Let’s be completely honest with ourselves: sometimes we give gifts to others at least as much to make ourselves look good as to make the recipient happy. For example, when you buy a bottle of wine to give to someone important, you want to get something they will enjoy, but you also want to show your good taste and sophistication.
It’s the same way with books: if there is someone you want to suck up to, maybe your boss’s boss or a prospective client, here are some book recommendations that will meet both goals. They will please the recipient and mark you as an especially discerning and intelligent person at the same time.
Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. Kahneman is one our most important thinkers, who won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his work, even though he’s a psychologist. This book is both instructive and entertaining, and will help you understand the quirky workings of the human mind. If you’re unsure whether to give this book as a gift, think of what will happen if someone else does before you do.
Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, by Adam Grant. Grant is described as a top-rated teacher at Wharton, and this book shows why. There are several reasons you might not want to get this book for someone, the most important one being that it can be dangerous to be perceived as an original thinker, especially within a large organization.
Pre-Suasion, Robert Cialdini. This is the newest book by one of the acknowledged legends of the influence world. Honestly, I didn’t think it was as good as the book which he’s famous for: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, but giving it will make you look smart and up to date.
Superforecasting, Philip Tetlock. This book is full of practical ideas to improve your judgment and predictive ability.[1] Using the National Intelligence Council’s 7-point scale, I predict that you are almost certain to impress anyone you give this book to, especially if they think you’ve read it.
How to Fly a Horse: The Secret History of Creation, Invention, and Discovery, by Kevin Ashton. This book will fascinate and impress anyone who works in or with technology, and they might even find creative ways to thank you for it.
Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Surviving in an Age of Accelerations, by Thomas Friedman. I’m breaking my own rule by recommending a book that I haven’t finished reading yet, but I didn’t want to be late in making this recommendation. If you’re concerned about the state of the world, Friedman will restore your optimism.
P.S. One of the best qualities of each of these books is that they are each so well-written that the recipient will actually read them. So, if you’re going to give one of these, it’s a good idea to buy a copy for yourself and read it!
[1] Although I have to admit I read it and still got the 2016 election wrong.
Your success as a persuasive communicator depends on both your message and you as the messenger. Of those two, Aristotle told us that the most important is ethos, or how others perceive you. In effect, recipients of your message are asking three questions: do you have good will, good sense and good character?
So, as long as you are an honest, thoughtful and competent person who only has the best interests of others in mind when you’re trying to persuade them, selling and influencing others should be a breeze, right?
Unfortunately, Virginia, now that you’re grown up it’s time to break the news that there is no Santa Claus. Just because you think you have those qualities does not mean that you actually do (at least to the extent that you think), and even if you’re right there is no guarantee that others will see you in the same light. On the other hand, there are plenty of people who don’t have those qualities but are still effective persuaders, because they’ve convinced others that they do. As the old joke goes, sincerity is your best asset—and once you can fake that you’ve got it made.
Let me be clear: I am totally in favor of having good will, good sense, and good character, but just having them is not enough unless others see those qualities in you. And according to Heidi Grant Halvorson’s new book, No One Understands You and What to Do About It
So, what can you do about it? You first have to figure out how others see you, and then make changes as necessary to adjust their perceptions.
To figure out how others see you, there are several things you can do.
- Ask a trusted colleague or two
- Get 360° feedback
- Video yourself
- Get a coach
- Run for president
If you see the need to change, Halvorson provides three useful “lenses” through which others view you:
The Trust lens. The first determination that people make about you is whether they can feel secure around you: what are your intentions (warmth) and can you act on those intentions (competence)? Halvorson suggests that you can increase the perception of your warmth by smiling, listening and in general taking a more active interest in the other person. If you need to kick up your perceived competence, look at people more directly, have a more upright posture, and in general act more confidently.
The Power lens. Power relationships affect how people view others, but it’s generally one-way: people in a one-up position tend to have a skewed view of the less powerful because they seem them primarily in terms of their instrumentality, or their usefulness to themselves; if you’re on the lower end you may not even get noticed enough too favorably impress them unless you can show them what you can do for them. For more on this, here’s an article I wrote recently on Selling Upward.
The Ego lens. The downside of projecting competence is that it can be a threat to the other person’s self-esteem. You can guard against this by being more self-deprecating; not necessarily by toning down your expertise or accomplishments, but by being more open about other weaknesses that you might have. You can also look for ways to praise the other person‘s accomplishment or abilities—as long as it’s credible. Finally, you can stress commonalities between the two of you, so that your abilities reflect favorably on the in-group to which you both belong.
No One Understands You is a good read, especially if you are new to these topics. However, the trust lens is the most powerful and the most practical of the three lenses, and there’s a lot more to it than is covered in this book. For more depth, I would suggest picking up two books: Compelling People and The Trusted Advisor.
