This is a book review of Chip Heath and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.

Why is it that urban legends, conspiracy theories, and public health scares can reach the other side of the world; while most businesses, teachers, and public speakers cannot get their ideas to reach the very person they are talking to? The answer lies in Made to Stick.

Everyday we get pounded with information from people. Most of it slips straight off us like food sliding off Teflon. “What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients.” said Herbert Simon, winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize in Economics. “Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”

Chip Heath and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick teaches you more than how to grab people’s attention. It will provide you with an exact formula for getting your ideas in people’s minds and keeping them there. The two authors use their first of six principles, “Simplicity”, in their stickiness formula by making their six principles form an acronym SUCCESs:

1. Simplicity
2. Unexpectedness
3. Concreteness
4. Credibility
5. Emotions
6. Stories

Reading a book about sticky ideas makes you hope the authors’ make their own principles sticky – and Chip and Dan Heath make all their principles stick using exactly what they teach. Each principle contains many real-life, and not so real, examples of ideas that have stuck in people’s minds. The stories used are really entertaining, most notably is the urban legend of Kidney thieves where an attractive lady seduces and drugs men who later awaken to find their kidneys have been stolen.

While Chip Heath is a Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and Dan Heath has conducted research for Harvard Business School, they don’t throw technical information at you – that would break their principles. Their book embodies many entertaining stories that are very practical. They also give you several exercises, and allow you to compare your answers with their answers, to practice the principles.

Teachers, public speakers, marketers, and experts in their field of choice, need to read Made to Stick. The book’s ideas focus around the Curse of Knowledge, a principle that explains why experts fail to make their ideas stick in students’ minds. Business managers fall into the trap of thinking they have successfully presented their proposal, or convinced people to buy into their idea, when they have finished a PowerPoint presentation. “What they’ve done is share data”, says the authors. Expressing your thoughts is one thing; it is entirely another thing for people to be convinced and remember your words.

I purchased the book to help me better communicate the communication skills I teach in books and articles, but I found how important it is to use as much of the SUCCESs formula in your everyday conversations as possible. Over the past few weeks, I’ve come to realize how most charismatic and persuasive persons naturally use the book’s principles.

If you want you, and your ideas, to be remembered in conversations and presentations, then the New York Times Best Seller Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die is exactly the book you need. You can grab your copy now from Amazon by clicking here.

This is a book review of Susan Scott’s Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work & in Life, One Conversation at a Time.

If you have ever felt the need to have an important conversation, but you couldn’t bring yourself to having it, then this is the book for you. Susan Scott details the exact methods to bring us to having those conversations that we know will change our life and other people’s life. It is important to overcome this barrier because a conversation is not about the relationship, it is the relationship.

When people see the word “fierce”, they may think pain, tough, or brutality. As it says on the book’s cover, “fierce” means robust, intense, strong, powerful, passionate, eager, and unbridled. The premise behind having a “fierce conversation”, as mentioned in the book, is bringing authenticity in your life by communicating who you are and what you believe.

Fierce Conversations will get you having the most important conservation you can have with someone, right now. After all, if you want someone or something to change, you are the one responsible for initiating the change. If something is bothering you, you need to be the one who does something about it.

Whether through fear of hurting a person, receiving retaliation, or having someone point out our own mistakes, we delay having the conversations we need to have. A large part of the problem comes down to how we present ourselves to others, in our conversations, and when we are by ourselves. All conversations are with yourself, and some are with others.

It is the book’s purpose to achieve four outcomes: interrogate reality, provoke learning, tackle tough challenges, and enrich relationships. These are achieved through the following 7 principles of fierce conversations:

1. Master the Courage to Interrogate Reality
2. Come Out from Behind Yourself into the Conversation and Make It Real
3. Be Here, Prepared to Be Nowhere Else
4. Tackle Your Toughest Challenge Today
5. Obey Your Instincts
6. Take Responsibility for Your Emotional Wake
7. Let Silence Do the Heavy Lifting

These principles, and other ideas and models in the book, are mostly applied in an organizational context. As a consultant for Fortune 500 companies, Susan leans the book towards communication in an organization. However, as she mentions in the book, if someone has communication problems at work then the same problems are likely to show up in their personal lives.

Fierce conversations needs to be used with employees, customers, colleagues, family members, and friends; not just in business. You will find Fierce Conversations especially helpful if you have trouble expressing yourself, talking with others who have trouble expressing themselves, dealing with passive-aggressive people, or resolving an ignored issue that people know exists.

Susan gives you a series of simple and practical exercises to do at the end of each chapter to help you begin using the chapter’s communication skills. She provides insightful scenarios of her experience with clients using the communication models and the powerful change that has taken place as a result.

Fierce Conversations is no emotional walk in the park. You are faced with some hard questions about your reality. “It takes a certain fearlessness to make your private thoughts public.” Susan says. “But if what you’re thinking makes you squirm and wish to wriggle away, you are probably onto something.”

Should you choose to awaken to the truth that confronts you by beginning to have fierce conversations, your relationships will grow before your very eyes. You will begin to talk about what everyone is pretending to not know. Don’t miss having that one conversation that could change your life. Achieve success at work and in life, one conversation at a time by getting your copy of Susan Scott’s Fierce Conversations directly from Amazon.com by clicking here today.

Related Media Links

1. Video and audio links – Links on the Fierce Incorporated website with Susan Scott.
2. Companies, careers built or lost one conversation at time – An article published in a Seattle newspaper by Susan Scott discussing how conversations, one by one, shape our lives.

When you think of delegation, do you limit your thoughts to organizational leadership? Do you think delegating activities is only a skill organizational leaders should know? Book after book has been written on delegating activities in a business context. However, the act of delegating is a powerful skill any person should learn for their personal and career success.

Delegation refers to transferring the decision making process to someone else. We see that it is simply the transference of responsibility to another person. It allows you to get more done in less time than if you tried to do the activity yourself. There is not enough time in a day to do everything by yourself that needs doing.

Nonetheless, this article does not focus on the view point of decision making in efficiently running a business. The article is about empowering anybody to make decisions on their own while not subjecting them, or anyone else, to damage. It is about learning to avoid turning yourself or somebody else into a cantankerous controlling individual to get people doing things.

You do not need to be a manager running a department or leader guiding a team for delegating decision making to be of use to you. Everyday we are flooded with requests. Too frequently we fail to say “no” and as a result, we go through mental and emotional havoc. Moreover, effective decision making skills allows you to create responsibility in people making them stand on their own two feet. Being able to create self-reliance in people is one of the most empowering skills you can develop.

As a leader, manager, parent, husband, wife, teacher, or human being on this planet (not that a manager isn’t a human being – though some may disagree), learning about the decision tree of leadership will be of help to you. Whenever you transfer responsibility and other duties, under safe circumstances, that lead to feelings of importance in people, you increase your personal magnetism and make people like you. With that said, let’s move onto describing the decision tree of leadership.

The Decision Tree of Leadership

Since reading Dr. Maxwell Maltz’s The New Psycho-cybernetics and Michael Hall’s Mind-lines, I have experienced the realization of how powerful metaphors can be in learning and implementing a skill. To overcome the feeling of being overwhelmed, Maxwell Maltz provided a powerful metaphor and visualization of an hourglass. No matter how much sand there is in the timer, it will only pour through grain by grain. One by one gets things done.

When we create a metaphor that is similar to a problem, we draw associations and learn something new from old information. This is abductive thinking, a creative process whereby we think of what could be. Symbols are used to indirectly mean something else. What this means for us in layman’s terms is our knowledge about a tree has the potential to help us better empower people!

Think of a simple tree. Each day decisions are made to keep it green and healthy. For the purpose of this metaphor, we categorize a tree into four parts: 1) roots, 2) trunk, 3) branches, and 4) leafs. Literally from the ground up we have:

Roots: Root decisions have the most potential to hurt an individual, group, or organization. They are made from a lot of input and consultation with others. Once an outcome is determined to be the best, the person responsible makes the root decision. Each person is kept up-to-date with the results of the decision.

Trunk: After roots are the tree’s trunk. Trunk decisions have the potential to hurt an individual, group, or organization like root decisions, though to a lesser extent. A trunk decision can take into account other people’s input but the ultimate decision is made by the person in charge. Who is in charge depends on who can initiate or omit the action. A parent can be in charge, but a trunk decision for the teen in deciding to find a job is made by their teenager. The outcome of trunk decisions should be reported immediately.

Branches: Branch decisions are very similar to trunk decisions. The main difference is the timeliness of the decision. A branch decision doesn’t have to be reported immediately once the decision is made. The person making the decision can take action immediately without other people’s suggestions. A teen deciding to get a job is a trunk decision, not a branch decision, because the teen is the one who acts on the decision while his/her parents are influenced by the decision.

Leafs: Leaf decisions are clear and simple. Sometimes the person has faced and solved similar problems in the past. A leaf decision is the outer-most and highest level of decision making a person can achieve. It involves making a decision and acting on it without consulting anyone. Unlike other parts of the tree that require the input of others, leaf decisions are pure independence. The person making the leaf decision does not need to report to upper management or notify someone what has been done.

The foundation of a tree is its roots. Without its roots a tree will quickly die. After roots is the tree’s trunk. Tree trunks are important in maintaining the tree’s strength. Next, the trunk leads to many branches. The branches of a tree shape how it looks and need to be maintained. Lastly, leafs grow from branches. Should a leaf or branch die, the whole tree doesn’t suffer. However, if the roots or trunk of the tree sustain serious injury, then the livelihood of the tree is jeopardized.

In terms of decision making, the leaf decision doesn’t necessarily mean it is less important than a trunk decision. Rather, it explains the ramifications of the decision. Leafs can die while the whole tree lives. If roots die so does the tree.

The decision tree of leadership doesn’t takeaway a person’s ability to impact his or her family, marriage, friends, or organization. It encourages leadership while maintaining a finger tip of control. We hate being controlled and having to report everything we do to a superior. The decision tree of leadership creates freedom and empowers people to become responsible and influential. The outcome of a leaf decision can still be life-changing. However, your family shouldn’t have to suffer because you made a leaf decision on behalf of your family that should have been a root decision.

Any teenager or employee at some time experiences a shift in self-reliance where their dependence on people change. Teens desperately want freedom from their parents while employees wish their overbearing bosses would release them from their controlling grasp. A male teen wants to become his own person, but you and I know that giving someone pure independence isn’t a safe choice. Mistakes get made and people get hurt. The decision tree of leadership will provide you with a lovely conceptual understanding of empowering another person so that you grant a person their desired level of independence while at the same time not making you seem like a grumpy controlling onlooker.

In adult love relationships, I often see something I call child-parent dependency. Such relationships have one individual, termed the “child”, who does things that are in compliance with the other individual, termed the “parent”. The “parent” dictates many circumstances of the relationship. The “child” of the relationship may feel comfortable being told what to do or he/she may lack assertive skills. When an important decision needs to be made by the “child”, he/she consults with the “parent” on the problem or shifts all responsibility back onto the “parent”.

Passive individuals require guidance by “parents” of their relationship due to a lack of definiteness. On one hand you have the “parent” who tells the “child” to do something because the “child” needs a decision to be made and action to be taken. On the other hand, the“child” hates being told what to do by the “parent” and will find an excuse to avoid the task whether through silence, avoidance, or forgetfulness. Again, this solving this problem comes down to managing self-reliance. Such a situation is one that will benefit from the decision tree of leadership.

