How to Influence others-Mike Clayton

Book review

How to influence others by Mike Clayton

I saw this book at the subway one day and I thought I could really use some tips on how to make people stick with my version for a while. It’s not that I am not good at persuading someone but I do not know the secrets of our body language. Did you know that most of our decisions are taken considering the body language of the person in front of us? Let’s take for example” the gut feeling”. That’s no mumbo-jumbo, it has been proven that we have what is considered to be a second brain.

Don’t take it literally, let me explain: In our stomach there are over 100 million cells that are specific to the brain. Pretty cool, huh? It makes sense considering the fact that our stomach needs to digest, absorb and decompose food. This little brain sometimes gets a hold of us, just think about when you get the munchies due to stress.

Ok, the book is not about what I have mentioned above, I just wanted to prove that there is some science in this topic, not just ways of pure manipulation.

I see this book very useful for those that work in the sales departments because it will help you guess what the person in front of you thinks of your proposal, package and so on.

This book covers about everything you need to know about this topic: starting with body posture, tone of voice, words involved in speech, making you look trustworthy, to techniques of analyzing the people around you.

When meeting new people, I am a little shy and the tips I’ve applied really helped me have an easier start of conversation with the others and I could easily guess their mood and if they were interested in my person. This is very useful for interviews as well.

Long story short, I’ll leave you with two small paragraphs from the book, in order for you to see what’s it all about:

“In order to influence someone efficiently, you must initiate a dialog. A real bilateral dialog is based on emotional connections- being synchronized with the other person. When you see two people that are very good in communicating to each other, you will see that if one leans, the other will also do that. If one will grab the coffee mug, the other will do the same. The emotional connection is natural and is similar to a dance. Here are three ways to boost the natural connection you establish with the others around you: Sincere interest, ”someone like me” and imitation/mirroring. “

“Dialog with yourself- The quote “ If you would talk to your friends the way you talk to yourself, you wouldn’t have any friends left” is attributed often to Princess Diana. As a stressful situation gets closer, one of the things that will leave you without self-confidence is that little annoying voice from your head. We all hear it. When we do something wrong, we accuse ourselves of being stupid and take the blame. But it doesn’t have to be like this. After all, who has control over that voice in your head? It’s You! “

I hope the paragraphs above got you interested in this lovely self-development book.

Let me know if you have any questions or you would like to talk about other interesting topics.

Toodles!

Cris ^_^