The beauty of human existence is reflected in our personality and physical differences. Imagine a world where everybody looks, acts, and speaks the same way, a world where our strengths and weaknesses are the same, where all are singers and all are scientists, all are educated and all are rich, all are conservative and none is liberal. Imagine a world with one race, one color, one language and one culture, the idea of it notwithstanding the fact that it is illusory is boring. Diversity is a unique feature of the human society; the world is populated with people of different personalities, colors, ages, orientation, nationalities, languages; customs, cultural values as well as religious inclinations. These and many more other differentiating factors account for our varying behaviors and approaches to life issues. However, in spite of our differences, nature has so made it that we cannot independently exist and subsist in isolation. By virtue of certain circumstances, there exist naturally, relationships among human beings. Also as a matter of social and economic necessity, people despite their differences must relate.The effectiveness and fulfillment of an individual {or a body corporate} lies in how successfully he is able to harness his relationships to make positive impact and gains. How well he is able to break the barriers of human differences to explore the world in conjunction with other people, how well he is able to manage the people he relates with everyday and how manageable he is from the perspective of other people relating with him. It is pertinent to note at this point that the whole essence of a good relationship is being able to get the best out of whatever or whoever we choose to relate with. Generally, good interpersonal relationships help to get the best out of the people in one’s world. Despite the inherent and socio-economic necessity for relationships, there are bound to be frictions in human interactions due to the differences earlier enunciated, hence an individual aiming towards success especially one who finds himself in the diversified US society needs to work hard on improving their human relation skills. By human relation skills within the context of this article I mean personal attributes manifested in human interactions that could warm the heart of people in your world towards you and facilitate their cooperation and support for the courses championed by you. Good human relation skills help to break the barriers of human differences and provide the right settings for effectual relationships. I have always noted on this column, that your performance as a player in the field of life is assessed and rewarded by people and what you get from them depends entirely on what opinion they have of you and not necessarily your personal aptitude. Poor human relations as a matter of fact hamper greatly the optimum utilization of one’s potentials. If you fail to exhibit certain virtues in your relationships with people, your inability will draw their attention away from your skills and potentials. If you are a lousy but highly talented painter for instance, lousiness will draw people’s attention away from your good painting, the only thing they will probably notice in your painting is anything reflective of your lousy nature even though it may be absolutely imaginary. Ignoring stereotypes is a way of breaking barriers of human differences to harness the potentials and expertise of others to achieve corporate or individual goals. In one of my previous articles on getting the best out of your world, I observed that stereotype is the bane of human relations in the diversified American society; we miss a lot of things because we jump to unfounded conclusions about people based on stereotype, things will work better in your relationships if you approach each individual and deal with them as a person and not part of a whole bunch, try this and you will be surprised at how much we err through presumptions. Everybody here seems to be defensive because there are ignorant presumptions of attitude and behavior and the only thing we try to do when we relate with each other is to verify as early as possible how true the stereotype is, in the course of doing this we ask questions, and we make comments that will turn the other person off and put him or her on the defensive. We all regard such comments as being bigotry and offensive, we all have names that we call such people even though we make the same mistake. Although, people by their behaviors and general dispositions sometimes confirm the stereotypes of their race, color, nationality or religion, nonetheless, good human relations demand that we relate with them with understanding, we must appreciate the fact that we are different but must also accept the fact that we must relate, because we people one another’s world. Approach every relationship with open mindedness and allow the other person to make an impression without it being colored by your stereotypical ideas. People appreciate individuals who see beyond color, race and nationality in their interaction with others.Another effective means of breaking barriers of human differences is being modest and courteous, these virtues do not take a penny away from you but they are licenses to harnessing the benefits of human relationships.  I have taken time out to study people who are arrogant and it is appalling how ineffective they are despite their usually huge but overblown potentials. Nobody watches the back of a haughty individual; nobody tries to warn them if there is danger ahead, people stand back and observe the fall of anybody who thinks too highly of himself, they do not have true friends, because they always want to keep their friends a stair case lower than them. They are generally lacking in good human relations skill, because they do not ever want to recognize there is something to respect in every individual no matter their social status. Good human relations require that no matter how high and mighty you are, you must always regard yourself as ordinary and deal with others as if though they seem ordinary they are as high and mighty as you think you are. The fact is that, if you can just stoop from your high standing, you will see that the people you look down on all have something to offer to keep you on your feet. Do not be afraid to admit that others around you are as good as you are, the truth is some of them might even be better, drop your peacock attitude and stop pissing everybody off. To conclude this piece, I must emphasize the need to be attentive in our relationships with one another, good human relations demands that you listen to others, do not allow your communication with people to be one-sided always, learn to listen, allow others to air their opinion, you will be giving people around you a sense of love and respect if you allow them to talk sometimes while you listen.  We sometimes listen without paying attention, we thereby miss salient messages they are passing across non-verbally. Listening to others is the only way we can prove that we truly respect and care about them, it is the only way we can connect with them and foster a beneficial relationship with them, good human relations demand that you seek and deduce explanation for people’s behavior at a particular time from their prevailing circumstances and show understanding and tolerance towards them. This you can achieve only by being attentive, do not just listen with your ears, listen with your eyes too, it works better than the ears sometimes.Even if you do not know many people in this new environment, put on the right attitude in your relationships with the few people you have cause to interact with everyday. The success of your performances, output, efforts, services and products is indexed by people’s acceptance. People’s impression of you matter; do not pretend it does not. You do not have to be a men pleaser but you have got to be pleasant. Don’t just go to school to amass educational certificates, get schooled in human relations and there is no limit to the height you can attain here or anywhere else in the world. If you can find your way here, work towards having your way with people here and you can really have your way here.