A group, namely an organization, that follows the decision tree of leadership will benefit for several reasons. Firstly, employees have frequently voiced their pain of not having the power to implement actions that they are responsible for. To create any change, growth, or even to conduct a simple daily activity, an employee monitored from their boss’s hawk eye requires their superior’s approval. If you want employees or members of a group to enjoy what they are doing and feel a sense of pride, ownership, and responsibility, you need to empower them by using the decision tree of leadership.

The second benefit of using the decision tree of leadership is the clarity it establishes. When expectations are made clear that are empowering to an individual, the individual knows what is expected of him/her and works to achieve those expectations. As humans we want to make an impact and we need to know where it is that we can impact on. Defining the level of authority establishes clear boundaries and expectations. If you lack expectations and clarity, you are more to blame for a problematic decision than the person who made the final decision.

The third benefit is the personal and professional development the model builds in an individual. By communicating the decision tree of leadership to an appropriate person in your group, they develop self-reliance and confidence. They become motivated to grow and achieve more leaf decisions.

The fourth benefit is it increases the likelihood of good decisions being made. Mistakes often originate from inexperience and a lack of knowledge. A primary reason we control a person by making their decisions for them is our lack of faith in the person’s decision making skills. Parents who control their teens lives act from fear in their teen’s supposed inability to make correct life decisions. A lot of unnecessary conflict can be reduced through better preparation. The decision tree of leadership teaches people to swim in shallow water before venturing into the deep end. Once they get out to the deep end, they know no one is holding their hand which makes it all the more satisfying.

The fifth benefit is the resources it frees up. People higher in the hierarchy do not get bothered by decisions that those lower in the hierarchy can solve. The purpose of the model is to get people making leaf decisions as much as possible when appropriate. Managers and executives are left with time that can be used to solve more important decisions.

The sixth benefit, and one of the most powerful reasons for using the decision tree of leadership, is the large degree of personal accountability the method creates. A lack of personal accountability causes the blame-game and the involved group to not move forward as they fail to learn from past mistakes. The decision tree clearly empowers people to make decisions creating personal accountability. Gary Horsfall wrote a paper titled Accountability: The Force Behind Empowerment that was published in the Hospital Materiel Management Quarterly. In it he boldly states, “The driving force behind any and all successful programs, initiatives and companies is accountability… It is not possible in an environment where people feel that they have little or no control over their own destiny.”

Now you are hopefully aware of what the decision tree of leadership is and the power it has in transforming an organization or similar group. Now I’m going to share with you a quick step-by-step process for implementing the method then I’ll provide some real-life examples of what decisions fit into which category of the model. Lastly, I’ll finish of the article with an exercise to help you begin using the method as I want to help you go from intellectualizing the information to physical behavioral change and results.

To start off using the method, you firstly want to mention a new method you have learned that will improve the family, organization, or team. They may not care what stuff you have learned so you need to tune them into their favorite radio station: WIIFM (what’s in it for me). Tell them that if they give the method a shot, they will come to have more freedom, independence, and personal power.

Next, explain the decision tree to the person (or just email them the link to this page). Once you have done that, ask the person what they think how their most common decisions are categorized. Are they leaf, branch, trunk, or root decisions? Mutually working out a solution here is the secret to its ongoing implementation. When we make a choice on our own, instead of being forced into making a choice, we stand by it stronger and for longer.

The Decision Tree of Leadership In Action

Okay, now to provide a few examples of the decision categories. I’ll use a teenager and a parent to demonstrate the decision tree because the majority of people should relate to and understand the example. As you read the examples, keep in mind that the decisions made by one family or an organization will be differently categorized for different families or organizations. Individuals have different personality characteristics and situations vary.

In this example, Julie is a parent to her teenager Sam. A leaf decision for Sam could be what he decides to do in his spare time. He’s shown in the past that he doesn’t need to be babied around in deciding what he should do in his free time. Though, you can probably see that this leaf decision could also be a branch decision because Sam may need his mum’s permission if she can drive him to the local sports field.

A branch decision for Sam could be deciding what University to attend. While some parents control their child’s education more so than others because of price and other variables that differ between countries, the university Sam decides must fit in with what he wants. Once he has made the decision, it would be helpful for his family and parents to know his decision as soon as possible, though he is not required to tell them immediately. Sam can ask for other’s opinions as to what they think, but it is clearly all up to Sam to decide.

One possible trunk decision for Sam is housework. Julie gives Sam a moderate amount of freedom to choose what chores he wants to do. Sam is influenced, not controlled, by his mum’s input into the decision. Whether Sam does or fails to do the chores, his final decision affects his family to a minor extent.

A root decision for Sam could be borrowing his parent’s car. The implications of taking his parent’s car without permission greatly affects Sam’s family. One possible affect is them being stuck at home with no means of transport to get somewhere important. Safety is also an issue as well as Sam’s parents being concerned for his whereabouts.

It may be tough in deciding whether a decision is a leaf or branch, branch or trunk, trunk or root decision, but it doesn’t really matter if you’re not precise. In this model, close enough is good enough provided that you have mutual agreement. I repeat, ensure that you have mutual agreement on what decisions should be in what category.

To begin implementing the decision tree of leadership in your family, organization, or other type of group, here is a simple exercise to do. Over the next week, write down your most common branch, trunk, and root decisions. Leaf decisions can probably be ignored because there may be to many of them that you won’t want to write them down. Once you write them down, you’ll begin to see what areas you or other people are independent in and how your many decisions affects someone else in the group. The exercise will help categorize and track what is going on.

Overall, the grand purpose of the decision tree is to establish freedom and personal growth. We hate being controlled and made to feel like a caged animal at the zoo. The decision tree of leadership empowers people to make decisions that they would like to make or once could not make. By following the decision tree of leadership, you’ll be on your way to nurturing growing and healthy relationships that aren’t constricted by the thorns of controlling individuals.

This is a book review of Michael Hall and Bobby Bodenhamer’s Mind-lines: Lines for Changing Minds.

You’ve been to told to see the glass as half full, but how do you do it? Have you ever wondered how your worries, fears, disagreements, interpersonal conflict, anger, and misunderstandings can be reinterpreted so that they empower you; instead of disempowering? L. Michael Hall and Bobby G. Bodenhamer’s Mind-lines will show you exactly how using the magical neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) technique of reframing. Moreover, the art of reframing is far more powerful than just being positive.

A father sees his son watching television while lying on his bed. The father begins to give his son’s behavior a meaning of “laziness”. As a result, the father starts criticizing his son out of the lazy frame. On the other hand, let’s take a look at another father and son in the same scenario. This other father sees his son watching television while lying on his bed. The father gives his son’s behavior a meaning of “relaxation”.

The premise of reframing is that the world exists with no meaning. “By mind-lines we refer to the lines (the linguistic constructions) that we connect and associate to things that create meaning formulas” says the authors. “By the changing of meaning, our emotions change, as do our behaviors, habits, moods, attitudes, skills, health, etc. and our life.” What you see around you means nothing until you give it meaning. By acknowledging that we are the ones who give the world its meaning, we become empowered to transform our world. Learning to reframe gives you the magic to overcome self-limiting beliefs and communicate more effectively in your relationships. The book is helpful for your personal development and relationships with everyone around you as it changes everyone’s felt sense of reality.

In each of us exists what the author’s call a “map”. Our map is our understanding of “reality” that provide us with a direction in this world. The map is only a construct of reality; it is not reality itself. Mind-lines will have you analyzing your map, seeing its many faults, and then helping you construct a map that is more healthier for your mental, emotional, and physical well-being. The same very lines can be used in your communication with others to change their behaviors, habits, moods, attitudes, skills, health, and life.

In the fifth edition exists a large 26 reframing techniques. These 26 reframing methods are conceptualized in the meta-model – a model introduced in part one that illustrates how the reframing methods fit together. I found myself slightly overwhelmed at the beginning of the book as the first of four parts focuses on the theory aspect of reframing.

However, once I had finished reading the first part, I realized the foundational material gave me the framework for understanding, and more easily, using the 26 reframing techniques discussed in the second part. When you read this book, if you have a similar experience, don’t let this small hurdle stop you from the power it has to change your life and those who you touch. Neuro-linguistic programming has some complex terminology which means it will take more time to read than your average self-help book, but it is still very understandable and life-changing.

It is a practical book. All 26 reframing techniques are applied to six specific statements plus a few additional statements scattered throughout the chapters. You are definitely encouraged to try and reframe using the specific technique before reading on and comparing your own answer to the authors’ answer. I personally encourage you to apply your self-limiting beliefs to each reframing technique as you read the book and observe the magic that begins taking place in your mind.

To give you an idea of how reframing used and the power it possesses, I’ll give you an example of the eighth reframe, positive prior intention framing. The purpose of positive prior intention framing is that every behavior has a positive intention behind it. There is a hidden positive intent even behind hurtful behavior. A reply using this frame to “I hate it when you treat me badly” would be “It’s good to hear that you want to be treated well. What can I do to treat you better?” This is drastic and powerful change to a reply most people would use, “I don’t treat you badly. You’re the one who is mean to me.”

Here’s an example of the fourteenth reframing technique, criteria and values framing. This reframing techniques puts into perspective what the person deems important. You are giving people, or yourself, motive to change. A reply using this frame to “You’re rude for not washing the dishes” would be “When you tell me I’m rude for not washing the dishes, it hurts me which makes me dislike our relationship. Is our relationship more important than the dishes? Would you prefer to tell me about the need to do the dishes without hurting our relationship?” What a wonderful example of reframing a person’s behavior.

Another interesting aspect of the book is something called a “meta-state”, which is a term that describes a state about a state. For example, you can be angry about being stressed. Our meta-states can get very confusing and multi-layered. Let’s say you experience guilt from hurting your partner. You then “wrap” the guilt with anger by becoming angry about the guilt. The anger leads to depression about the anger. The methods in this book allows you to overpower these “lower levels” with “higher levels” that give you more productivity, efficiency, a better mood, relieve stress, and generally anything else that is beneficial for you.

I have experienced the NLP technique of reframing in changing my own behaviors, moods, fears, etc., as well as helping other people change, to be far more powerful than other NLP techniques like the swish pattern. Knowing how to reframe will give you a skill for life that you can use anywhere at anytime to improve something about you or another person. It is a great book that teaches a great technique.

The six pages straight after the preface and before part one of the book, titled “Mind-lining a Toxic Idea”, is worth a thousand times the book itself. I say this with absolute confidence that reading those six pages will change your life. In those six pages, the 26 reframing techniques are applied to “failure”. The word “failure” will be eliminated from your life for good if you apply the simple reframes, but it doesn’t stop there. The reframes will not only cancel out the bad emotions and thoughts towards failure, but the reframes transform the concept of failure into a power energy source for better behavior, mood, skills, and health. Is living a life absent from seeing yourself as a failure important to you? Imagine the happiness and success you would experience when failure isn’t even a concept in your life?

To wrap this review up, I want to use the mind-line of story-telling. There was a poor illiterate man who lived by himself out in the woods. One day out in the woods he stumbled across a piece of paper. It was written in Chinese with a few strange diagrams that he couldn’t understand so he just through away the paper. Years later a few Chinese tourists were visiting the area and found the same object. With a scream of excitement, the tourists realized they had accidentally stumbled upon an ancient Chinese document. The tourists later sold their discovery to a collector for a large amount of money.

The map which is your understanding of reality can give you far more things than wealth if you no longer ignore it. Learn to alter your map and you empower yourself to change your own, and other people’s behaviors, habits, moods, attitudes, skills, and health. I know you want what is best for yourself and your relationships, so I recommend you grab your hands around a copy of Michael Hall and Bobby Bodenhamer’s Mind-lines: Lines for Changing Minds. The little price of the book is nothing when you consider that everything you experience in this world is dependent on how you frame it. You can get your copy from Amazon by clicking here today.

