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.
I can think of several good reasons you should not read this post. Of all my ideas for helping you be more persuasive, this may be the craziest one yet. Plus, it takes a lot of skill and confidence to even try to pull it off, and if you screw it up, it will definitely backfire on you.
I’ve actually thought this for a long time, because I’ve seen how it works in my own sales efforts, but I’ve held off on writing a post about this because of the very real concerns I listed above. But Adam Grant wrote about it in his book, Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World
I call it unselling, and Grant calls it the Sarick Effect.[1] It’s an approach that involves telling people right up front all the reasons they should not accept your idea—getting all the negatives out on the table right away. When it’s done right, it can be an extremely powerful way to a) get agreement and b) sustain that agreement. In his book, Grant relates the story of Rufus Griscom of Babble, who began his 2009 pitch to potential investors with a slide telling them five reasons not to invest. He walked away with $3.3 million. Two years later, he pitched Disney and told them why buying his company was a bad idea. They bought it for $40 million.
I’ve had the same experience myself many times in my selling career. I’ve used unselling in several different ways, one of which I will share here. When a company approaches me about sales training, I sometimes push back on the premise that sales training is truly what they need. I question whether they might not need to look at their compensation structure or their sales strategies or even hiring practices before investing in training their sales force. Invariably, they start telling me all the reasons they’re convinced that sales training is exactly what they need.
Why does it work? Here are seven reasons. The first four are Grant’s reasons. While I agree with his reasons, I’ve added three more reasons of my own.
- Leading off with your negatives disarms the audience, which naturally has its defensive shields up expecting to be sold. If people are initially opposed to your idea, your first task is to get them to at least listen.
- It makes you look smart. Research by Theresa Amabile demonstrated that negative reviewers are seen as more intelligent than positive reviewers, for example.
- It makes you trustworthy. Not only does it make you seem more honest, it actually does your listeners a favor. Griscom says, “The job of the investor is to figure out what’s wrong with the company. By telling them what’s wrong with the business model, I’m doing some of the work for them.”
- By doing the work for them, it makes it harder for them to think of additional weaknesses, which makes it intuitively more reasonable that there are no other weaknesses. It’s what Daniel Kahneman calls WYSIATI: “What you see is all there is.”
- It accords with the preferences of an educated and intelligent audience, who prefer two-sided arguments. If you notice, almost all of the opinion pieces in The Economist are written this way. They first cite the reasons against their position before making what they consider to be the stronger case. (You’ll notice that’s not the approach politicians take during debates—which speaks loud and clear what they think about the intelligence of the average voter.)
- It harnesses the power of reactance. When people feel you are trying to impose your reasoning on them, it’s an attack against their freedom of choice, and they respond just like a two-year-old. So, they will start coming up with reasons to refute your reasoning, and that’s a good thing.
- It takes away ownership of the negative reasons. If you’re listening to a pitch and you think of a good reason not to buy, that reason is your own because you thought of it, and you are much more likely to defend it against all argument. If someone else thinks of it, you may be less likely to cling to it.
So, there are very good reasons to unsell. But the reasons against it that I cited in the opening paragraph are also true, so if you decide to try it, there are some important points to keep in mind. First, the reasons you give against your idea have to be reasonable. If they’re just transparently strawman arguments, a smart audience will see right through them and the tactic will backfire. Second, they should be reasons the audience would reasonably have thought of on their own; no need to give them free ammunition. Finally, of course, be absolutely certain your positives outweigh your negatives.
Does unselling work? You’ve made it this far, so what do you think?
[1] You will have to read his book to find out why.
Although 2013 is still young, I predict that Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success
The premise of the book is quite simple: the world comprises three types of people: givers, takers and matchers. Which type tends to be most successful? Although we’ve all been raised on the homily that it’s better to give than to receive, the bad news is that the left side of most bell curves is populated by givers, those who contribute more to others than they expect in return. Quite simply, they do less for themselves, people take advantage of them, and they are prone to burnout.
But the real surprise is that the right side of bell curves is also a givers’ neighborhood. Combining extensive research with inspiring examples, Grant shows us how and why successful givers do well for themselves at the same time that they contribute so much to others. Successful givers approach four principal aspects of relationships differently. The four aspects are networking, collaborating, developing talent and communicating.
Successful givers are excellent networkers, but so are a lot of takers and matchers. The difference is that successful givers proactively do things without expectation of return, creating goodwill and possibly setting an example that may be contagious. One of the excellent tips in this chapter is the suggestion to revive dormant connections. The benefit is that when most people tap into their network for help, their strong ties are trusting and disposed to help, but their weak ties have more diverse information. People you haven’t talked to in a long time combine the assets of strong ties and weak ties.
Givers are also excellent collaborators, quick to help others in a team environment and without spending too much time worrying about who gets credit. They tend to demonstrate what the National Outdoor Leadership School calls expedition behavior, putting the needs of the mission and the team ahead of your own. In the long run, this behavior increases their prestige and the willingness of others to help them when they need it.
Givers are also excellent at spotting talent, because they’re not worried about creating rivals who may outshine them. Also, because they tend to assume competence and talent on the part of others, they may be generating self-fulfilling prophecies. I found this chapter to be rather long on anecdote and thin on evidence, but the next chapter made up for it.
For me the meatiest chapter covered the successful practices that givers follow in communicating with others, in presenting, selling, and negotiating. Successful givers ask more meaningful questions and have an effective mix of confidence and humility in their advocacy. They also tend to be good at perspective-taking, which is the cognitive equivalent of empathy: instead of feeling what the other person is feeling, they are adept at thinking what they’re thinking. In studies, people with high empathy do worse in creating value, because they are more apt to give the other person what they want. Those high in perspective taking are better at coming up with creative ideas to give both sides more of what they want.
The second section of the book is for those who are too giving, and tend to fall at the bottom of the success distribution because they get taken advantage of and exhaust their energies serving others rather than themselves. The key insight is that self-interest and other-interest are not opposite points on a single line; they are separate axes on a graph. Those who give too much have a high score for other-interest, and a low score for self-interest. Successful givers are at the top right of the graph, combining a high other-focus with high self-interest. As a result, they are in better control of their giving, seeing it as a positive choice rather than an obligation, and being more proactive in allocating their giving time and energy.
If you get inspired by Grant’s book, what you’ll really want to know is how to become a more successful giver. The Catch-22 is that giving has to be sincere if it’s to work, and if you try to make it strategic it’s not sincere. I do think, however, that if you begin changing your behavior for strategic purposes, and start doing more for others, two positive things may happen. First, regardless of the motive, you’re contributing to the sum total of benefit and happiness. Even more important is that your attitude may begin to catch up with your actions. The mind does not like cognitive dissonance, so if we’re acting in a giving manner we will begin to see ourselves more as givers, leading to a virtuous circle. The book finishes with ten suggestions for becoming more of a giver—I’ll keep you posted on how it works.
The one weakness in the book is that in some of the chapters, as mentioned above, there was less evidence than it seemed on first reading. You get pulled in to the inspiring stories, but on closer reading you don’t find enough evidence to be able to make up your mind whether those examples are the rule or the exception.
Despite this, the message in Grant’s book is so powerful that I give it five stars. But it’s not a gift—it’s truly earned. The book itself is a gift to anyone who reads it, and to countless others who may be on the receiving end of their stepped-up giving.
