We all want people to do stuff. Whether you want your customers to buy from you, vendors to give you a good deal, your employees to take more initiative, or your spouse to make dinner—a large amount of everyday is about getting the people around you to do stuff. Instead of using your usual tactics that sometimes work and sometimes don’t, what if you could harness the power of psychology and brain science to motivate people to do the stuff you want them to do – even getting people to want to do the stuff you want them to do.
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In this book you’ll learn the 7 drives that motivate people: The Desire For Mastery, The Need To Belong, The Power of Stories, Carrots and Sticks, Instincts,  Habits, and Tricks Of The Mind. For each of the 7 drives behavioral psychologist Dr. Susan Weinschenk describes the research behind each drive, and then offers specific strategies to use. Here’s just a few things you will learn:
The more choices people have the more regret they feel about the choice they pick. If you want people to feel less regret then offer them fewer choices. If you are going to use a reward, give the reward continuously at first, and then switch to giving a reward only sometimes. If you want people to act independently, then make a reference to money, BUT if you want people to work with others or help others, then make sure you DON’T refer to money. If you want people to remember something, make sure it is at the beginning or end of your book, presentation, or meeting. Things in the middle are more easily forgotten. If you are using feedback to increase the desire for mastery keep the feedback objective, and don’t include praise.
How to Get People to Do Stuff Concise yet not cryptic. The narrative provides enough anecdotal support to make the points easy to grasp quickly and retain. I especially like the bullet-point summaries for each section. Well-done and a good buy for me.
If You Ever Need to Get People to Do Stuff…then this is a must-read If you ever need to get other people to do stuff (and who doesn’t!), then this terrific book is a must-read.As a huge fan of Susan Weinschenk’s two excellent “100 Things” books, I just finished “How to Get People to Do Stuff” and absolutely loved it! In fact, after an initial first read, there were so much thought-provoking ideas in it that I went back to the beginning and started going through it all over again, page by page, with red pen in hand, to underline, circle, and…
Will I read a book that enables me to get others to act when I don’t have authority? .I am a believer that exceptional leaders are masters of human behavior. When I teach leadership to professionals my mantra is “human behavior is not logical but it is predictable.” When we study and understand this predictability we are able to successfully navigate our way to the achievement of goals both individual and organizational regardless of our official authority level.A lot of what is in Ms. Weinschenk’s book is not new and I have read and recommended some of her…