This is a book review of Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power.

Robert Greene is author of three savvy books covering seduction, war, and power. His interest in topics that others overlook because they appear greedy, manipulative, and condescending have caused people to frown upon his work. However, on the “opposite side” of his reviewers are those who are greatly thankful for his teachings on the power, manipulation, and the seduction games that take place regardless of whether you like the topics or not.

The 48 Laws of Power is divided into 48 chapters and starts off with a fascinating discussion in the preface on the arguments many people have against power. The author says many people think that the laws of power are immoral or unfairly differentiate people. It would be unfair for all people to have equal power because each of us are unique and have different skill sets. People who unconsciously use moralistic arguments against power, openness, and attempts to be fair, actually further their own power or bring someone else’s power down. Robert Greene goes on to say:

“To some people the notion of consciously playing power games – no matter how indirect – seems evil, asocial, a relic of the past. They believe they can opt out of the game by behaving in ways that have nothing to do with power. You must beware of such people… they are often among the most adept players at power.”

Power games are inevitable. However, I won’t say that all the 48 laws are useful in all your relationships because power isn’t everything; though many people do underestimate the importance of power in everyday living. From personal relationships to dealing with customers, having more power will benefit you – and when you use it correctly, it will benefit the relationship. Thinking otherwise is just using the same moralistic arguments Robert Greene discusses in the preface. Nonetheless, even to me some laws of power seemed harsh, but this is the reality of power. Power isn’t always meant to be pretty. We are talking about power; not a book about fairies and pixey-love.

Moving on, the historical research within the book is phenomenal. The author and his team of researchers have dug through many books on history to provide hundreds of stories from those who have used the laws of power. The reader is given insights into powerful historical greats like Sun Tzu, con artist Joseph “Yellow Kid” Weil, and seducer Casanova.

With the large number of references to Niccolo Machiavelli and Baltasar Gracian, I assume these were Robert Greene’s primary figures of authority from which he developed most of his principles. Even if you do not have much interest in history, such as myself, you should still find the stories interesting. The stories are used in each chapter to show how the law of power being discussed was used to increase power and when it was disobeyed to decrease power. An “interpretation” section is provided after each observance and transgression of the law to help you understand the interpersonal dynamics and power games being played by those in the story. The author’s interpretation of the story provides a great way of understanding the keys to power and adapting the principles to your everyday life – it isn’t fluff.

Most of the chapters use the following structure: transgression of the law using a story from modern history, interpretation of the story, observance of the law using a story from modern history, interpretation of the story, keys of power which discusses the relevant law of power in depth, an image to memorize the law, and the law’s reversal which discusses when the law shouldn’t be used. Here’s one example of an image used for law 20 (Do not commit to anyone): “A Thicket of Shrubs. In the forest, one shrub latches on to another, entangling its neighbor with its thorns, the thicket slowly extending its impenetrable domain. Only what keeps its distance and stand apart can grow and rise above the thicket.”

Initially it may appear some rules contradict each other such as law 15 (Crush your enemy totally) and law 47 (Do not go past the mark you aimed for; in victory, learn when to stop) as well as law 16 (Use absence to increase respect and honor) and law 18 (Do not build fortresses to protect yourself – isolation is dangerous). However, discussing the latter, you can see that they aren’t really contradicting. Absence and connecting with people each has its usefulness in specific circumstances. You are advised to be flexible and use common sense to determine each law’s application. Each law has a context in which it should be applied.

Most of the pages within the book have fables, quotes, and small interesting stories which “distill three thousand years of the history of power.” Anecdotes line one side of the pages to nicely complement what you are learning on the law of power in the chapter. At a large 450 pages, the book mimics a textbook. You can expect to discover many great techniques to increase your power, stop yourself from being manipulated by others, and get what you want. Securely grab your copy now from Amazon by clicking here.

This is a book review of Dale Carnegie’s all time international classic How to Win Friends and Influence People. It is a fairly large review with the occasional “diversion” from the topic because I feel it is appropriate for this classic book.

The original version of this book was written in 1937 with just 5,000 copies in print. It didn’t take long for the word to spread about the value contained within the book for further copies to be produced. The book has spread like wildfire since then with over 16 million copies in print. Business owners, salespersons, and generally people who are interested in better relating to their fellow human being, have constantly referred to How to Win Friends and Influence People over the years as one of the best books you can read on the subject.

In every subject, there are usually one or two books that people categorize as a necessary read if you are to succeed in that subject. In the wealth world there is Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich and Wallace Wattles’ The Science of Getting Rich. In the advertising world there is Claude Hopkins’ Scientific Advertising. In the self-help world there is Maxwell Maltz’s Psycho-cybernetics or The New Psycho-Cybernetics. While in the human relationships and communication skills world, the number one book to read is How to Win Friends and Influence People. There are people who will of course disagree with this, but there are a substantial number of authority experts in the respective industry that refer to these books as the best ones you can read.

All of these books date back many decades and were the pioneers in their industry. Books which discuss the psychology of being financially successfully to this day use the exact same principles mentioned in Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich which was firstly published in 1937. The same goes for other self-help classics like As A Man Thinketh by James Allen. I strongly encourage you to read these books as they are the original source of much self-help information taught today. The same is true for How to Win Friends and Influence People. Just about any communication skills book today will mention a principle that originated from this book whether it be to show interest in the other person or to not criticize. It is the authority book in human relations.

If you’re not really familiar with self-help classics, you may be wondering how the heck can books written back in the early to mid 1900s be useful today? Surely humanity has made many more great discoveries that are far superior than this “old school” material?

I use to think the exact same thing prior to reading such books. However, there is something to do with learning about a subject from the core, the nectar, the heart of its original pioneers that makes the information so powerful. I have literally heard hundreds of people praise How to Win Friends and Influence People. Originally, I thought it was because the book was most people’s introduction to communication skills. I thought, “Sure, the book is great because it’s your first experience in learning the amazing effect of good communication.”

What I later found, which is what many people have experienced, is that by reading the book one time every year you experience a powerful new realization. Life-changing realizations are also frequently experienced by many people when reading Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. The awareness and experience you have at the present time isn’t enough to completely grasp the principles in these classic books.

After reading the 2007 edition of this book, I’ve come to realize that the book’s four parts which deal with techniques to handle people, ways to make people like you, winning people to your way of thinking, and being a successful leader, are the fundamental skills of all human relations. I constantly teach these principles without realizing it because they are so fundamental to relationships. The very important point I’d like to distinguish here is that fundamentals are not necessarily basic skills. Fundamentals in any area form a solid framework for further skill development.

An athlete cannot become good in his or her sport by not having correct fundamentals. Sport coaches will tell you that an athlete who doesn’t have the right fundamentals is tough to coach because every skill builds off the foundation laid by fundamental skills. Professional athletes constantly fine tune their fundamental skills because they know the profound affect such skills have on their professional abilities. Advanced techniques are only useful when the person knows the fundamentals. Also, having good fundamentals produces an exponential effect that puts you ahead of 95% of people, while advanced techniques in any area produces a slight improvement that gives you an edge of the 5% who also have sound fundamentals.

Tiger Woods can work on perfecting his 2 iron stinger where he hits the ball with a very low trajectory, while the average golfer is better off focusing on fundamentals like a better grip, stance, and pre-shot routines. However, Tiger still needs to monitor and work on these fundamentals as well. The skills taught in How to Win Friends and Influence People constantly need to be revisited and worked on regardless of how good you think you are at communicating.

At the start of each chapter, Dale discusses the chapter’s principle. He then provides an example of how someone, mostly students from his speaking course, have applied the principle in their business or family life. The stories themselves can be a revelation at times as you become aware of how and in what situations the principles can be applied.

The majority of the book discusses concepts instead of word-for-word techniques. One principle is making the other person feel important. Dale doesn’t tell you to say exactly this and that. He provides the “what,” which is the concept, with a little bit of the “how.”

The table of contents is below:

The principles of each part are nicely summarized at its end so you can easily review and memorize them. Overall, each principle may seem simple at times, but don’t let simple deceive you into its power. These are powerful principles that are still changing the lives of those who’ve read the book five or more times. If you don’t already have a copy of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, you need to go grab your copy now from Amazon by clicking here.

You’re about to unlock what I believe is the greatest human need in communication. I’m going to show you how to connect with your fellow human being in the most intimate way possible – a way that many people have never experienced their entire life. This is something I know the world so desperately needs. It is something that you so desperately need. I would not pour excessive amounts of time and effort into this article if I failed to believe this article would change how you think about communication forever.

See if you can figure out the common thread between the following short scenarios: Your partner leaves the room in anger after another argument; A friend lashes out on you despite you having done nothing wrong; Your children’s constant disobedience makes you extremely frustrated causing you to yell and do other things you later regret; Your supervisor or boss orders you to complete a task leaving you to feel controlled like a puppet on a stick.

These are just a list of common scenarios where we know there is a better way to handle the situation, but we just can’t figure it out. A lot of the times, our emotions get the better of us causing us to handle the situation poorly, yet often in these times of conflict there is something we can’t quite put our finger on. We know something is wrong and that we can fix it, but something we don’t know that is going on is just out of our reach.

Why does your partner become angry at you when you remain calm and willing to communicate? Why would a friend lash out on you despite you having done nothing wrong? Why does your children’s disobedience seem as though they are doing it constantly on purpose? Why does communication at work seem to only be on the surface as it ignores the more important issues skin-deep? There are thousands of similar situations to the ones listed above that all have a common thread.

Let’s face it, everything we say to another person attempts to get a response from them. Whether we are trying to get a person to agree, comply with our request, conduct a certain behavior, feel a certain emotion, or simply listen in silence – there is a response each of us seek because we want to be acknowledged that we were received (that’s a hint with regard to the commonality amongst the above situations). Your partner would not become angry at you and your children would work with you – instead of against you – if you followed this rule.

It is said that all communication is hypnosis because all communication is about inducing states within people. Some people are more effective in inducing states of emotion and thought within others because they have more effective communication skills. A salesman who can induce the desired buying state of emotion and thought in a buyer will likely make the sale instead of a salesman who desperately tries to persuade and sell. We are all constantly trying to make others feel, think, or behave a certain way with our communication.

The process I’m about to discuss in this article is one created by the Center for Nonviolent Communication. The organization is a nonprofit organization founded by Marshall Rosenberg who has written Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life. Rosenberg and a couple hundred other people who are well trained in the process, conduct workshops throughout the world teaching people their techniques known as Nonviolent Communication (NVC). The NVC process has changed the lives of millions of people who have learned the techniques directly and those who have been fortunate enough to have those trained in the NVC process use the techniques on them.

By learning the NVC process, which I’m going to teach you below, you will be extremely effective in inducing a state of connection with the person you are talking to. I’m talking about a level of connection that most people will never experience their entire life.

If you are after a process that changes a person’s behavior, then NVC is not the best one to use in your situation. NVC is about building an intimate relationship and connecting with people at a deep level by using effective communication to met the needs of both people involved. I’m not saying it can’t be used to change a person’s behavior – it definitely can – but the underlying purpose of the process is to breakdown conflict to let people connect at a very intimate level. Once you have sufficiently gone through certain steps in the process, then you can begin using your negotiation skills to persuade the person. If you try to persuade the person upfront without having used the NVC process, you will often find the person resisting you – emotionally blocking you out – and ignoring what you have to say. This is especially true for you if you feel others don’t understand you.

