The Invisible Mentor

Posts Tagged ‘Jim Randel’

Yesterday, I pulled together a collection of 10 book reviews for 2010, today, I have another 10 for you. These book reviews are designed to give you a sense of whether or not you need to read that book. In 2011, I will be delving more into, and exploring the idea of using yesterday’s ideas to solve today’s problems, as well as figure out how to more fully marry ancient and modern wisdom.

1. Review of the Skinny on Willpower
2. Review of Bunker Bean
3. Review of How to Build an Empire on an Orange Crate, Honest Ed Mirvish
4. Review of the Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
5. Review of Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire
6. Enchiridion by Epitectus: A Book Review
7. The Skinny on Success: A Book Review
8. The Skinny on Time Management: A Book Review
9. Review of The Little Engine That Could
10. Review: The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

All book links are affiliate links.

Where has the 2010 gone? As subscribers to this blog already know, reading is one of life’s simple joy for me. I love to snuggle up with a good book. Science fiction is not a genre that I really like so I have been forcing myself to read more because I think it’s important to stretch myself. I ask you all the time to do so, so it’s important for me to follow the advice that I dispense. Next on my science fiction reading list is the Foundation Trilogy: Foundation, Second Foundation and Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov.

Here are 10 book reviews that I did this year:

1. Innovate The Steve Jobs Way
2. Review: Briefcase Essentials by Susan T. Spenser
3. Have You Found Your Acres of Diamonds?
4. Review of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
5. Review of Linchpin – Are You Indispensable by Seth Godin
6. How to Build a Successful Business by Doing These 10 Things?
7. Want Presentations That Rock? Joey Asher’s 15 Minutes Including Q & A Delivers
8. Review of the Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
9. Review of the Skinny on Networking: Maximizing the Power of Number by Jim Randel
10. Review of Books That Changed the World by Andrew Taylor

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Book links are affiliate links.

Like all the other Skinny On books, I received The Skinny On Networking: Maximizing the Power of Numbers by Jim Randel to review. The objective of The Skinny On series of books is to provide concentrated learning by extensively researching a topic, distilling the salient facts, and presenting them in a “progression of drawings, dialogue and text intended to convey information in a concise fashion. The book which can be read in less than two hours is presented in slides, two to a page, and 267 of them.

Networking is an important topic because success, happiness and personal fulfillment depend on the quality of your relationships. I consider The Skinny On Networking a good introduction to networking. I do no think that it’s possible to learn everything about networking, even the most important aspects from one book. Jim Randel highlighted some important aspects of networking that many would not think about. I have included some of these important points.

According to Randel, The Skinny On Networking: Maximizing the Power of Numbers is “about creating and maintaining your network.” And his definition for networking is “developing and utilizing relationships with other people…it is any activity that helps you to develop relationships with others…and is about increasing depth and breadth as a person…Successful networking entails identifying and asking your WHO to help you meet your WHAT.” The author includes 10 activities to clarify and support what he means by networking.

1. Staying in touch with people you have already met
2. Meeting new people
3. Doing research to find the person(s) who can assist you
4. Using online resources to identify someone you know who knows someone you want to meet
5. Increasing social capital
6. Entertaining and helping others – creating a desire for reciprocity
7. Building positive word of mouth
8. Marketing your expertise
9. Joining groups that foster natural connections
10. Asking for introductions and referrals

To achieve astounding success in life requires the use of your human capital (knowledge, skills, expertise and experience) as well as your social capital (the resources you have access to through your personal and professional networks). You create social capital by establishing, building and nurturing relationships. It’s important to invest in the relationship by giving something of value to the person before you start to make withdrawals by making requests. The longer you have known someone and the more time you have spent investing in the relationship, the more social capital you have created with them. Building social capital is a lifelong activity, and it’s also important to build social capital before you need it. You can lose social capital by asking for too much too soon.

