BE HONEST AND DEPENDABLE Finding Common Ground.(LEADERS & SUCCESS)(IBD'S 10 SECRETS TO SUCCESS)

Byline: Robin Grugal

10 Ever had a great idea get shot down? Don't blame others. Do yourself a favor and take responsibility for how others receive your ideas.

Learn how to gain people's support without resorting to hard sell, manipulation or power plays.

Consider the context. Felix Grant, one of the great jazz disc jockeys, had the right idea. A decade into his 45-year radio career, he proposed doing a nightly jazz show. But he did so carefully, knowing that station management and advertisers would see a jazz program as too big a financial risk.

It was the late 1950s, and long-playing records were gaining in popularity. So he called his show "The Album Sound." Grant once said, "I dealt with them in the beginning by never using the word jazz. I would play Sinatra, who nobody else was playing. . . . And the nonjazz fan, for the most part, wouldn't really know it was jazz. And it worked out very well. They sold a lot of spots, and the station was happy."

Grant hosted "The Album Sound" nearly 30 years, notes Rick Maurer in "Why Don't You Want What I Want?"

Find ways to connect. In April 1998, Attorney General Janet Reno, a strong proponent of gun control, spoke to a group of gun dealers. She began by saying, "I don't care which side of the gun issue you're on; we all can agree that unsupervised use of guns by children must be stopped."