When a person disagrees with you, refuses to comply with a request, or is angry at you, a poor communicator will firstly try to express oneself. The person seeks to be understood before seeking to understand. An effective communicator and one who uses the NVC process, will seek to understand the person, which in turn leads to their own need of being understood. The secret to being understood is to understand.

Remember that little teaser above where I said I’d tell you the commonality amongst the situations mentioned earlier? What I said about the need to be understood is that shared relationship. Your angry partner wants to be understood. Your friend wants to be understood and will have almost zero frustration once you understand. Your children want to be understood which will lead them to talking to you about intimate issues. Even your boss and supervisor want to be understood. The power of Nonviolent Communication lies in understanding others and having them understand you.

Answer this question truthfully. How many people in your life truly understand you on a frequent basis? Think about the question for some time because it’s important to have an understanding of understanding.

If you’re like most people, you won’t have one person in your life that frequently and truly understands you when the two of you communicate together. If you are fortunate enough to have someone who understands you when the two of you are talking together, show your gratitude to the person by telling them right now how thankful you are. Phone the person if need be. Having an understanding person in your life does amazing things for your mental health which is why we need to be understanding and be understood.

I asked this question because I want to demonstrate the scarce number of people in this world who seek to intimately understand the people they talk to. Very few people actually care about understanding others and as a result, they fail to be understood. I believe this is why most individuals who complain about “no one understands me” are constantly misunderstood. They live on a one-way street seeking to receive before they give. Violence is so widespread because on one hand there is one person desperately wanting to be understood, and on the other hand is another person they are in conflict with wanting to be understood.

The failure to see each other’s needs means neither has his needs met causing an outbreak of emotional or possibly physical destruction. Ignorance to understanding another person without imposing judgments or solutions is what I believe to be a secret of world peace. “Peace cannot be achieved through violence,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson, “it can only be attained through understanding.”

The anger and frustration present in everyday situations appears to be irrelevant to deeper issues, yet it is our little bursts of anger that contribute to a global scale of war and hatred. Our everyday outbursts of anger, frustration, and misunderstandings has as much – but probably greater – impact on peace and love than kind actions.

I’ve written about the reciprocation rule and how you can get a lot of the things you wish – often in greater quantities – by firstly doing that which you wish to be done to you. That sounds a bit wishy-washy, but it is a universal law that holds true in many of life’s situations. Once you learn to understand others, they will be far more willing to understand you.

The need to be understood is quite possibly the greatest unmet need amongst humankind. If you can fulfill someone’s need to be understood, you will trigger amazing things that you have probably never experienced before when communicating with someone. Thanks to Dan Kennedy, a great marketer that I intently learn from, I came across a quote by Cavett Robert, the founder of the National Speakers Association, who said, “Most people are walking around, umbilical cord in hand, looking for a new place to plug it in.” If you can be that “socket” by understanding the person and empathically receiving the person’s needs, you will build an electrifying connection with the person. You will see something about the person change before your very eyes. They will know something deep is going on without having understood the process themselves.

The Nonviolent Communication process is a very simple technique once you understand it; though it is not exactly simple to use because emotional pollution clogs your thinking. With practice, you will become better at implementing the process and be more successful in your communication and relationships. Over time, provided you continually practice the techniques and polish your skills, you will become excellent at using the process because you have got to be willing to learn, change, and grow. Nobel Prize winner George Bernard Shaw said, “Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”

The process has four steps: observing, feeling, needing, and requesting. There are really eight steps because you firstly apply the four steps to the other person, then you apply them to yourself. Remember what I said before about seeking to understand before being understood? Applying the stages firstly on the other person is a way of initiating understanding so that you can be understood.

You firstly empathically go through the four steps with the other person, then you apply the four steps to yourself. This is a very important concept to grasp. You go through the four steps first on the other person otherwise he or she will not listen to what you sre saying. Use the visualization of picking up a vacuum and firstly having to empathically “suck up” the person’s communication. You then turn on the reverse switch and “spit it out” in an empathic manner. Having successfully done this process, you are then ready to use NVC on yourself.

Most people, including myself, identify a few problems in firstly focusing on the other person. If you haven’t identified one or a few of these now, you’ll likely come across them as you continue to read about the process below. The biggest concern when using NVC is that you are forgoing your own needs and concerns. People think they have to suppress their own needs and emotions such as anger. The process actually encourages you to express intense emotions – especially anger – but not in the way we are conditioned to believe that is good for us. By following the NVC process to express yourself, you prevent destructive expressions of anger and frustration to help heal your emotional self.

Observing

The first step of the process involves observing the other person. You are to observe what they are specifically doing, not being. By far, the greatest mistake in this stage is observing the person with an evaluation. People evaluate by using judgments in their observations which pollutes their understanding of what they see and hear with the person they are listening to.

Think of a birdwatcher who is carefully and calmly admiring nearby birds. The birdwatcher doesn’t disturb the birds. Rather, he carefully watches to see what the birds are doing while listening to the sounds they make. He may even respond to a bird’s sound in the same manner by whistling. At the observation stage, if people were birdwatchers and they were observing a bird (the other person), they would fire gunshots, scream, and throw rocks at the bird. Shooting a gun, screaming, and throwing rocks at a bird is equal to evaluating the person you are “listening” to instead of just observing.

I can almost guarantee you that when you’re listening to your partner, a customer, or coworker, that your “effective communication” and “excellent listening skills” involve shooting a gun at the person by evaluating them through judgments. I estimate that 99% of people using the process fail at this stage, but I occasionally fail at this stage so don’t get discouraged. It is a tough concept to grasp for many people.

Evaluations can take many forms. An evaluation basically means you are not receiving someone’s communication for what it truly is. You mostly “shoot a gun,” “scream,” and “throw rocks” when observing by judging, criticizing, blaming, or using general words.

Those who have my communication secrets of making people like you program will deeply understand the common ways we intoxicate our ability to listen to others. I believe your ability to actively listen without polluting the person’s message with your thoughts and feelings is one of the greatest communication skills you can obtain. This is why I’ve written separate chapters in the book on criticism, diagnosing, labeling, reassuring, and moralizing. They are the greatest destroyers of relationships. Understanding them allows you to communicate in a “magnetic manner” that builds a connection in your relationship.

I’ll give you some common examples of how people stuff up the listening process by using the 12 communication barriers I give in my program. The first part of the dialog is person one, while the second part is person two who uses the communication barriers:

There is a lot more to these 12 secrets so I encourage you to read more about them here. These are all times that we should be observing the speaker instead of providing evaluations. To demonstrate this concept more, because it is vital to understand, here are some more examples of evaluations and the reason why they are evaluations:

• “You’re very kind by helping out.” – The word “kind” is a moralistic word as it is judgmental and distinguishes the behavior as good or bad. The person gets evaluated as good instead of the person’s behavior.
• “I reckon Mary is ugly.” – The adjective “ugly” evaluates Mary’s looks. It is dependent on each person. Other people will like Mary’s appearance.
• “All guys are clueless about managing a relationship.” – Too generalized and not specific enough.
• “She avoids me.” – The person needs to provide evidence as to why the woman avoids him/her. Also, the word “avoid” needs to not be used as it assumes the woman’s behavior is avoiding when in fact there are many other possibilities.
• “Britney, you don’t like my helping you.” – How does the person know Britney doesn’t like the person’s help? The person tries to mind-read instead of stating some visible emotional or physiological aspect that gives the signal of her dislike.

A wife who wants more intimacy with her husband may use the following statement to evaluate her husband, “Whenever I try and communicate or be intimate with you, you always avoid me.” Using such a statement will stimulate a typical response to an evaluating observation: the person will feel cornered and become extremely defensive. Arguments will break out and nothing good will come out of the conversation.

Poor observations cause conflict. In Frogs Into Princes by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, the authors discuss common words that damage communication. Each of us have our own representational system where we access information based on how it feels, sees, or smells. (If you don’t understand that, then I recommend you go visit my review of Frogs Into Princes and go grab yourself a copy of the book.) You build rapport and connection by talking directly to the person’s representational system. If the person uses seeing words in their language, then you can use seeing words to build rapport. A problem arises when words such as think, believe, or sense are used as they are too general and confusing. They don’t match any representational system, but more detrimental is the fact that they can be misinterpreted.

When you use generalized words or what is known as “Universal Quantifiers” such as always, never, ever, at all, and anytime, you are polluting your observation with an evaluation. You evaluate that the situation occurs “always” or “never” instead of truly observing when it happens. These examples are often exaggerations and not the truth – hence an evaluation. Using those words will likely evoke defensive behaviors and intensify arguments.

It’s vital to be specific in your wording. You can be specific by recalling a past situation and directly referring to it. The wife who is seeking intimacy with her husband is better off saying, “Last night when I tried to talk with you while we were sitting down and watching T.V., I felt unhappy because I needed to share my experiences with you.” That statement incorporates the next two step we will soon discuss. You may already be feeling the power of NVC.

An alternative application of universal quantifiers is clarifying someone else’s communication. Sally says, “My husband never appreciates me”, to which an effective communicator would reply, “Are you sure he never has?” Because we often use universal quantifiers as unconscious exaggerations to make a point more profound, clarifying the exaggeration and helping the person to become more aware and specific allows a solution to be more easily achieved.

An effective observing statement typically starts off with, “When you hear…” or “When you see…” The goal of this stage is to reflect back to the person what you are observing. As stated, it must be free of evaluations.

Don’t be focused on the intellectual level when reflecting back what you are observing. It will greatly hurt the person’s feeling of connection with you. (There’s a whole chapter in my communication secrets program on the balance of logic and emotion in your communication.) It’s vitally important to be focused on emotion and not logic. In other words, reflect back the person’s feelings and not what the person is thinking. Reflecting back what the person is thinking involves judgment and evaluation on your part because you don’t know what they are thinking.

Some good examples of observing are:

• “When you hear me tell you to do work around the house…”
• “I see that you’re unhappy with the changes in the office?”
• “It sounds to me as though you’re worried about losing a friend.”
• “I see that you’re excited about winning tonight!”

These statements are all free from polluting judgments and other evaluations – allowing you to build understanding and empathy. A lot of times your observation may be incorrect, but this doesn’t matter when you observe without evaluating because the person will correct you.

When using the observation step on yourself (think of it as the fifth step), it is again vitally important to remove evaluations. This will help you gain clarity as to what you really need which will help you fulfill that need. You are verbalizing these observations to the person you are communicating with once you have used the four stages on the other person.

Observing statements of yourself that you communicate to the other person typically start off with, “When I hear…” or “When I see…” Examples include:

• “When I hear you speak loudly…”
• “When I see you walk away from me…”
• “When I come home from work…”
• “When I don’t hear your appreciation of my cooking…”

It’s just as important to not include evaluations from the observations of yourself. Your goal is to communicate yourself clearly such that the other person understands what you’re feeling. Evaluative statements of the above examples with regards to observing yourself would include:

• “When I hear you become angry…”
• “When I see you avoid me…”
• “When I come home from work and see you annoy me…”
• “When you don’t like my cooking…”

Bad, bad, bad. These are all evaluative statements. Here you are judging the person to be angry or avoiding you. You criticize the person that they annoy you or dislike your cooking. Again, I highly recommend you read about my program by clicking here and grab your copy to learn more about ways you “poison” communication.

Feeling

Having observed the person, you’re next step is to identify the feelings he or she is experiencing. Like the first step, there are a few common mistakes made at this stage that destroy effective communication.