Steps to Successful Networking

1. Tap into family, friends and acquaintances because they have connections that you are not aware of
2. Always be specific about what you want so that the person knows exactly what is required of them, and always give them an out just in case they may be uncomfortable filling your request
3. When making a request, make it clear that you are willing to reciprocate when they require your assistance
4. Use all tools available to you, both offline and online (LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook)
5. Successful and savvy networking is very hard so make it an ongoing process
6. If you are shy or an introvert, use a connector to help you connect to people you’d like to meet
7. Create diverse networks of people, some who are very different from you – step outside your comfort zone
8. When you meet someone, put the spotlight on them, most people like to talk about themselves so give them the opportunity, and listen to what they are saying
9. Within 24 hours of meeting someone who you find interesting, make notes about them: how you met her, what she does, what you learned about her during the conversation
10. Keep in contact with your networks

Most of us, including myself know about popular social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, but Randel includes four others that I have never heard of. I recommend that you read The Skinny On Networking: Maximizing the Power of Numbers, but keep in mind that it’s a very good introduction so you will not learn everything about networking. Despite the size of the book, you will pick up a few tips like I did. As usual, Jim Randel includes the books he referenced, as well as some quotes from them. The inclusion of books referenced throughout the Skinny On series of books makes it easy to decide which other books to read on the subject matter.

Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed.

Note: The copy of The Skinny on Networking that I received is a pre-publication copy.

Additional Resources to Assist With Online Networking

Make Your LinkedIn Profile Work for You

Use LinkedIn Effectively

Write Your LinkedIn Profile for the Future

If you are a blogger, Top 10 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog Using LinkedIn

50 Power Twitter Tips

My Best Twitter Advice

How to Prospect Using Combined Power of LinkedIn and Twitter

The Skinny On The Art of Persuasion by Jim Randel is part of the Skinny On series of books, which are designed  and written for the time-strapped professional looking for more than surface level knowledge on a particular subject. The reader can consume and digest any of these books in less than two hours.

I received a copy of The Skinny On The Art of Persuasion to review. Persuasion is defined as “the act of convincing, influencing and inducing.” Based on Jim Randel and his team’s extensive research, they conclude that the ability to persuade is an acquired skill, that means it’s teachable, but, “good persuaders understand that persuasiveness is an art…that to be effective, they must have a sense of dimension and, of nuance. If you push people too hard, they will instinctively pull back.”

The author points out that there is a fine line between persuasion and manipulation. He cited from Persuasion: The Art of Getting What You Want by Dave Lakhani, “Manipulation is inwardly focused on the outcome for the person doing the manipulation. Persuasion is externally focused on developing a win-win outcome where everyone’s needs are met.”

There are 10 Rules of Persuasion

1. Connect with the person you are trying to persuade. Mirror them so they feel comfortable around you.
2. Prepare extensively before you utter a word. Think about what you are going to say and how you are going to say it
   1. The more you prepare the more comfortable you will feel and act
   2. The more prepared you are, the better able you will be to control your listener’s thought processes
   3. The more prepared you are, the better able you are to determine what you can and cannot do during the “persuasion” and you will know when to stop talking
3. Learn to listen and watch. People love it when they feel like they are being listened to and heard. You will also be able to pick up verbal and non-verbal cues
4. Create a feeling of scarcity – people want what they cannot have
5. Do not confuse the familiar with the universal. Because a way of thinking or belief may be familiar to you, it is not necessarily universal to everyone, so be mindful of that. People strive to be consistent in their behaviours
6. People do not like to feel indebted so they will find a way to reciprocate
7. People often take shortcuts when making decisions. They often make decisions in relation to something else, something familiar. People are often operate on automatic pilot
8. People follow crowds, celebrities,  and authorities
9. People often make decisions based on emotions
10. Persuasiveness is about integrity

Rule 10 is particularly important to Jim Randel. He relates an experience he had 30 years ago when he was into flipping real estate. There was a fire and he knew there were often fire sales, so he went to where the fire was. He realized that the owner had died as the EMTs were wheeling the elderly man away. Jim rushed to city hall and learned that the dead man had a daughter living in the Midwest. Later that evening he called the daughter to get information on who would be handing the sale of the house. It was that instant that the woman discovered that her dad died in a house fire.

I winced when I read this, and I understood. I have never done anything like this, but I’m sure that I have offended others because I responded too quickly without thinking things through. I realize that we so often want to win so badly that we do not stop to consider how our actions might impact another. According to Randel, “In my rush to succeed, I lost sight of basic human compassion and decency.” To me this was the most important point in the book. If we think of people compassionately, we will think before we act, and we will strive for a win/win outcome and not cross the line and attempt to manipulate others.

I recommend The Skinny On The Art of Persuasion. Below is a list of the books mentioned in the Skinny On The Art of Persuasion.

