Want to encourage someone to do something?
You’ve got to figure out the best way and time to influence them.
It also helps to be empathetic and vulnerable, as well as make it easy for them to take action.
And if it’s been a while since you connected with them, they first need to even remember their encounter with you and your message.
These are the themes of the most helpful business books I read during 2016 – all backed by science.
Here are my five favorites in no particular order. Like last year, the list is intentionally short to avoid overtaxing your working memory and causing you overwhelm.
- Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade by Robert Cialdini. This book builds on the author’s classic at work, Influence: The Science of Persuasion. In his latest masterpiece, Dr. Cialdini shows that while words are an important tool for persuasion, you can boost their impact by setting the stage. When you make the effort to find the best time and place to deliver your message, you can improve your chances to persuade effectively.
- The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence by Dacher Keltner. The author and co-founder of the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley explains that empathy and social intelligence are the most effective means of acquiring and exercising power. When people experience your kindness and how you focus on them and others, they give you power that you can use wisely. Unfortunately, when you’re granted power, you can get drunk on it and start to become less empathetic, which is the paradox of power. (See my blog post 3 ways to be empathetic and powerful.)
- The Power of Fifty Bits: The New Science of Turning Good Intentions into Positive Results by Bob Nease. The “fifty bits” refers to the brain’s bandwidth limitations for conscious thoughts. Each second, the brain processes about 10 million bits of information. However, the pre-frontal cortex (also called the executive function), which directs our conscious thinking and acting, can only process about 50 bits per second of these 10 million bits. The other 99.99995 percent of our bandwidth is allocated to our unconsciousness. This limitation is largely responsible for the gap between what you want to do ─ if you can pay attention long enough ─ and what you actually do. In other words, we’re wired for “inattention and inertia,” which makes it difficult to spur ourselves into action. “Fifty bits design” is a type of behavior design that helps people do things they already want to do. (Fifty Bits has become one of my favorite “go-to” books. See my blog post Focus on Inattention and Inertia to Initiate Action.)
- Impossible to Ignore: Creating Memorable Content to Influence Decisions by Carmen Simon. Using the latest research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, the author, who holds doctorates in both cognitive psychology and instructional design, has written both an enlightening and practical book about prospective memory. Recognizing that we have trouble paying attention and remembering things (Yes, we’re wired for inattention and inertia), she describes how to make the most of a difficult situation, especially from a communication perspective. She provides tips on how to influence what other people remember so they can turn their good intentions into actions that help them and ideally benefit you too.
- An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey. The co-authors of Immunity to Change and How the Way We Talk Can Change the WayWe Work propose a radical new way to unleash your company’s potential. In their newest book, they advocate doing away with everyone’s “second job,” which entails covering up your weaknesses, trying to look your best, and managing how others think of you. The book features three companies that have already adopted this approach. The authors discuss theprinciples, concrete practices, and the underlying science of these “DDO’s” – deliberately developmental organizations. It’s a whole new way of being at work, and a much healthier and productive one.
What are your favorite business-related books from this past year?
And what do you now have on your reading list? Please tell!
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