But before I list the common mistakes and how to express the person’s feelings as well as your own feelings, I’ll give you a few successful feeling statements to give you an idea of what this step involves. Continuing on from the provided examples in the observing stage for the other person:

• “When you hear me tell you to do work around the house, you feel overwhelmed…”
• “I see that you’re unhappy with the changes in the office? This makes you feel restless…”
• “It sounds to me as though you’re worried about losing a friend. This makes you feel brokenhearted…”
• “I see that you’re excited about winning tonight! You feel energetic…”

Also, continuing on from the provided examples in the observing stage for yourself:

• “When I hear you speak loudly, I feel scared…”
• “When I see you walk away from me, I feel detached…”
• “When I come home from work, I feel exhausted…”
• “When I don’t hear your appreciation of my cooking, I feel depressed…”

Upon seeing those statements, which involve the observing and feeling steps, you’re probably thinking that the feeling stage is very simple. You might be saying, “Cool. All I gotta say is what the other person feels and what I feel.” If it only were that simple.

One of the greatest mistakes made at this stage is choosing the wrong feeling. I consider myself an emotionally aware guy with regards to my own emotions and others’ emotions, yet I still incorrectly state my own and other people’s feelings. However, incorrectly expressing someone’s feelings isn’t as much a concern as incorrectly expressing your own feelings. It is more important to accurately express your own emotions than it is to accurately express the other person’s emotions. When expressing other’s feelings, it doesn’t really matter if you incorrectly express their feelings because the person will likely correct you. But unless the person has good communication skills and a good ability to interpret emotions, you’re the only person who will accurately express your feelings so it’s important to choose an accurate feeling.

Having a good emotional vocabulary is an essential part of the Nonviolent Communication process. In the example, “When I see you walk away from me, I feel detached…”, if the person instead said, “When I see you walk away from me, I feel angry…” a huge misunderstanding will occur – assuming that the person actually feels detached instead of angry. It is easy to confuse feeling detached with anger. The person may be angry, but what’s more important is their feeling of anger coming from the disconnection occurs from the detachment. Saying that oneself is angry is too vague in this example because it can be misinterpreted in various ways. The Nonviolent Communication book has a useful large list of feelings when our needs are being met and when our needs aren’t being met. I encourage you to read up on the list a few times to expand your emotional vocabulary. Alternatively, you can view a list of feelings online.

After not having a large emotional vocabulary, another big mistake is the wrong level of responsibility for your own and others’ emotions. You need to take complete responsibility for your own emotions while not taking responsibility for other people’s emotions. Let me explain.

Firstly, when you fail to take responsibility for how you feel, you will blame, condemn, and criticize others for how you feel. You feel a victim of this world. You believe other people become the reason for your pain. I believe we all have to continually remind ourselves to take responsibility for how we feel because we often see ourselves as a victim of another’s actions.

In addition to taking responsibility for your own feelings, it’s important to not be responsible for other people’s feelings. When relationships advance in importance, it’s common to begin feeling responsible for the person’s emotions. If your partner is grumpy, then you may feel responsible to make him or her happy. If your partner is sad, then you may feel responsible to lift them out of their depressing mood. Statements such as, “What did I do to make you feel…” and “Have I caused you to feel…” are signs of feeling responsible for other person’s feelings. This feeling of responsibility is dangerous to a happy and successful relationship because the person you feel responsible for becomes a liability.

I’m not saying you must ignore the person’s emotions. Definitely not. Rather, you need to empathize with the person instead of making yourself responsible. Observing without evaluation and expressing the person’s feelings is powerful empathy at work. Take note of that. Express the person’s feelings; don’t express the person’s thoughts or words. This process is far more helpful for you, your partner, and the relationship than the many ways feeling responsible manifest.

Your partner storms into the room you are in and starts shouting at you. You will communicate poorly when engaging in an emotionally intense dicussion with logical statements or making yourself responsible for how the person is feeling. In this example, logical statements could include, “I didn’t do that,” “That isn’t what happened,” and “You’re missing the point.”

Instead of talking about the content of what your partner is saying and getting caught up in a logical battle that can’t be won, you need to focus on the feelings by empathizing. An effective statement would be, “You feel angry because you need…” With intense emotions, one or two empathizing statements are likely to not be enough. Just keep going through the process and you’ll see amazing communication changes taking place. To continue the blatant self-promotion, because I really believe you will benefit, I highly recommend you get my communication secrets program by clicking here and reading the chapter on logic and emotion.

Needing

A lot of what I discussed in the feeling stage with regards to responsibility is just as important in the needing stage. It’s common to blame and criticize others when stating your needs. You don’t actually state your need, but rather complain about the person not doing something you want. You also must not feel responsible for the person’s needs. Remember to empathize instead of feeling responsible. Once you do this, then you can take the necessary steps to fulfill the person’s needs. I understand this is what people are trying to achieve when feeling responsible for other people’s feelings and needs, but the outcome in doing so isn’t desirable and is often damaging to the relationship.

In the needing stage, your first goal is to express the other person’s needs so you and they know what it is that they require. Your second goal is to express your needs to let the other person know what it is that you require. In the Nonviolent Communication process, this is the third and seventh stage respectively. The definition of a “need” says it is a requirement. For our use, it also incorporates something you or the other person wants like personal space, quietness, or attention.

By focusing on the needs of those concerned and your own needs, you communicate at a whole new layer of communication. When we want something, we complain about what we don’t want. There’s a very powerful distinction here. A manager needs the daily quota completed, but instead he blames employees and criticizes them with statements like, “You’re not working fast enough. I can’t afford for you to be working at this pace.” In addition to the criticizing and vague statements, the manager hasn’t stated what he wants. He has just said that he “…can’t afford for you to be working at this pace.” The manager may have the goal of achieving the daily quota and a good intention to not hurt employees, but this isn’t the message that is being received. The employees will feel attacked in addition to not knowing what exactly their manager wants. I highly doubt this manager will have a happy and productive workforce.

A husband comes home from work and needs some personal space, while his wife needs some intimacy and communication. Instead of the husband saying he needs personal space, he’ll say what he doesn’t want like, “I don’t want you to bug me” or “not now”. Instead of the wife saying she needs intimacy, she’ll criticize her husband or state what she doesn’t want such as, “You never want to talk to me” or “I don’t like when you avoid me”. Not only is this couple failing to express their needs correctly, but they are also completely failing to perceive their partner’s needs. You’ll also notice that those statements include evaluations instead of pure observations.

Continuing on from the provided examples in the observing and feeling stages for the other person:

• “When you hear me tell you to do work around the house, you feel overwhelmed because you need rest…”
• “I see that you’re unhappy with the changes in the office? This makes you feel restless because you need consideration…”
• “It sounds to me as though you’re worried about losing a friend. This makes you feel brokenhearted. You need someone very close to you…”
• “I see that you’re excited about winning tonight! You feel energetic because you have a need to win this important game.”

A common problem nearly every person makes when talking to someone who is angry is they feel attacked and also become angry. There is an amazing thought that has worked for me so well to overcome this problem. It is something I use just about everyday to separate myself from other people’s below average behavior and communication. It is a way of not dragging myself down in someone else’s anger, poor communication, or rudeness.

When I feel an urge of anger towards someone, I simply think, “They aren’t making me angry. It’s my response. The way I’m reacting is making me angry.” I aim to reframe my thoughts using various reframing techniques from NLP. Possible reframes you could use include, “They aren’t making me angry. It’s my response.” “I know the person cares about me because of what the person did last night for me.” and “He’s probably angry because he has had a tiring day.” No one can control how you feel without your permission. As Marshall Rosenberg said, “I never have to worry about another person’s response, only how I react to what they say.”

Think about this concept of anger very deeply. Someone doesn’t make you angry. This is usually a life-changing “Ah-ha!” moment for many people. The messages you run through your mind after observing a person’s anger is what makes you angry. You “reason with yourself” what their shouting, swearing, and anger means. You’ll probably think that such messages mean they don’t respect you, care for you, or want to hear your opinion. It is this rationalizing process that makes you angry. The person doesn’t make you angry; it is how you react that makes you angry. If you’re reacting instead of responding, chances are that you’re angry. The reframing examples I gave you above are ways of controlling your interpretation of the person’s behavior so that you can think more calmly to maintain your poise.

When someone is expressing anger, they have a need. As hard as it is to think that way in an emotionally intense situation, their anger is a poor attempt to fulfill an unmet need. The person has a need somewhere and they are trying to make you aware of it – often in an unconscious manner. Knowing that a person’s anger is originating from an unmet need prevents you from taking it personally.

Okay, so far in this stage you’ve learned about other’s needs and a little about your own, so let’s discuss expressing your own needs more in depth. Continuing on from the provided examples in the observing and feeling stages for yourself:

• “When I hear you speak loudly, I feel scared because I need emotional safety…”
• “When I see you walk away from me, I feel detached. I need physical closeness…”
• “When I come home from work, I feel exhausted. I need to relax…”
• “When I don’t hear your appreciation of my cooking, I feel depressed because I need to be appreciated…”

Many of us think we know our needs, but it’s not funny how far out of tune we are with our own personal needs. If you can’t correctly express your need, let a lone have awareness of your need, then good communication is very unlikely.

When you come to the needing stage, you’ll probably catch yourself out a few times in saying an incorrect want or saying what you don’t want. You want to be accepted yet say “I need to not be ignored”. You want to be touched yet say “I need you to not be so distanced”. You want to be understood yet say “I need to feel connected”. When you aren’t in tune with your own needs or when you express what you don’t want, you can’t expect someone to magically fulfill your needs. As with feelings, you don’t have to be sure of what the other person needs. Empathically receiving and giving allows you to help build clarification so that you can later correctly express their needs.

By accurately “tuning in” to your own needs, it becomes so much easier to “tune in” to another’s needs. I think this is because we begin to think at a level of needs. We become aware of the needs instead of missing them purely because of our focus of consciousness. We see a deeper reason behind each word and body gesture. As I said earlier, all communication is trying to induce certain states of feelings and thoughts in others. Thinking at a level of needs makes you see the deeper reasoning behind a person’s actions.

Requesting

The final stage of the Nonviolent Communication process is the simplest so there isn’t much need to discuss this stage in depth. It is also the most powerful in changing a person’s behavior. The most important thing to keep in mind when making a request is it needs to be specific and not general. A request cannot be accurately fulfilled if it is vague.

Continuing on from the provided examples in the observing and feeling stages for the other person:

• “When you hear me tell you to do work around the house, you feel overwhelmed because you need rest. Would you be willing to workout a weekly plan regarding the household chores?”
• “I see that you’re unhappy with the changes in the office? This makes you feel restless because you need consideration. Would you be willing to accept the changes this time and in the future we’ll ask you for your thoughts regarding the issue?”
• “It sounds to me as though you’re worried about losing a friend. This makes you feel brokenhearted. You need someone very close to you. Would you be willing to solve the issue with your friend?”
• “I see that you’re excited about winning tonight! You feel energetic because you have a need to win this important game.” (Doesn’t really have a requesting stage because it’s an unusual application of the NVC process. You could say, “Would you be willing for me to come watch?”)

The request you make is dependent on what you are trying to achieve. In the third example regarding the friend, you may be annoyed about the person complaining about their friend and not doing something about it. Your request would therefore be something along the lines of, “Would you be willing to discuss the issue more in depth with your friend?” However, losing a friend will probably not even require a requesting statement. All you are likely to be doing is listening to the person, empathizing, and comforting them (not reassuring), instead of bringing about changes to the person’s friendship-life.

The requesting stage is usually only made once or twice during the whole process, while the first, second, and third stages can occur many times. The provided examples shouldn’t be fully used in one statement. By reading those examples above, you can probably see that it lacks empathy. That’s why you don’t just say the observation, need, feeling, and request one after the other.

