While searching for another book, I picked up 25 Ways to Win with People: How to Make Others Feel Like a Million Bucks, a follow-up companion to John C. Maxwell’s lauded Winning with People. As someone at the beginning of her career, I’m building a professional network and I thought a book about creating and maintaining successful relationships would be a great read.
The book is written by two well known authors: John Maxwell, known for his bestselling leadership books, and Dr. Les Parrot, Psychology professor and author of several relationship books.
The layout of the book makes it easy to follow and easy to reference back to specific sections to reread the chapters. Both John and Les make good use of stories to describe the ideas. These stories are often entertaining, memorable and show you how their philosophies are applicable in real-life situations.
The main reason I enjoyed 25 Ways to Win with People is because it provides readers with actionable steps on creating and maintaining relationships. Each chapter is about a specific actionable idea to improve your interpersonal relationships with others, and they all end with a summary of four short points to drive the idea home.
So what can you take away from this post? A main theme throughout the book, and the first chapter’s focus, is to start with yourself. According to Dr. Parrott, “If you want to win with people, you’ve got to be a winner yourself – or at least on your way to becoming one.” It is a fact that you cannot give others what you do not have or enjoy others until you enjoy yourself. To start with yourself the book encourages you to recognize, accept, increase and believe in your value.
John and Les understand that you cannot completely change the way you interact with people in one day, so they encourage you to select one or two of the practices, do them every day and add other practices as you become more comfortable with them.
Social interaction and communications skills are some of the most important skills for success in business and life. This book helps readers understand and act on ways to improve these vital skills. I recommend this book to anyone looking to improve their networking and their outlook on relationships.
To encourage your personal interactions I will leave you with a practice that you can start using today, John’s 30-Second Rule. When we are around people the majority of us seek ways to make ourselves look good but the 30-Second Rule seeks to reverse this habit. Next time you are spending time with people search for ways to make them look good. Within the first 30 seconds, provide those around you with encouragement, recognition or a compliment. Doing so empowers them and ultimately raises their opinion of you as well.