(Broadway Paperbacks, $16)
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop TalkingWhile business seems to place a higher value on the “extrovert ideal” (the alpha personality – gregarious and highly verbal), the introverts quietly and persistently create change and progress. In a world without them, we might not have Steve Jobs’ Apple Inc., Einstein’s theory of relativity, Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth or Warren Buffett’s Berkshire-Hathaway empire.
Of particular interest is Susan Cain’s research about leadership and the introvert-extrovert trade-off. Various studies show that introverted leaders excel when working with employees who take the initiative. Their extroverted counterparts excelled when the employees were passive. Diving deeper, the studies found that introvert-led companies with initiative-takers outperformed extrovert-led, follow-my-instructions firms.
Why? Introverts practice active listening and are more open to suggestions than extroverts. Introverts rely on the skills and talent of their employees to create a “circle of proactivity.”
Introverts who practice active listening also make good salespeople. Their natural tendency to ask a lot of questions allows them to find common ground. Cain cites Jon Berghoff. His summer job in high school was selling knives door-to-door. During his first eight weeks, he sold $50,000 worth of knives. When he returned to high school, he was still a socially awkward kid who spent lunchtime in the library.
Berghoff’s sales success continued. In 2002, he founded Global Empowerment Coaching and has conducted seminars and individual coaching for over 30,000 salespeople and their managers. What’s the key to his success? “I learned early on that people don’t buy from me because they understand what I’m selling. They buy because they feel understood.” To understand prospects, Berghoff asked questions and tuned into their message.
Cain combines research with stories of famous and not-so-famous introverts to make this point: A quiet person can succeed in a loudmouth world.
Hannibal and Me
(Riverhead Books, $16)
Using the historical context of Hannibal’s numerous victories over the Romans and his ultimate defeat at Rome’s hands, Andreas Kluth takes the reader inside the art of winning and dealing with disaster. He keeps the timeline moving as he moves from past to present by showing how history repeats itself.
Let your competition defeat themselves. Grab initiative by getting your opponent to focus attention on something you’ve chosen to highlight. When they’re focused on responding to your choice, they stop paying attention to other things. That makes their response predictable and their flanks (i.e. blind spots) exposed to attack.
Use their momentum against them. Do your homework. Study what your competition does; most tend to repeat basic moves and responses.
Never block an opponent’s charge head on, Kluth explains. Like a judo master, use leverage to counteract and redirect brute force (i.e. get them to spend more time and money.) Adjust your tactics to take advantage of their moves.
When you have small victories, remind yourself that long-term success is not ensured. Hubris leads to disaster.
There’s often a knee-jerk reaction to failure. All too often, the response is immediate, and rash. Accept what happened; learn from it. Sometimes doing nothing is prudent. Conserve resources until you can do what needs to be done.
The bottom line: Part of success and failure is adjusting your idea of what they are and how they affect future choices.
Jim Pawlak reviews business books for The Dallas Morning News.