You can observe, feel, observe, feel, need, feel, need, and then request. It all depends on what is appropriate for the situation. Remember the analogy I mentioned earlier about the vacuum. “Suck up” the person’s communication first before moving on. You will probably “miss a few spots” and constantly have to go back through several stages. Marshall Rosenberg says you will know when you’ve adequately empathized when the tension reduces or the person doesn’t have anything else to say.

Having successfully used the NVC process, you are then ready to use NVC on yourself. You can run through the NVC on yourself in your mind to control your emotions, but also be aware that in doing so, you will not be conscious enough of the other person to adequately empathize.

Continuing on from the provided examples in the observing and feeling stages for yourself:

• “When I hear you speak loudly, I feel scared because I need emotional safety. Would you be able to not yell the next time we argue?”
• “When I see you walk away from me, I feel detached. I need physical closeness. Would you like to cuddle when we’re alone and together?”
• “When I come home from work, I feel exhausted. I need to relax. Would you allow me to sit down for 15 or so minutes after work?”
• “When I don’t hear your appreciation of my cooking, I feel depressed because I need to be appreciated. Would you say ‘thank you’ or give another form of appreciation around once a week?”

“Would you like…” is the typical requesting statement made when making a request because it doesn’t order, threaten, or blatantly advise the other person.

When someone tries to connect with you by reflecting back what you are saying, the worst thing you can do is become angry and condemn them for not understanding you. Thank them for making an effort and then clarify yourself. I know someone who gets frustrated when you don’t hear or understand what he says. The people talking with him are afraid to seek clarification. What then happens is people pretend to hear him as a means of avoiding his anger.

Let’s say you tell somebody you’re angry about work and they reflect back that you’re depressed. What you do is thank them for trying to reflect back your feelings and follow that by clarifying yourself; not by saying “You don’t listen” or “You never understand me”.

Another brief note worth mentioning is repeating what I said earlier regarding what you want in the needing stage. When making a request, don’t say what you don’t want. Say what you do want. Be clear, be specific, and make it actionable. An example is not saying you’d like the person to work harder. Say something along the lines of, “Would you be willing to complete the daily report by 5pm each day?”

A Complete Application of the NVC Process

You’ve now learned a lot about empathizing, listening, and the entire Nonviolent Communication process. It’s time to give you an example of the entire process at work in a real-life example. The main points I want to demonstrate is how the process is applied and that the application of the process isn’t as logical as sequentially going through the stages.

The non-italicized text in brackets is my discussion of what is going on so that you can deeply understand the communication taking place and the reasoning behind the person who is attempting to communicate effectively. All the italicized text is provided to create and describe the scenario. You’ll see in the following example that you don’t have to use the techniques perfectly for them to work.

Ryan and Jessica are married. Recently, Ryan has been watching a lot of television, playing computer games, going out with friends, and working. He hasn’t been giving Jessica much intimacy as she would like despite her efforts of pointing out the problem and providing a solution. Ryan arrives home late one night after going out with friends and did not tell Jessica that he went out. He enters their house and the couple makes eye contact. Jessica has recently learned the Nonviolent Communication process so she is keen to use it and is likely to make some mistakes.

Jessica: (Jessica has been anxious about Ryan for hours and greets him inside their house with a very unhappy face.) Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick about you.

Ryan: (Ryan has a smile on his face after arriving home from a good night out.) Chill out. I’ve been out having a good time with my mates.

Jessica: (Jessica’s emotions get intense causing her to become angry and forget the effective communication skills she has been learning.) You want me to chill out while you’re out partying? Are you kidding me? You didn’t even tell me you were going out. You’ve been out having fun all the while I’ve been stuck here at home! (Here Jessica has been caught up in a logical battle with Ryan. She is talking about facts and trying to logically argue with him. The issue here is an emotional one which means her focus needs to be on emotions.)

Ryan: That’s why I don’t tell you because all you’re gonna do is annoy me. You’re a nagger. It’s not like I have to tell you everything. (Ryan has become angry and joins Jessica in the conflict by using the communication mistakes of diagnosing, criticizing, and labeling.)

Jessica: Ha! You’re like a little child. You don’t take responsibility for anything. I do all the work in this relationship. (Jessica has criticized, labeled, and used universal quantifiers – all things that will make Ryan defensive. She has taken Ryan’s criticism as a personal attack and becomes angrier because she has failed to recognize that Ryan was purely trying to met one of his needs.)

Ryan: Oh! And you’re little miss perfect? You’re just a big pain in the a**!

Jessica: (Jessica realizes that she has forgotten the Nonviolent Communication process and tries to begin using the communication techniques. She takes a moment of silence and breathes deeply to clear her head.) You feel annoyed and this makes you angry. (Jessica has turned her focus towards Ryan and first seeks to empathically receive what he has to say. The NVC process successfully begins!)

Ryan: You do more than annoy me! All you do is tell me what to do! You’re a stupid control freak and a b****!

Jessica: When you hear me tell you what to do, you feel controlled. (Jessica has reflected back another one of his statements by using the observation and feeling stage. She begins to see that he has an unmet need of freedom which prevents her from feeling attacked.)

Ryan: Yes! I hate it when you constantly nag me! I just want to have fun without you being a damn pest!

Jessica: So I can understand what is annoying to you, is what I said tonight an example of the nagging? (Jessica is unsure of what he means by “nag” and so she asked a good question to clarify what he means. She needs to be careful about taking responsibility for the way Ryan feels.)

Ryan: That’s just one small example of you being a damn pain.

Jessica: When you hear me ask you what you did, you feel irritated because you need freedom. (Jessica has observed, felt, and identified a need.)

Ryan: (Ryan begins to calm down though he is still agitated.) No! I… I just don’t like having to run everything through you like your some boss. (Jessica wrongly identified one of Ryan’s needs, though it didn’t matter because he then provided clarification.)

Jessica: When you hear me ask you what you did, you feel irritated because you need independence. (Jessica has rephrased her previous statement with a different need. She is attempting to identify what unmet need Ryan has because this will result in a solution.)

Ryan: I do need independence and you’re not giving it to me. You control me. You’re not fun at all. You’re just a pain.

Jessica: You feel detached from me when you hear me telling you what to do. (Jessica jumps back to the beginning of the NVC process by shifting her focus onto another feeling. Notice how she is empathizing with him instead of feeling attacked?)

Ryan: (The tension is reducing.) I guess that’s right. You’re no fun anymore. All you do now is annoy.

*Silence*

Jessica: When you hear me tell you what to do, you feel annoyed because you need more joy with me.

Ryan: That’s right.

Jessica: Would you be willing to help me become more fun? (Jessica sensed the tension in the air dissipate and felt Ryan has said what he wants. Therefore, she made a requesting statement.)

Ryan: I’d love to.

Jessica has used all four stages of the NVC process on Ryan and knows she is now able to use the process to express her feelings and needs, as well as making a request for Ryan to change his behavior.

Jessica: When you constantly go out without me, I feel detached. (Jessica has made a poor observation as she has made an evaluation with the word “constantly”.)

Ryan: I don’t constantly go out!

Jessica: You feel frustrated because you don’t go out much. (Jessica realizes Ryan may have another need and so she switches her focus back on him.)

Ryan: Yeah.

Jessica: (Jessica senses the number of times he goes out isn’t an issue and so she switches her focus back on herself.) When you do not go out with me like tonight, I feel alienated from you. I need to be close to you a few nights per week. (Jessica has made an accurate observation without evaluation and has given Ryan a specific example of the behavior she dislikes. She has also been able to identify her need of intimacy with Ryan.)

Ryan: I see. You need to be with me whenever I go out?

Jessica: Thanks for telling me your understanding of what I need. To clarify what I meant, I don’t mind if you go out by yourself, but for example, like tonight I wanted to go out with you because I need physical closeness. (Jessica thanks Ryan for trying to understand her even though he misunderstood. Most people would have felt frustrated, and started an argument, from Ryan’s excessive statement.)

Ryan: Okay.

Jessica: Would you be willing to tell me what you’re doing so that we can go out more often? (After having completed all seven stages, Jessica finally makes her request to change Ryan’s behavior. This is usually the first thing people do; not the last.)

Ryan: Sure. Provided that you become more fun like we said earlier.

Jessica: (Jessica hugs and kisses Ryan in huge relief as she has solved a problem that has annoyed her for months.) Agreed.

There are many possibilities that could have taken place in the above scenario and changed the communication, but I think this scenario beautifully demonstrates how the Nonviolent Communication is applied to real-life.

Some people, who for the first time use this powerful process that I have described, may find their partner or themselves breaking down in tears. That’s perfectly okay as it’s pure relief and likely to be a release of mental and emotional tension that has built up after years of being entirely misunderstood and ignored. When someone observes without evaluation, accurately sees your feelings, and is able to identify an unmet need you have, it builds a connection of understanding that most people will never experience in their entire lifetime.

Overall, the Nonviolent Communication process isn’t about getting people to do what you want. It isn’t a persuasive process. It is a method used to build compassion and connection in a relationship. In a world where we desperately need to be understood by others, there is a gap that Nonviolent Communication fills as it connects two people who would otherwise remain distanced, frustrated, and in ongoing conflict. Begin using this process today and I know you will begin to have more intimate relationships in your personal and professional world. Doing so will bring us closer to world peace. “We can never obtain peace in the outer world,” said the Dalai Lama, “until we make peace with ourselves.”

I highly recommend you go read my review of Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg and visit the provided link where you can order a copy of the book today. Secondly, if this article interested you, you can receive Nonviolent Communication skills training online. Lastly, you can get my communication secrets program here to discover more skills that work extremely well with the Nonviolent Communication process.

“Men are like sheep, of which a flock is more easily driven than a single one.” – Richard Whately

“Like the herd animals we are, we sniff warily at the strange one among us.” – Loren Eiseley

“We herd sheep, we drive cattle, we lead people. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.” – General George S. Patton

It’s 1964 in New York City and something terrifying occurred. Most people who have since heard the story, struggle to believe such an incident would take place. Psychologists tell us had these people been present at the same situation, they would have behaved in the same manner.

The event I’m referring to involves a lady by the name of Catherine Genovese who was publicly stabbed and killed. This killing had a lot of debate surrounding it from many people in various roles and responsibilities. They were all shocked at how such an event could occur and left dumbfounded at how the observers of the killing did nothing to save the lady.

Robert Cialdini in Influence describes the killing as one that wasn’t done discretely in a dark alley hidden from other people. The shocking event occurred loudly over a 35 minute period with 38 of her neighbors not doing a single thing. They didn’t even phone the police.

The media had previously concluded that the public killing took place because society was “cold” and careless of others. The observers didn’t provide much useful information as to why they did nothing to help the murdered victim. Most of them said something along the lines of, “I don’t know.” Neither answer was the true reason for the observers doing nothing useful to help the attacked lady.

Later on, a pair of psychologists eventually found an accurate explanation. Their explanation comes from the sixth principle of influence, social proof, which states people look to others and follow what they are doing. In times of uncertainty where it is difficult to determine what exactly is going on, we will become more ignorant in an effort to “stay under the radar” and not get noticed. Whether yells are cries for help or playful shouts, loud bangs are someone dropping a heavy object or a gunshot, or a person wobbling down the street at night is drunk or very ill, it is “more safe” for us to follow what everyone else is doing and do nothing.

The psychologists later tested a theory of whether the number of people present in an emergency would affect whether the person(s) present changed the likelihood of the victim being helped. The researchers didn’t bash people over the heads with baseball bats to create a victim-scenario! Rather, they had someone fake a seizure to create the scenario for research purposes. The researchers found that individuals who were alone with the victim were more willing to attend to someone who appeared to be in need of assistance than when groups of people were present.

