I like him, because....

It is a perfectly normal human reaction. It is as natural as water or happiness or sadness. The only thing that is not normal is that we tend to have extreme opinions about someone or many people, which is very bad.

For instance, I have seen several highly qualified and experienced professionals sit in interviews for selection of candidates, selecting a particular candidate, simply because he or she exhibitied something that seemed to one of them, as "he is more like me".

This is commonly called the halo effect. This can cause real problems if it is taken to the extreme, as it often happens. This is all the more so, when the boss himself has several weaknesses that cannot be hidden under the carpet, or the boss is so happy building an empire of his yes men or women. This becomes a very dangerous game, which does not yield any result to anyone at any stage.

We should try to be very much balanced to evaluate people only based on their inherent qualities and not because he or she is more like us. We will be doing a great service to society if we have his balance.

How does one go about doing this? Simple. Study a person very carefully before making any judgement -- good or bad. Only when there is not even a very slight doubt in our minds that the person is a good person, and is value-driven, can we try to evaluate him or her. If we need to get personal to them for whatever reason, it is wise to be very measured in understanding them totally and then evaluating the limits to which we can open out. For, openness is a very delicate issue and we cannot just like deal with it. It requires a great deal of patience to strike a personal relationship with another person. Only if we see something so good about a person, we can do something. If we try to accept people at the face value, and try to discover why he or she is "more like me", we will land ourselves in deep trouble.

Developing good inter-personal relations is an art. It does take quite a bit of effort on our part to convince others that we are trustworthy and good human beings. Once this happens, others tend to react with us either personally or formally or somewhere in between and all that. It is at this stage that we need to be very careful. For some reason like our own feeling of security, we tend to get very close to someone, but we need to be very patient, and closely observe the other person. If we are convinced that getting personal will work well, there is nothing wrong with it. But this decision has to be supported by value-based behaviour on either side.

Value-based behaviour,is easier said than done. In a dog-eat-dog world, relationships are becoming very very commercial. Hundreds of people like to form relationships trying to find out what they can get from us, and then quickly forget us. Halo effect has a major role to play here. We need to strike a personal relationship,only after a great deal of understanding of the other person.

Those who live in apartments have a horrible time in striking such relationships,as life has become so mechanical, so busy for anyone. At best, there is an exchange of "hello" somewhere in the lift, or in the evenings. If there has to be a meaningful and trustful relationship, we would have to be very careful and ensure that we are are not considered a nuisance by others. This itself is a very big challenge, and does take time.

Whatever we do, and whatever we are, we should understand that halo effect has an important role to play in building inter-personal relationships. The more we understand the meaning of it through real-life experiences, the better.

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