What are the four essential truths of human interaction?

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I just finished a great book by George J. Thompson, PH.D., titled Verbal Judo - The Gentle Art of Persuasion.  Dr. Thompson was a professor of English Literature, but also a police officer and a black belt in Judo.  Although he passed away a few years ago, the messages he shares in this book are invaluable for anyone who has to deal with people.  In particular, his Five Universal Truths of Human Interaction really resonated with me.  They are as follows:

1. All people want to be treated with dignity and respect.
2. All people want to be asked rather than told to do something.
3. All people want to be informed as to why they are being asked or ordered to do something.
4. All people want to be given options rather than threats.
5. All people want a second chance when they make a mistake

WOW!  I think he nailed it.  Pretty simple, huh?

He also shared a belief with ancient Greeks: "that action follows philosophy and that what we believe will dictate our actions in life".

Although Dr. Thompson passed away a few years ago, the learnings  he shares with us in this book and in the training he did with police officers and others will remain with us forever. 

My goal moving forward is to put these universal truths into practice.  I bet if we all kept these in mind when interacting with family, friends, business associates, strangers, the world would be a better place.  

As technology races ahead, driving cars and performing surgeries, you might wonder: What roles in organizations will be left for humans to handle?

Actually, a lot, according to Geoffrey Colvin, Fortune's senior editor-at-large. Colvin's new book, "Humans Are Underrated," probes the subject of disappearing jobs from a human-affirming angle. Rather than ceding to humans the ever-decreasing number of tasks computers are incapable of, Colvin asks, "What are the activities that we humans, driven by our deepest nature or by the realities of daily life, will simply insist be performed by other humans, even if computers could do them?"

One convincing answer is the desire to work in teams. In developing this line of thinking, one of Colvin's key sources was John Chambers, former CEO of Cisco, who was keenly aware of how even the best video technology does not catch the subtleties of in-the-flesh human interaction. "It was extraordinary the lengths he went to make [video-conferencing technology] as realistic as possible," Colvin tells Inc. 

What Colvin learned from Chambers was consistent with what he was learning elsewhere as he researched "Humans Are Underrated." It was, in short, the idea that humans covet interactions with other humans. "We want to hear our diagnosis from a doctor, even if a computer supplied it, because we want to talk to the doctor about it--perhaps just to talk and know we're being heard by a human being," he writes. "To look into someone's eyes--that turns out to be, metaphorically and quite often literally, the key to high-value work in the coming economy."

And that's why the desire to work in teams is a safe bet to survive any machine age. Which means, more than ever, a crucial concept for leaders is understanding what separates great teams from adequate ones. Colvin's book explores the traits researchers have consistently found on high-performing teams. Here are four of his insights: 

You can't just throw everyone in a room and expect the politics to end and the trust to begin. You need to give teams time to work together and get to know each other. One prominent example is Steve Jobs' six-executive inner circle at Apple, which stayed together 13 years--meeting several hours each week--before Jobs stepped down as CEO in August, 2011.

"One of the main advantages is simply speed of action," says Colvin. "They know each other so well, through the long history of things they've talked about, things they thought were smart or dumb. As a result, they can cut through a whole lot of laying groundwork that others have to do." 

As an example, Colvin cites the story of how Jobs did not like a late iPhone prototype. He couldn't quite articulate what he disliked; all he kept expressing was the general feeling that "something here is just not right." Jobs' top team was able to change the phone to his liking, "in an amazingly brief amount of time," says Colvin, because "they all knew exactly what he was talking about and made it happen in no time." They were able, in other words, to handle what Malcolm Gladwell describes as Jobs' "I'll know it when I see it" method of tweaking ideas and prototypes. 

You might think certain individual talents will always manifest themselves in collective settings. In fact, it's not true. Colvin cites Harvard's J. Richard Hackman's research, which points out that 73 percent of airline mishaps occur on a crew's first day of flying together. Even capable pilots need to learn how to work as teammates. 

Likewise, Dr. John Noseworthy, CEO of the Mayo Clinic, told Colvin he takes pains to keep surgical teams together. One reason? Academic research shows surgeons have far fewer mishaps when operating on patients at their home-base hospital, as opposed at outside hospitals, with different teammates. 

Colvin points out that this finding is not the same as bromidic calls for diversity. If anything, it's the opposite: Research on team intelligence shows that the more women are part of a group, the smarter the group will be. Period. Replacing a woman with a man made groups collectively dumber. 

The reason? Women bring social sensitivity to groups. Those sensitivities improve team performance in two ways: First, members of the group are more likely to share ideas. There's a collective understanding that everyone deserves a chance to speak. Second, women have a stronger ability to gauge the collective (and often unvocalized) feelings of the room, and make judgments based on those feelings. 

In short, groups with more women tend to generate more ideas and make better judgments--both of which add to a team's collective intelligence. 

The succinct explanation for the female advantage is empathy--the ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes. In addition to staffing key teams with more women, you can conduct exercises with your colleagues to help them develop social sensitivities. 

For example, Colvin points out that dozens of medical schools now insist on their students reading fiction, for its power to cultivate empathy. In addition, more and more leaders are advocates of programs like Toastmasters; the idea is that public speaking can help cultivate skills of social interaction--skills you might neglect if you spend eight hours a day staring at a screen, rather than speaking with others (or learning what it takes to speak skillfully to others).

To that end, you might consider encouraging your colleagues to take a short-term cleanse from technology, or even just a dinnertime break from it. Study upon study cited by Colvin shows that forsaking your screens for more in-person interactions can make you more emotionally insightful than you were before. 

And the more emotionally insightful individuals you have on your teams, the better your teams will perform.