Don’t you dread it when the voice at the other end of the phone says “Hello, So-and-so, How are you today?” The egregious sales pitch that follows is enough to bring up your breakfast. Peter Ustinov had a point. When a Manhattan hotel receptionist said “Have a good day” he politely replied “Thank you, but I have other arrangements!”

Sales training is important and I am the first to acknowledge that there are legitimate techniques for closing a sale. But the most important sales tools we have are our ears and our eyes. Someone came to me for an interview recently. Nice chap, decent, experienced but totally lacking emotional intelligence. He talked from start to finish. He was still talking as I gently pushed him into the lift and waved him goodbye. He didn’t look at me. He didn’t observe the surroundings. He didn’t ask a single question. Buy, boy, did he talk. I should think he’ll be in the ‘talking Olympics’.

Sad that the notes I had to write after his departure read like a primary school report. ‘Could do so much better.’

His inability to ask, to listen and to enthuse lost him the offer of a very good job. Even a smile would have been some compensation for his poor interactive ability but this fellow had taken gravitas to its logical conclusion – grimness.

He’s not alone in the sea of cold fishes.

When we train people to deal with others, whether they are sales people, IT technicians or doctors we must teach them first to observe. Doctors know this. “Eyes first, ears second, hands last and least, mouth not at all.” That was the dictum on which they were brought up – for diagnosis, but not often for dealing with the consequences of it.

Every interaction we have with another is about them, not about us. You may think that if both sides approach it from this point of view there won’t be much communication – each will be waiting for the other to speak. In practice there will be excellent communication.

An out of work friend came to me for advice. He’s had a bad run, not all his fault. He’s failed in a couple of jobs and he’s failing again in the present one. He asked me what I would advise him to do. I have observed this very nice man for a while now. He is depressed (but not clinically), he is dejected, he is a little sorry for himself, he is sensitive to other people’s criticism, even when they don’t mean to be critical.

Now I’m normally a kindly, sympathetic fellow. Life has been good to me; I try to be good to those it hasn’t treated so generously. But I gave him hell – well, not quite ‘hell’ but heading in that direction. Why?

The world bullies the defeated, applauds the successful. But it applauds most those who try, even when they don’t succeed. In fact, the world reserves the best of its pleasures for the enthusiastic. Not for the unrealistically effusive but for the communicators who demonstrate that they have observed the other person, have worked out the position they are in and who react to that analysis with gusto.

Genuine, sustainable enthusiasm is infectious. All those who bask in its sunshine become lively, interesting, engaged. And that’s where we came in. Every greeting must be relevant, genuine (not rote) and about the other person.

Dr Ee Peng Liang had it to a fine art. “How can I help you?” he greeted almost everyone. The difference was, he meant it.

Can you mean your greeting, too?

We hear a lot about people having emotional intelligence (EQ) but seldom consider the consequences of emotional stupidity.

A family I knew, with a reasonable – but not vast – fortune lost all their money through emotional stupidity. Now they live on the low end of life, licking their wounds, divided, hurt and irreconcilable. Why?

Because the most senior, responsible member of the family, who was already head the business, tried to micro-manage his siblings and parents, tried to run every detail of the business, trusted nobody so that nobody trusted him and ended up in one of the most expensive law suits ever heard. The small fortune went to the lawyers. The family was left with nothing.

As an example of emotional stupidity it doesn’t get much worse than this. Sadly, it happens all too often. There are four main causes of emotional stupidity: pride (sometimes expressed as ‘bloody-mindedness’), greed, self-destructiveness, ‘short-termism’.

People in charge have to be confident. You cannot lead a business if you are indecisive, uncertain, lacking in conviction. You must be strong to be a good leader. Unfortunately, many of those in positions of responsibility are not strong. So they use what they think are authority-asserting tactics – harsh treatment, bullying, rudeness.

If only they knew! Such behaviour merely tells their subordinates that they are weak – but trying to look strong. It produces all the wrong responses – low morale, sullenness, unwillingness to go the extra mile, a desire for revenge, sometimes theft, occasionally physical attack.

Success becomes greed when it turns into EXcess. And excess is disproportion, getting things out of reasonable relationship to each other. It is essential to be ambitious, to fight the commercial battle with vigor and thrust. We live in a capitalist world and it has done many people well, increasing their choice, their health and their comfort and lengthening their lives. But we have to temper the corporate battle with common sense about rewards or we get super-rich and super-poor, even within a single business.

Nobody has yet defined an acceptable gap between the economic top and bottom of our society. We are all very conscious that it is a great deal smaller than exists at present in the world.

What of self-destructiveness? Surely we are not out to destroy ourselves? You would be surprised at how many people are inherently self-destructive, sometimes even self-harming. It is nearly always an attention-getting tactic by those who feel neglected, sidelined or ignored. It is emotionally stupid but its causes have to be discovered and dealt with; just criticizing it won’t solve the problem.

‘Short-termism’ is the seeking of instant gratification irrespective of longer-term damage. We are currently watching the consequences of this form of emotional stupidity in international banking and climate change.

How do we root out emotional stupidity and empower ourselves to be rational and intelligent? The answer is “we do it ourselves”. Others may help, guide, encourage but the will and effort is always ours. Neil Armstrong said that the hardest part of his journey to the Moon and back was getting out of bed on the day of the flight. I believe him. That first step is the really hard one. The others follow more easily.

And how is the first step determined? By asking and answering a simple question: What do I want out of the current situation? A calm appraisal of the facts, a rational assessment of the desired outcome, a cool approach to the best way to achieve it, all this plus politeness and good humour will yield great results.

Plus lower blood pressure. A bonus for everyone.