5. Would you like to meet him outside the institution?

Every question had multiple choices; Excellent, good, fair, poor. The students filled in the questionnaire and returned it to the instructor. The instructor began his lecture on interpersonal skills in an office environment,and in the middle of the lecture he said, “Oh! Why should we deprive your colleague of this lesson?” He went out of the classroom, shook the hand of the ejected Be kind at the first meeting student with a smile, and brought him back in. He then said, “I think I lashed out at you a little while ago without any particular reason. I am having some personal problems due to which I behave quite erratically at times, so I beg your pardon. You are, after all, a committed student, and the proof of that is the fact that you left behind your wife and children to come all the way here. I would like to thank you, in fact all of you, for your commitment. I am very honoured to be your instructor.” He was, thereafter, very light-hearted with his students. He then picked up more copies of the questionnaire and said, “Since your colleague didn’t get the chance to fill in the questionnaire, how about if you all were to fill it in again?” He handed out the questionnaire and they filled them all in and returned them to the instructor. He then took the previous questionnaires and the new ones and began to compare between the two, to discover that the ‘poor’ boxes in first set of questionnaires were all checked, while the second set of questionnaires did not have a single check against ‘poor’, or even ‘fair’. The instructor laughed and said, “What you just witnessed was a demonstration of the ill effects of the lack of interpersonal skills in the work environment. What I did to your colleague was an example of this which I wished to demonstrate to you all. Note how your views of me changed as I changed the way I dealt with you!” This is all part of human nature, and hence, one must take this into consideration, especially with those he meets for the first time. Be kind at the first meeting The Prophet  would also capture people’s hearts the first time he met them. After the conquest of Makkah and when Islam had become dominant, the Prophet  started to receive envoys from various tribes. One of the envoys the Prophet  received was from ‘Abd al-Qays. When they arrived, before they could even dismount from their rides, the Prophet  said to them, “Welcome, O people! May you never face disgrace or sorrow, so have glad tidings!” As they dismounted from their camels, they raced to the Prophet  to greet him. They said, “O Messenger of Allah, between our cities there lies a dwelling of a group of pagans from Mudhar, due to which we cannot come to you except in the sacred months, since this is when Arabs do not fight, so guide us to the best thing we can do, which if we were to do it, would cause us to enter paradise, and which we would instruct others to do also. The Prophet  said, “I shall order you to do four things and forbid you from four. I order you to have faith in Allah. Do you know what it means to have faith in Allah?” They replied, “Allah and His Messenger know best.” The Prophet  said, “It means to testify that there is no one worthy of worship except Allah, to establish the prayers, to give in charity, and to give a fifth of the war booty in charity.” I also forbid you from four; from drinking from ad-Dubba, anNaqir, (pitched water skins), az-Zuruf, al-Muzaffat and al-Hantam (names of utensils used for the preparation of alcoholic drinks).’ (al-Bukhari) Be kind at the first meeting On another occasion, the Prophet  was travelling with a group of his Companions at night. They travelled for a long time until the last part of the night fell upon them, and they decided to stop over and sleep. They were overcome by deep sleep until sunrise. The first one to awaken was Abu Bakr, and then ‘Umar. Abu Bakr sat next to the Prophet  and began to say “Allahu Akbar” aloud until the Prophet  also woke up and prayed Fajr with his Companions. When he had not finished the prayer, he realised that one of the Companions had not joined them. The Prophet  said, ‘What prevented you from praying with us?’ He replied, “I had a wet-dream and didn’t find water to bathe with.” The Prophet  ordered him to perform Tayammum with dust. The Companion then prayed and thereafter they continued on their journey, and none of them had any water. On the way they became extremely thirsty and were unable to find any well or water. ‘Imran bin Husayn  said, “As we were travelling, we found a woman on a camel with two leather sacks (filled with water).