You maybe thinking that what took place in 1964 is different to nowadays, but it isn’t. The principle of social proof that explains the reason for cold and ignorant behavior, is just as powerful today. In early 2007, there was an attack in Los Angeles during broad daylight which was caught on camera. You can watch it take place on YouTube before your very eyes as approximately a hundred people standby and do nothing. Watch the video and as you see a few people walk towards the attack, more people follow and watch closely. The whole video is an example of social proof at work.

As safety advice, should you find yourself in an accident, experiencing a health problem, or being in a situation that requires another person’s help, the best thing you can do is to remove as much uncertainty as possible. Make it clear you are in need of help by talking directly to specific individuals and telling them exactly what to do like calling an ambulance. Remove as much uncertainty from the situation as possible so that social proof doesn’t work against you. Do a friend, coworker, or family member a favor by emailing them a link of this article. You never know, they could find themselves in a dangerous situation and understanding how social proof works may safe their life.

Building Momentum and Leadership

The principle of social proof is a very important influential principle in leadership and generally getting masses of people to do what you want. It is quite possibly the greatest technique for persuading masses of people. Any leader has very little chance to get each individual of a group to do what he or she wants. This is where social proof comes in handy.

An effective leader can put the principle of social proof into practice by persuading those who will be more easily persuaded first through persuasive techniques and the other five principles of influence. By getting a few people to follow your lead and doing what you want, other members of the group observe those who are doing what you want and are more influenced to follow your request. “A mood can sweep through a group with great rapidity,” says Daniel Goleman in his highly praised book Social Intelligence, “a remarkable display of the parallel alignment of biological subsystems that puts everyone there in physiological synchrony.”

You can think of social proof as a chain reaction. Your request is an explosion while the people you are trying to persuade are crates of explosives. The ones closest to the explosion (those more easily persuaded) are triggered (comply with your request) once you give an effective “explosion” using influence and persuasion tactics. The next ones who are a little further behind (less easily persuaded) are then triggered because of nearby explosions (witnessing other people comply with your requests).

This process can go on until eventually, the most cold-hearted individual who completely refused to comply with the person’s request at the beginning, starts thinking “everyone else is doing it so I must be wrong. I’ll do it as well.” The principle of social proof is extremely powerful and can convert a defiant individual into agreement.

You can further make use of social proof to get what you want by arranging situations in a way that increases the chances of social proof. Some ideas I have of how you can rearrange a situation to create social proof is getting people you know well to work with you and comply with the request.

Another idea you can use for when you are in a social situation is communicating both directly and indirectly to someone about how great a friend is so that someone or a group likes your friend more. The reasoning behind this is that they are uncertain of how nice is your friend. You provide social proof and build momentum or a “chain reaction” that gets others to like your friend. As long as you’re not egotistic and not obvious you are boasting about your friend, this technique should work. Another example of social proof in social situations is provided later on.

If you are running a training program, you can ask certain people beforehand to do what you want when the time is appropriate. This tactic has unethically been used by multi-level marketing companies at seminars. They have “set up individuals in the crowd” to rush to the back of a room and buy the companies product when the public speaker announces the audience can now buy their books, audio, or video programs. The tactic can set off a stampede of people. I don’t recommend you use any influential technique unethically. It’s up to you on how you decide to use each principle of influence.

Popularity and Dating

If you are a guy or girl interacting with a person or group of people, you can leverage the situation and have them provide social proof to you through your body language. When a guy approaches a girl, a very common mistake is poor proxemics (positioning of the body). An unconfident guy will stand still while the group he is approaching remains seated. He places himself out of position which makes him look desperate and needy. If the guy were to make good use of proxemics, he would position himself such that it looks like the group he approached wants to talk to him. He subtly rearranges the group or manages to get himself in a more dominant position to build social proof. In The Game, author Neil Strauss achieved this when he approached two women at a bar who were facing the bartender. He lent against the bench between the two ladies instead of standing which allowed him to be more dominate in the situation and improve his social proof.

The law of proximity, a Gestalt laws of perceptual organization, states that objects near one another are grouped together. When we see groups of people together, we treat them in a collective manner. A guy who is with a celebrity will appear more desirable to both guys and women. The celebrity boosts the guy’s image purely through the law of proximity. Being in proximity to certain people increases your social proof.

Another tip you can use, that deals with rearranging the situation to increase social proof, is to purposefully influence those who are similar to the people you would like to influence. This is perfectly demonstrated by good testimonials for a company’s product or service. By ensuring those who are giving testimonials to be similar to potential customers, social proof is injected with steroids! As was discussed in the principle of liking, we like those are similar to us. The similarity leads to less resistance and increased compliance. When you observe someone in a similar situation to you who is similar to you, social proof and liking two very strong influential forces at work.

Overcome Fear

Social proof is a useful tactic to overcome fear. The principle of social proof is effective when we are uncertain. As fear is often built from uncertainty and not knowing what could happen or thinking something bad could happen, observing someone else confront the fear we have provides proof and certainty that the situation is safe.

As is true with social proof in general, you will be more likely to overcome a fear through social proof if the person or persons you are observing are similar to you. A 30 year old professional male who has a fear of public speaking will be more successful in using social proof to overcome his fear if he were to observe another 30 year old professional male speaking in public at a similar event. If the guy was to observe a high school captain giving a talk at a school assembly, he won’t gain much confidence from observing this situation.

Overall, social proof has many powerful applications to influence people. You can use social proof to have more people see you as their leader, boost your likability, increase the opposite sex’s attraction towards you, and overcome fear, to name a few useful situations this influential principle is powerful. By using the principle of social proof, your persuasive power will increase and you will be more able to get what you want.

If you’re reading this right now and you enjoyed this free course I’ve written for you on influencing people, then you probably would like to return the favor like many people already have. You can give a donation or invest in my communication secrets of making people like you program. Thanks.

Links in this Course: The 6 Principles of Influencing People

• Introduction to Influencing People
• 1. Commitment and Consistency
• 2. Reciprocation
• 3. Scarcity
• 4. Authority
• 5. Liking
• 6. Social Proof

You can download this entire course in a neat report format by right clicking here and selecting “save target as”. You can keep a copy safely on your computer. The report is in .pdf format so you will need this free software to view it.

“Man prefers to think what he prefers to be true.” – Francis Bacon, Sr.

“Leadership comes through respect, and a large part of respect is liking someone.” – Carol Leonard

“Each man is led by his own liking.” – Virgil

You arrive at a bus station where you wait for a bus to go to work. While you are waiting, a poor looking guy with messy hair who is dressed in dirty clothes sits next to you at the bus stop. “Ready for a big day today?” the man asks you and the conversation starts from there. You’re surprised that he is so open to talking with you as most people who wait at the bus stop hardly make eye contact with anyone.

The two of you have a fun and interesting conversation for five minutes, then your bus arrives and the two of you get up to walk on the bus. However, the man says he doesn’t have a couple of dollars to pay for the bus fare, but you happily pay his fare for him. The principle of liking is at work in this situation and is a powerful influence in how we interact with anyone.

The principle of liking says that people will say “yes” more often to those they like. Had the poor man not made you like him through the interesting conversation, you would had been less likely to comply with his request of paying his bus fare. If there was a situation of choosing who would likely follow your request between a complete stranger versus a friend, you can be very confident in knowing your friend is more likely to comply with your request than the stranger.

There are six principles of liking: physical attractiveness, familiarity, compliments, association, cooperation, and similarity.

1. Physical Attractiveness

Attractive women have a lot of influential power. More so around guys. Most men would bend over backwards for an attractive woman (pun intended). If the woman asked of these guys to do something for her like: buy her a drink, drive her somewhere, or to borrow his mobile phone for a call, the guys would very likely comply. It is a fact that more guys would comply with an attractive woman’s request than an unattractive women’s request. The same goes for women being more likely to comply with requests from handsome guys than ugly guys. Physical attractiveness also influences someone in same gender situations.

People who are more physically attractive are generally more liked. If you’re not so good looking, you probably hated reading that, but don’t ignore this component of liking. It doesn’t matter if you think looks are superficial because people will be judging you nonetheless. An unwillingness to use this component of liking means you will have less influential power with people.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I estimate that 99.99% of people can look at least a 5 (average looking) if they use the following tips. People just don’t realize what parts of their looks are holding them back. In the principle of authority, I provided some basic advice on clothing to improve your power and authority. I’m no stylist so the advice is very simple. Guys, if you have a partner or girl friends, ask them for their advice and perhaps they’ll go shopping with you. Okay, they will definitely go shopping with you like metal to a magnet. They will love the idea of helping you out as long as you aren’t all depressed about this whole “looks” subject.

In addition to clothing, there are plenty of other things you can do to improve your looks. Workout at least three days a week and eat healthy. This is the most powerful of the tips and is more life changing than just in improving your looks. You will have a lot more energy and a positive attitude which instantly affects: how you feel about yourself, how you influence people, and how you interact with people and yourself in general.

Get a modern haircut that is stylish. You can feel like a whole new person and dramatically get an upbeat attitude. Don’t be afraid to try something new like bleaching, dye, or perming, but ask others beforehand about what they think. Before doing anything to extreme with your looks, it never hurts to ask others what they think would be good for you.

Always keep clean, hygienic, and smell good. Don’t overdo makeup and jewelery. Keep all body hair to a clean level. If you’re a guy with a beard, you’d likely benefit from shaving your beard off. A beard acts as a shield which can “prevent” you from connecting with people. It can also act as a mask that subcommunicates devious behavior such as lying. Funny by true. I don’t think Osama Bin Laden did anything good for guys with beards.

2. Familiarity

We all like things that are familiar to us including people. Familiarity is a way of sorting through what’s safe versus dangerous, good versus bad, reliable versus unreliable, fun versus boring, and believable versus unbelievable. If you cannot make someone feel familiar with you, then you’ll lose out on a whole lot of influential power. I would hold more influential power towards you in this article if you are familiar with me. If you aren’t familiar with me, then I don’t have the full power of the liking principle working for me.

Each of us are usually familiar with those whom we have long-term relationships. We come to expect certain behaviors from these people. This provides us with a level of comfort because we like the known. We love to comprehend what we can expect from people and how somebody we’ve met fits into our lives. We are creatures of comfort and love familiarity even if there is a thing we hate because we then know to stay away from it.

Making yourself familiar to someone is far more than asking each other questions and talking for hours. In fact, I think that is the least effective method for creating familiarity. A “dirty” tactic you can use to make someone like you is to link yourself with someone or something the person you are talking to knows about. You heard the person say they like gardening so tell them how much you enjoy gardening. You see the person wearing football socks so talk to them about the latest game. Talk about subjects that are familiar and enjoyable to the other person.

By using this technique for building familiarity, you not only get the other person doing most of the talking because they are talking about what they enjoy, you are incorporating two other components of liking: association and similarity. What you are doing is subtly linking yourself to information the person already knows about. The person will unconsciously associate qualities of people who love gardening or football to you. By the principle of association, you all of a sudden become familiar to the person.

3. Compliments

Compliments can be an “iffy” subject. Think about it. A salesman knocks on your door and tells you that you are looking great. You’ll instantly think, “What the! What does he want from me?” A coworker or employee tells you your hairstyle is looking great today. You’ll instantly think, “Thanks. Wait… What was wrong with my other hairstyle?” A guy comes up to and awkwardly tells you how beautiful you are. If you’re a guy you’ll freak out and punch the guy. If you’re a lady you’ll think, “Ugh! He’s hitting onto me.”