If Alen Mayer had written this book about twenty-five years ago, it would have saved me a lot of time and trouble. That’s because, while I make a pretty good living by meeting new people and speaking to groups for hours at a time, I’m also an introvert. It has not always been an easy journey, as I’ve learned through trial and error how to suppress some tendencies on the one hand, and how to take full advantage of some strengths on the other. Introverts in Business: Being Quietly Successful
It may seem unfair, but our business culture favors extroverts: you only need to look at qualities asked for in job descriptions, such as “team player, dynamic, people-oriented”, or track who gets all the air time in meetings. But your natural introversion does not have to be a handicap.
If you’re an introvert just starting in business, or a single contributor moving to a role that requires more teamwork, or are rising to a management role, this book can help you.
How can it help? First, it dispels myths that others—or you—may have about introverts, and that may be holding you back, such as the idea that introverted means being shy, or that introverts can’t succeed in professions such as sales that place a premium on relationship building.
That’s because some of your natural tendencies can actually be strengths. In sales, for example, the prototypical talkative, slap-them-on-the back-and tell-a-joke, professional “friend” is at a loss in many of today’s complex system sales, which require asking questions and listening, and thoughtful analysis about customer needs—both of which favor introverts. In fact, introverts excel at developing deeper relationships which helps with the patient building of influence in complicated decision processes over long sales cycles. By exploiting your strengths, you can “make your quiet presence felt, if not heard.”
That said, sometimes you do need to be heard: there are situations where it pays to step out of your comfort zone and act extroverted, to interrupt, socialize more, or to blow your own horn. Mayer provides useful ideas about how to fake it ‘til you make it in Chapter 3.
Finally, you can read the very detailed and specific suggestions that apply in your role as you move up the corporate ladder, whether you are a team member, manager, senior leader, or entrepreneur. This is where Mayer’s book excels. I’ve written before about Susan Cain’s book, Quiet, which is also excellent. At only 88 pages, Introverts in Business is a quick read, but it’s more of a field guide or handbook, so it’s much more applicable to specific situations you might face.
By the way, if you’re an extrovert, you probably haven’t read this far—but just in case—you can also profit from reading this book, particularly if you’re a manager who wants to get the most out of a mixed team.
Not just for entrepreneurs
I like to be on top of things by reviewing new books as they come out, so why am I reviewing a book that was published three years ago? Simply because the title misled me. I don’t run a startup and most of my readers don’t either, so I didn’t see a reason to read it.
But I had heard good things about The Lean Startup 
In my view, The Lean Startup is one of the most thoughtful and important books I’ve read in a long, long time. What’s not to like? So many of the topics I touch on in this blog and in my training are in here: clear thinking, customer focus, value, lean principles, and process orientation. The popular imagination tends to see entrepreneurship as a spark of genius, where someone turns a great idea or insight into a big business. But good ideas are often the least important part of the equation. Ries tells us that “…it’s the boring stuff that matters the most.”
The key idea is how to apply lean principles to startups. In a nutshell, lean is about eliminating waste, which is defined as anything that does not add value to the customer, using a very rigorous and data-driven approach. But in a startup, how do you define value when you often don’t even know who the end customer is? (And if you think you do, you’re probably way ahead of yourself—you’re operating on an untested assumption, to use Ries’ term)
The answer is that you measure progress toward the creation of value not through how the product is coming along, but by how much you’re learning about what customers will want and will pay for. After all, you can create a wonderful product full of all kinds of cutting edge features, and have it fall flat with customers. And it doesn’t do too much good to conduct focus groups to ask customers what they want because often they don’t know either.[1] Learning occurs through a cycle called the Build-Measure-Learn loop. You start with a hypothesis about what customers will value, then build a minimum viable product to test it, carefully collecting the right metrics that will lead to validated learning, then repeat as fast and as often as necessary.
Ries provides a very detailed road map through the Build-Measure-Learn loop using credible and compelling real world examples to illustrate such important concepts such as Minimum Viable Product, validated learning, innovation accounting, small batches, and Five Whys. It’s probably easier to grasp the concepts if you’ve had exposure to lean thinking, but if you haven’t, it pays to study the ideas closely—with a pen and paper at hand to write down all the good ideas that will spark in your mind.
My one quibble with the book is the definition of the word entrepreneur. Although I like the idea of defining a startup broadly, calling anyone who runs a startup, especially within a larger organization an entrepreneur is like blurring the distinction between the chicken and the pig when it comes to ham and eggs.
That quibble aside, I highly recommend this book.
[1] Ries doesn’t put it this way, but I see it as an ongoing dialogue between startup and customers, where you “say” something in the form of a product and see how the customer responds.
