Book Review – How to Win Friends and Influence People
I’ll start by saying that I’m an introvert, always have been. This is clearly an obstacle to the profession I’ve selected! This book has not only helped me professionally, it’s helped me with personal relationships. When seeking to build relationships, business or otherwise, my biggest blind spot was encouraging people to talk about themselves. I always struggled to get beyond the basics in conversations with people outside of friends – but, as the book suggests, at the core, you’ve got to show a genuine interest in people to get the conversation headed in the right direction. Remember that a person’s name is to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language!
As one of the engagement leaders in our sales organization, the buck stops with me, period. This accountability leads to strong team execution in a majority of our engagements. This book helped me decide how to lead very early on. Recently we had a prospect demonstration go poorly. Immediately, I called attention to my own mistake in preparation. So in our debrief meeting, the focus was on the disconnect of what the prospect expected versus what we delivered. I put this on my shoulders, I should have done a better job equipping the team for those requests, anticipating push-back in certain areas, done a deeper discovery. Because I didn’t – the meeting wasn’t as successful as it could have been. Clearly, there is more to the story, and assuming you have a self-aware team, their instinct will be to take responsibility and reflect on how they could have performed better. This helps develop a culture of accountability and takes the sting out admitting fault for the entire team. Encourage the team, a self-aware group will improve. Throw down a challenge for the next engagement!
In the case of a well-executed meeting, genuinely lavish the team in praise. But it must be honest and sincere, we work with smart people, let’s show them the respect they’ve earned and deserve. Take the 5 minutes to give written feedback on their performance. How great does it feel to be praised for a hard effort? Let’s not worry about the chicken or the egg, or worry about who give praise first, be the chicken and the egg when it comes to praise.
Finally, learn to be a better leader by asking questions instead of giving direct orders. For example, “how do you think we could tailor your demonstration to fit in with this specific win theme?”, instead of “I need you to build a demonstration a different way.” You want to get the other person saying “yes, yes” early on, while being sympathetic to their ideas as well. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to, and appeal to the nobler motives.
Even if this all comes naturally to you, it’s a great read (or re-read) to get out of a mental rut. Help you rethink the way you handle complaints or challenges, and even provide you with a background of basic psychological principles.
Find the book on Amazon, here
Try Audible and Get Two Free Audiobooks