On the other hand, if the salesman complimented you on the lovely paving he walked across when he approached your front door, you’d feel happy and liking him more. If a coworker or employee thanked you for doing something today that made them feel better, you’ll become all warm and fuzzy inside and like the person more. If a guys comes up to you and says “you’ve got great taste in your style”, then you’ll likely be: caught off guard, thanking him for the compliment, and liking him more. However, should the guy continually give you compliments and other types of praise, then you’ll begin to hate him!

Receiving well delivered praise is such a wonderful feeling, but when done wrong it can destroy a relationship. Think of a time someone gave you effective praise. How did that make you feel? You would have felt great and liking the person more! Given that the person complimented or encouraged you in an effective manner, you would have felt more “magnetized” towards the person. Now think of a time you were given poor praise. How did that make you feel? You would have felt manipulated and wondering what were the person’s ulterior motives for praising you.

Compliments and other forms of praise when delivered effectively possess a lot of power to make people like you. It is no wonder than that I’ve written an entire chapter on giving people praise using things like encouragement, compliments, and other forms of behavioral conditioning in my communication secrets of making people like you program. Go check it out for more powerful tips on making people like you.

4. Association

Ivan Pavlov’s well known experiment around the 1890s about getting dogs to salivate at the ringing of a bell is important in making people like you. Pavlov developed what is known as reflex conditioning, classical conditioning, or association. Prior to the experiment, Pavlov noticed his dogs would go through routines prior to being feed. To further explore this reaction, he feed the dogs and rang a bell simultaneously over a period of time. After a while, Pavlov decided to not feed the dogs and just ring the bell. At the sound of the bell, the dogs began to salivate without being feed any food!

My dog has been conditioned to bark like a maniac whenever he hears the house doorbell ring because he associates the doorbell with an intruder. Even if just my family or I use the doorbell, he’ll start howling until he sees who is at the door. Even then he sometimes doesn’t stop barking!

In Richard Bandler and John Grinder’s Frogs Into Princes, the authors discuss a neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) technique called “anchoring” which utilizes classical conditioning. Anchoring involves creating “bells” to make people“salivate”. For example, you can touch people at a certain time when they are happy and when they become unhappy, you touch them again and evoke happiness. The NLP technique is beyond this article, but if you’d like to learn more about it, go check out my review on the popular book and grab your copy.

There are other and more basic techniques you can use to create associations and increase your liking. Humans experience classical conditioning in so many ways you wouldn’t believe it occurs almost every minute of our lives. One basic tip you can begin using the next time you tell some recent news or events is to link yourself with good news and not bad. Another tip that you can use is from my communication secrets program where I encourage readers to tell somebody when they were praised by another person.

By becoming the “middleman” of positive messages, you transform into a likable person through the principle of association. Telling somebody good news or a compliment another person mentioned about them is almost as good as it originating from you. Sharing praise is a great way to give compliments without the risk of it being rejected and blowing up in your face. Link yourself with as many good things as possible and you will increase your liking.

5. Cooperation

Cooperation is a powerful step for teachers who want a successful classroom, parents who want a happy family, and managers who want happy and productive employees. From an ecological perspective, cooperation involves organisms living in a specific area and receiving mutual benefits. From a sociological perspective, cooperation involves the participants receiving mutual benefits like members on a sports team. From an economic perspective, cooperation again involves the participants receiving mutual benefits like an organization doing well.

Regardless of the perspective, we can see that cooperation goes beyond just working together. Cooperation is more than working together as a happy team. It is working towards a common purpose that involves each member receiving a benefit.

The opposite of cooperation is competition. From an ecological perspective, competition is fighting for water, food, and other necessities. From a sociological perspective, competition involves fighting for a common goal with losing and winning results. From an economic perspective, competition again involves competing and obtaining as much beneficial resources as possible.

Regardless of the perspective, we can see that competition goes beyond just “fighting” against someone else. Competition involves obtaining something such that the other participant misses out on the thing you obtained. It is working towards a common purpose for your own benefit and causing someone else to miss out on the benefit because you already have it or some portion of it.

When you are in cooperation with somebody, you will like the person more than if he/she was in competition with you. You see this affect in gangs and wars where members hate members of the side they are battling against purely because they are in competition with one another. I remember reading a poem in high school, which I can’t find, where the poet writes about war and the perspective of competition. The two sides battling against one another would actually be friends had they not met in the heat of intense competition. However, because they are under brutal competition and fighting for the resource of living, they hate one another.

At work, socially, and in the family, we to often put ourselves and others in competition whether it be for a pay raise, attention, or love. We can exist on the same team yet competition will be present should the parties involved be after a resource that is limited or made available to only a select few. When competition is combined with the principle of scarcity, you have a powerful combination for conflict. Internal conflict explodes when team members have individual ulterior motives that aren’t in the team’s best interests because of the principle of competition and cooperation. Wherever possible and whenever possible, cooperate with people such that you and them receive mutual benefits should you both succeed. Also, minimize competition where the participants are not fighting over a beneficial resource.

6. Similarity

Take a look at your friends and other groups of people with whom you have happy relationships. You’ll likely find one big similarity and that is similarities! Whether it be looks, hobbies, interests, occupation, or social activities, we like people who are similar to us.

The liking component of similarity is powerful for those who know how to successfully “manipulate” the technique. You can increase your similarity with somebody and hence increase your influential power with them, by using the same technique shared in the familiarity component of liking. If you are concerned about ethics, this is in no way unethical. All you are doing to “manipulate” the situation is expressing things about yourself which are similar to the person you are talking with.

Most people either aren’t aware of how similarities affect friendship, leadership, influence, and most relationships, or they aren’t proactive enough about making those similarities clear. We all are far similar to each other than most of us believe. It is a matter of having the skills to communicate those similarities.

Now, there are three main ways you can go about finding similarities. Firstly, you can spend a lot of time with the person and get to know them. The problem with this is we don’t have time for whatever reason to frequently use this method. A second option involves peppering the person with questions until you are able to “mine” and “dig up” something about the person which is similar to you. Lastly, you can be smart about exploring the similarities by using a combination of techniques listed below:

• Observe – look at what the person is wearing, observe the person’s friends and other people he or she is with, and be on the lookout for other information that provides hints with what the person is interested in. If you see the person browsing the computer games section of the stores or wearing a football shirt, talk about these topics and be sure to eventually show a level of enthusiasm towards the subject which matches the enthusiasm the person communicates. You ask a person what computer games they are into after seeing them looking at the games, but it turns out they hate games and are just looking at them as a present for someone. Did you stuff up? No. You can talk about your dislike towards computer games because someone you knows wastes a lot of time playing them.
• Listen for keywords – when we are in a conversation, we will use terminology or references to subjects that we like. This technique is a little more advanced, but very successful if you find these keywords when listening to someone talk. There are variations of this technique that can be used depending on the outcome you want like twisting words around to spark attraction or misinterpreting words to be funny for example, but we will use it for finding similarities. All you do is listen for keywords that indicate the person’s interests and you then link yourself to that information. If your talking about houses and the person starts talking about electrical work, then chances are the person is into electrical work and so you express your enthusiasm for this subject. You don’t have to know a lot about the subject, but you can show an interest and liking in the subject, which is what it takes to have someone like you.
• Ask questions – it’s okay to ask questions, but do so sparingly. Best friends don’t hammer each other with questions. You can use questions if you think you’re “onto something” in finding similarities.

In conclusion, we follow things we like more so than the things we dislike. The same goes for people and influence. By improving your physical attractiveness, making yourself familiar, giving effective compliments, successfully using the principle of association, being in cooperation, and having similarities, you can make people like you and increase your influential power.

If you’re reading this right now and you are after many secrets of making people like you and having great relationships with lots of love and minimal fights, then I highly recommend you go get my communication secrets of making people like you program by clicking here today.

Links in this Course: The 6 Principles of Influencing People

• Introduction to Influencing People
• 1. Commitment and Consistency
• 2. Reciprocation
• 3. Scarcity
• 4. Authority
• 5. Liking
• 6. Social Proof

You can download this entire course in a neat report format by right clicking here and selecting “save target as”. You can keep a copy safely on your computer. The report is in .pdf format so you will need this free software to view it.

This is a book review of Richard Bandler and John Grinder’s Frogs Into Princes: Neuro Linguistic Programming. It has been referred by many as the book to read for somebody starting out in neuro-linguistic programming and rightfully so.

Richard Bandler and John Grinder are the founders of neuro-linguistic programming so you can expect a fair in depth discussion on the topics within the book. Frogs Into Princes is a transcript from a live seminar conducted by the two presenters. It is divided into three main sections which were presented on three separate days in the seminar:

1. Sensory Experience: Representational Systems and Accessing Cues
2. Changing Personal History and Organization: Anchoring
3. Finding New Ways: Reframing

The first section has quite possibly the first ever discussion on accessing cues. It involves amazing body language reading techniques and appropriately adjusting your own body language to create rapport with people. If you’ve seen a movie where an investigator knows the suspect is lying because of the suspects eye movement, then you’ve likely seen the very basics of accessing cues. It is more complex than simply which directions the eye moves because the way we access information is dependent on the questions asked.

Representational systems involves the language used in communication and matching the person’s representational system to build rapport. (I touch on this in the second chapter of my communication secrets of making people like you program.) Matching a person’s representational system is also an effective and extremely underused technique to prevent conflict. The authors are extremely confident in their techniques’ reliability to create rapport and with the sheer popularity of their methods having spread throughout the world, it is an indicator that their communication modeling works very well.

The anchoring section deals with classical conditioning and learning to associate certain actions, mostly kinesthetic, to evoke specific emotions and thoughts. The extreme basics of the technique involves touching someone while getting them to elicit specific emotions. When you touch them in the same manner at a later time, they will experience the same emotions. (That is a very brief description of anchoring and if you try it based on what I told you, it’ll likely be ineffective.) The section mostly discusses anchoring in the context of overcoming fear and therapy, but it can be easily used in relationships, healing painful memories, negotiations, sales, leadership, and seduction. The list of applications for every technique in the three sections are endless.

The last section of Frogs Into Princes gives an exact formula for reframing. The neuro-linguistic technique of reframing involves changing the way you see an event to change its meaning. I have found it to be one of the greatest techniques for overcoming fears and having unstoppable confidence for myself and other people I’ve helped. I feel reframing is a must have technique for any person who is interested in getting past problems and obtaining the most out of life.

You would think that because the book is a transcript, the language used would be easy to understand like the simple language used in face-to-face communication, but it isn’t. This is the greatest downfall of the book. Most parts of the book are difficult to understand because of the terminology used so a lot of “newbie” communicators will have extreme difficulty in getting the most out of the book. Even I found myself rereading some sections up to five times to just understand what was being said. However, I found the sections to loop into each other where the understanding of certain parts were clearly understood in later sections. When reading this book, don’t get caught up in understanding everything that goes on as you’ll likely later figure it out while reading the rest of the book.

The seminar was for therapists so most of the techniques’ applications are discussed in a therapist-patient scenario. Therapists and psychologists would find the applications of the techniques extremely useful for improving therapeutic communication with patients.

If you don’t mind more “complex” reads that includes terminology or you think your communication skills are pretty advanced, then you’re sure to get a lot out of this book and I recommend it for you. The last time I checked, the book was out of print, but fortunately it is still made available to you in a quality second-hand condition through Amazon. Once you get your copy, hold on to it as you’ll find it a very valuable addition to your personal development and communication library. You can grab your copy of Frogs Into Princes from Amazon by clicking here today.