How to influence others

Two books I’ve been occupied with recently deal directly with a very problematic topic for most team leaders world wide – how do you influence people in your team and your organization to either change or help you change things for the better?

I will be writing separately about each book, but for now keep these two close at hand – they are seriously interesting to anyone who wants to become a better leader, and a change agent in an organization of any size:

• How to Win Friends & Influence People

This book deals with influence at the micro level – just you, personally, one on one, with other people. In a way, this book provided me a set of social behavior protocols that I’ve never dared to even try, or even try to figure out why they were needed. But after reading it fully, I think it is priceless, not just for the last part of it relating to leadership and influence.

• Influencer: The Power to Change Anything

This book deals with influence at the macro level – how were people able to change and influence thousands and even millions of people, across countries, to change their behavior in an effective manner? from helping to prevent aids, to preventing unnecessary health system deaths, how do you get to change people’s key vital behaviors to the effect of a whole society being affected? If you’ve ever tried to drive change in your little company, this book has some nice drills into 6 different forces that need to work in order to make change at almost any level possible.

I’ll deal with both books in this blog thoroughly, but I’d suggest going out and starting to read them as soon as possible.

I’m sure there are books out there that I’ve missed on such topics. I’d love it if you ‘d help other readers of this blog by sharing what resources you know to learn and master influence at micro and macro level.