Covert Persuasion: Psychological Tactics and Tricks to Win the Game, Kevin Hogan and James Speakman

Maximum Influence: The 12 Universal Laws of Power Persuasion, Kurt W. Mortensen

The Magic of Rapport, Richardson and Margulis

Persuasion: The Art of Getting What You Want, Dave Lakhani

How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie

The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success, Brian Tracy

How to Do Tricks with Cards, Bill Turner

The Art of Cross-Examination, Francis Wellman

People Skills, Robert Bolton

The Definitive Book of Body Language, Allan and Barbara Pease

Body Language, Julius Fast

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini

Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman

Nudge, Thaler and Sunstein

How to Master the Art of Selling, Tom Hopkins

How We Decide, Jonah Lehrer

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, Dan Ariely

Irrational Exuberance, Robert Shiller

The Hidden Persuaders, Vance Packard

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell

The One Minute Salesperson, Spencer Johnson

True Success: A New Philosophy of Excellence, Tom Morris

What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed.

Book links are Amazon affiliate links

The publishers of The Skinny on Series sent The Skinny on Willpower: How to Develop Self-discipline, The Skinny on the Art of Persuasion and The Skinny on Networking for me to review. In previous blog posts, I reviewed The Skinny on Success and The Skinny on Time Management. The objective of The Skinny On series of books is to provide concentrated learning by extensively researching a topic, distilling the salient facts, and presenting them in a “progression of drawings, dialogue and text intended to convey information in a concise fashion.

You can easily read this book in less than two hours and at end of The Skinny of Willpower, the author Jim Randel provides a 15-Point Plan for improving your willpower which is quite helpful. As I have said in previous reviews of The Skinny On series, and I will mention it again, the reason why I do not like the books is why most people will love them. Though Jim Randel does a good job of summarizing the topic, and the series is a response to the fast-paced world we live in, I feel like he is spoon feeding the reader. I am detailed oriented so I like to read and distil information for myself. However, I recognize that not everyone can do that or is willing to expend the time and effort.

Now having said that, the author provides a bibliography for people like me to read further about the topic, and throughout the book, he has the names of the books that he referenced for information on willpower.

Willpower is defined as “the strength to act, or forbear from acting in the pursuit of a goal – is a critical determinant to success… [It is] the effort needed to get going in a forward motion.” Jim Randel is qualified to write The Skinny on Willpower because he and his team spent countless hours reading and listening to everything they could find on willpower, searching online for insights, as well as speaking to professors and researchers and interviewing highly accomplished people.

As outlined in the book, to achieve your goal you have to be very specific about what you’d like to accomplish and be committed to yourself in attaining your goal – you have to have a real hunger, and the “why” underlying the goal achievement drives the how. Additionally it’s important to break the goal into bite-sized pieces so that you do not become overwhelmed, and when you have negative thoughts in your mind about your goal, it’s good to have a response to get you through that moment to eject all thoughts of negativism, and find the strength deep within you to work on achieving your goal.

Randel identifies three steps you need to take to keep you focused on your goal.

1. Take your temperature – how badly do you want it
2. Set realistic expectation – the best things in life seldom come easily
3. Don’t compare yourself to others – it’s what you think about you that really matters, be in it for the long haul

Here are the author’s 15 points for improving willpower and self-discipline:

1. Be sure you are totally committed
2. Prepare yourself for a difficult journey
3. Prepare for your challenges by reducing the instances in which you will exert willpower
4. Identify your goal and the process to get there in as concrete, specific and finite terms as possible
5. Divide your challenge into small manageable pieces
6. Maintain vigilance over your thoughts
7. Control your dominant thoughts
8. Frame your challenges in a pleasurable, not painful manner
9. Pick your spots
10. Force yourself to visualize the end of a succession of “either/or” choices
11. You really have more willpower than you realize
12. The more you use your willpower, the more confidence and strength you have for new challenges
13. Turn positive activity into habits
14. Self-discipline is not self-deprivation
15. Strong willpower can take you to new heights in life.

The 15-points listed above for improving your willpower and self-discipline is a good summary for you to refer to after you have read The Skinny on Willpower which I recommend because my goal is to help you succeed. I also recommend that you revisit my blog post on the Einstein Distraction Index – it will strengthen your resolve against giving in, and I also recommend that you create a mind movie which is a sequence of photos, and mantras that represent what you are trying to accomplish, accompanied with music that uplifts you and make you happy. Having willpower is often what separates the successful from the unsuccessful.

Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed.

All book links are affiliate links