficulty truly understanding the point of view of others.
 
A perspective is not right or wrong by default. It just is what it is: the point of view of a single person based on their life experiences and values, among other things. We each have one; sometimes we share it with others, and sometimes we do not.
 
Stephen Covey the author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People suggests When you really listen to another person from their point of view, and reflect back to them that understanding, it's like giving them emotional oxygen.
 
Henry Ford summed this all up well when he said If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own. 

Why do we all take selfies of just ourselves so much these days? I get the idea of a picture with somebody or against some spectacular background scenery, but just on our own? It seems to be some kind of affirmation of self, almost a reinforcement of our existence. Maybe it is just about supporting our own self confidence.
 
Some people seem to be born with an easy and self-confident manner. They breeze into meetings and networking events and seem to be at ease with themselves and whatever is taking place, a confidence that is infectious and rubs off on others.
 
For most of us we really have to work more at this and to overcome hesitation or some measure of self-doubt. As Sheryl Sandberg said her book Lean In talking particularly about women but recognising quite rightly that to applies to men as well “Like so many things a lack of confidence can become a self-fulfilling prophecy”. In other words, because you are not confident you will perform well then you don’t even though you are perfectly able to do so. She goes on to say “This phenomenon of capable people being plagued by doubt has a name – the imposter syndrome.”
 
The same is true in sport – see this blog Developing confidence in sport which says In every interview I ask the same question to each person “ What do you think is the most important psychological factor needed to excel in sport?”
 
The response: Self Confidence, Self Belief. 
 
The football manager Arsene Wenger summed this up If you do not believe you can do it then you have no chance at all.
 
In business and in sport there are actually some simple actions we can take that build confidence. Sheryl Sandberg suggests faking a smile or adopting a “power pose” like extending your limbs. I find just getting up from the table and walking around the room can help. Here is an interesting Harvard Business Review article on overcoming barriers to confidence which suggests that Confidence is an expectation of a positive outcome.
 
And also, it can be an advantage not to take confidence to its extreme. As the British swimmer Adam Peaty commented There is a very thin line between confidence and arrogance. I think professional people appreciate dealing with colleagues who are confident but at the same time capable of being sympathetic and understanding.
 
Ultimately as Sir Edmund Hillary said It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.

It seems to be a law of nature that if you are at a networking or social gathering and comment on (perhaps not very favourably) or even criticise another professional or firm, imagining they are safely miles away, you suddenly find they are standing at your shoulder. I confess it has happened to me.
 
In order to avoid this, it’s probably a good idea to have a rule not to do this under any circumstances and to respect professional courtesy and not make adverse comments about fellow professionals, however justified or deserved you think they might be.
 
Professional courtesy according to Wikipedia generally refers to a philosophy of particular professional behaviour or etiquette which is extended between members of the same profession. It is essentially about treating others the way you would like to be treated.
 
Here is an American Bar Association discussion on How Do You Define Professional Courtesy which has some interesting comments on the subject including  Laying aside the moral imperative for the moment, it just makes good business sense and it doesn't matter which jurisdiction the lawyer is in as we are all in the same profession. It's the same attitude as should exist when we fight tooth and nail in a courtroom but engage in friendly conversation once we've stepped outside the courtroom.
 
This this certainly been my experience working on global contracts with lawyers around the world, and sometimes in very difficult circumstances where your clients are at loggerheads with each other. The ability to create and preserve a channel of communication between the legal and commercial specialists working on a deal can often be vital to preserve the relationship and to break serious deadlocks.
 
It means that you can, for example, have a private side conversation on a difficult topic away from the main negotiating room, where perhaps both sides are guilty of “show boating” their views rather than understanding the issues and seeking a solution.
 
Here is another example from a different profession, medicine, in the form of an article from the BMA Five top tips for professional courtesy which quotes a doctor speaking at a conference on this topic who said that said that civil relations among colleagues was vital to staff health and disrespectful and aggressive behaviour among doctors often had a significant impact on work environments, ranging from stress and distress to burnout, illness and then subsequent absenteeism, with wider impacts including declining workplace morale and increased staff turnover.
 
Behaving in a courteous manner in business relations also extends beyond the professions. Dale Carnegie’s Principle 1 in How to Win Friends and Influence People is Don’t criticise, condemn or complain. He counsels When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity. Don’t criticize.
 
I suggest this voice originally from the 1930’s is just as relevant, if not more, in these days of constant and instant communication where there is even more opportunity to be discourteous or even downright rude – perhaps not even intending to be. The abrupt email, text or IM sent in a hurry just seems often to come out that way in the eye of the receiver.
 
As Ralph Waldo Emerson the American 19th century American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, and poet said Life is short, but there is always time enough for courtesy.