A friend recently made me a deal where he would buy me this book if I’d read it and tell him something that I learnt from it. I think this is all a cunning plan of his to get all his friends to do the same and save him having to read it himself but I’m never one to turn down a free book, especially when it is one that a former manager recommended I read. Well ok so he recommended I read the original which was written in the 1930’s. Since then there have been a number of books based on the same ideas for different audiences, even one in pink for teen girls (I am not kidding). This version attempts to bring the concepts into the modern age by using more recent examples and explaining how you can apply them to the internet age.
The title of this book always put me off. It made it sound like a textbook on manipulative practices to make people like you. That isn’t really what it’s about though. It’s more about changing your own attitudes and behaviours than it is trying to get others to change theirs. The claim is that others will react to your attitude towards them and often respond in kind so if you can change yourself for the better then you’ll see others respond to you in better ways.
The principles in this book are well worth anyone taking the time to read over and try to follow. This is particularly true of those in corporate environments and they are all vital for those who manage people. It should come as no surprise then that all of them are also covered to one degree or other in other management books that I’ve read. This means that nothing in this book was completely new to me. Some of the chapters did put some of the ideas into different contexts and had me thinking of ideas that might help me manage my teams though.
What I liked about the style of the book was its simplicity. It’s short and doesn’t mess around. You can see what all the techniques are from the table of contents. For many you don’t even need to read into the chapters to understand why they are important but the chapters provide useful examples of how they can be applied in certain situations. I’m planning on making a list of the chapter headings to stick up by my desk somewhere for quick reference. A couple of the chapters seem to go off the rails a little, particularly towards the end and some of the examples meant for the digital age felt a little contrived and jammed in for the sake of it. I do wonder if it might be as good to read the original and rely on yourself to figure out how to apply it to the modern world.
I think the thing I immediately drew from the book is that I am consistently too negative. I was at first going to make this post a scathing review of the book because for sure it does have some problems. But that would be ignoring all of the benefits you can get from reading it. And what would be the point? Maybe it makes me feel big and clever but it doesn’t make me look big and clever. So hopefully this is a more positive review that should convince you to take a flick through, it is certainly worthwhile if you haven’t read much like it in the past.
And now I feel big and clever for seeing that being negative only makes me feel big and clever. Ah well, can’t win them all.