9/18/2014 15 Lessons From Best Selling Books

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15 Lessons From Best Selling Books
Presentation Transcript
1. 15
Lessons From
Best Selling Books
2. Some books and authors change how we think. I was distilling some of my favorite books into one-
liners to show the contributions of various authors. Here are 15 lessons from their best selling books.
3. Book One : Blink - The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.
Malcolm Gladwell teaches us that thin slices of data tell us a lot. Gladwell also tells us about our
instinctive ability to mind read, which is how we can get to know what emotions a person is feeling just
by looking at his or her face.In what Gladwell contends is an age of information overload, he finds that
experts often make better decisions with snap judgments than they do with volumes of analysis.
4. Book Two : Dealing with People You Can't Stand: How to Bring Out the Best in People at Their Worst
The concept of this book is pretty simple and straightforward: choose a person you can't stand, identify
which of the 10 personality types mentioned in the book they most closely match, and follow the specific
recommendations to immunize yourself against further annoyance. The 10 types listed in the book are:
1. The Tank2. The Sniper3. The Grenade4. The Know-It-All5. The Think-They-Know-It-All6. The Yes
Person7. The Maybe Person8. The Nothing Person9. The No Person10. The Whiner
Dr. Rick Brinkman and Dr. Rick Kirschner teach us that difficult behaviors stem from 4 intents: get the
task done, get it right, get along with people, or get appreciation.
5. Book Three : Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance
Marcus Buckingham teaches us to give our best, where we have our best to give. Research
data show that most people do not come close to making full use of their assets at work. There are some
questions that you should ask yourselves;
Why your strengths aren't "what you are good at" and your weaknesses aren't "what you are bad at."
How to use the four telltale signs to identify your strengths. The simple steps you can take each week to
push your time at work toward those activities that strengthen you, and how to cut out those that don't.
The fifteen-minute weekly ritual that will keep you on your strengths path for your entire career.
6. Book Four : Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life
Martin E. P. Seligman teaches us that optimism is not about thinking positive.
Its simply not thinking negative and avoiding explaining bad events as permanent, personal, and
pervasive. He shows you how to chart a new approach to living with "flexible optimism.
LEARNED OPTIMISM shows you how to: Attain maximum personal achievements Boost your mood-
and your immune systemwith healthful thoughts!
1. Change your interior dialogue and experience the astonishing positive results.When you know how to
choose the power of optimism, you'll gain an essential new freedom to build a life of and lasting
fulfillment.
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7. Book Five : Overachievement: The New Science of Working Less to Accomplish More
Dr. John Eliot teaches us to use stress to be our best. As Dr. Eliot has discovered through his cutting-
edge research and real-world coaching, techniques such as goal-setting, relaxation, visualization, stress
management, and flow just don't work for most people. Relaxing when the pressure is on is the wrong
way to go. Instead, to really ratchet up your performance, you'll need to change the way you think about
pressureand learn how to welcome it, enjoy it, and make it work to your advantage.
8. Book Six : Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach To Customer Service
Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles teach us to create a vision of perfection, centered on the customer.
Your customers are only satisfied because their expectations are so low and because no one else is
doing better. Just having satisfied customers isn't good enough anymore. If you really want a booming
business, you have to create Raving Fans.
Raving Fans uses a brilliantly simple and charming story to teach how to define a vision, learn what a
customer really wants, institute effective systems, and make Raving Fan Service a constant feature--not
just another program of the month.
9. Book Seven : Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions
Gary Klein teaches us to fill our heads with patterns and experience to make better decisions. The
central argument of the book is that pattern recognition drives decision making, and that real experts do
not waste time on comparing all available actions, but match options to the situation at hand and choose
the first suitable solution by evaluating each option on its own merits.
10. Book Eight : Stumbling on Happiness
Dan Gilbert teaches us we cant predict our happiness. We can make our own happiness and its just
as real (synthetic happiness.) The solution presented by Dr. Gilbert to accurately estimate our happiness
is to draw our conclusion from people with similar backgrounds and experiences. The variance in
subjectivity of happiness is a lot lower than the distortion in your own imagination.
11. Book Nine : The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You
John C. Maxwell teaches us that leadership is influence. John C. Maxwell combined insights learned
from his 40-plus years of leadership successes and mistakes with observations from the worlds of
business, politics, sports, religion, and military conflict. Leadership Skills are the tools and traits acquired
to facilitate guiding or a directing a group, most commonly toward a shared goal.
12. Book Ten : The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding: How to Build a Product or Service Into a World-
Class Brand
Al Ries and Laura Ries teach us that to dominate a category, narrow our focus.According to the father-
daughter team of Al and Laura Ries, a brand name is a name (a Proper Noun in fact) in the mind of the
consumer that conveys a single proposition about a particular product or service. The power in a brand
name lies in its ability to positively influence purchasing behavior. In an increasingly cluttered information
society, a powerful brand image can act as a guidepost for the consumer in making a purchase decision.
A successful branding program, therefore, should differentiate your product or service from all the similar
products or services out there.
13. Book Eleven : The 8th Habit Personal Workbook: Strategies to Take You from Effectiveness to
Greatness
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Stephen Covey teaches us to find our voice, and help others find theirs. In order to thrive in what Covey
calls the new Knowledge Worker Age, we need to build on and move beyond effectiveness -- to
greatness. Accessing the higher reaches of human genius and motivation in today's reality requires a
whole new habit. The questionnaires, tests, self-assessments, and other exercises in this workbook
provide a hands-on approach to developing the mind-set, skill-set and tool-set for achieving greatness in
the Knowledge Worker Age. The 8th Habit will transform the way you think about yourself and your
purpose in life, about your organization and about humankind.
14. Book Twelve : The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
NassimTaleb teaches us that If you miss the train, dont chase it. Catch the next one. Missing a train is
only painful if you run after it.
A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it
carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less
random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so
was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the
rise of religions to events in our own personal lives.
15. Book Thirteen : The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)
Seth Godin teaches us to quit the right things and pick the right dips to lean into. According to
bestselling author Seth Godin, what really sets superstars apart from everyone else is the ability to
escape dead ends quickly, while staying focused and motivated when it really counts. Winners quit fast,
quit often, and quit without guilt? Until they commit to beating the right Dip for the right reasons. In fact,
winners seek out the Dip. They realize that the bigger the barrier, the bigger the reward for getting past it.
If you can become number one in your niche, youll get more than your fair share of profits, glory, and
long-term security.
16. Book Fourteen : The Likeability Factor: How to Boost Your L-Factor and Achieve Your Life's Dreams
Tim Sanders teaches us that likability is a skill. The more you are liked, the happier your life will be. Tim
Sanders shows how to build your likeability factor by teaching you how to enhance four critical elements
of your personality:
Friendliness: your ability to communicate liking and openness to others
Relevance: your capacity to connect with others interests, wants, and needs
Empathy: your ability to recognize, acknowledge, and experience other peoples feelings
Realness: the integrity that stands behind your likeability and guarantees its authenticity
When you improve these areas and boost your likeability factor, you bring out the best in others, handle
lifes challenges with grace, enjoy better health, and excel in your daily roles.
17. Book Fifteen : The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
Steven Pressfield teaches us that resistance is the enemy within.
Understanding Resistance is important; Pressfield spends a third of THE WAR OF ART discussing his
definition of Resistance, another third on ways to combat it, and the final third of the book discussing
what lies beyond Resistance. THE WAR OF ART is intended as a guide to unlocking the barriers to
creativity, using the keys that you already have but may have forgotten about or misplaced. THE WAR
OF ART is a work to keep, and to keep close at hand.