Day 54 (Fifty-four) of 356 days
Careful consideration of circumstances and consequences. A person with tact is understanding, sensitive and empathetic to others. They think before they speak and act and often keep critical and upsetting thoughts to themselves. Helping ourselves develop this virtue will help us immensely throughout our lives.
Tact is a skill centred around an understanding of other people and being sensitive to their opinions, beliefs, ideas and feelings. Effective use of this skill comes from being able to sense accurately what another person is feeling or thinking at any given time and then responding in such a way as to avoid bad feelings or awkwardness, whilst at the same time asserting or reflecting your ideas and feelings in a delicate and well meaningful fashion.
Have you ever wondered why some of your friends or relations are naturally able to sense what is really going on in the minds of others, and then respond with a certain delicacy of feeling that influences many people extremely well? This is because they have a greater awareness of their natural preference which has helped them to gain more understanding of the behaviours they need to use to influence effectively.
With some, high tact may work best. Others may require a far more direct approach. Your success depends on deploying the most effective behaviours in any situation. To become tactful, however, you need to follow these occasionally unfollowed rules of behaviour
- Listen more than talk
- Before saying a word, ask yourself, "How would this make the person feel?"
- When you have to criticize, couch it in face-saving terms
- Avoid unnecessary conflict
- When you want something, don't necessarily ask for it. Instead, consider asking the person whether he or she thinks it's worthy.
Tactfulness is a skill we all need to possess to show discretion in what we say as well as how and when we say it, to avoid offending others needlessly.
