Strength And Warmth

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: Compelling People: The Hidden Qualities That Make Us Influential

Competencies: influence skills, interpersonal skills, presentation skills

Who benefits: anyone concerned with how others see them

Consultant Usage: excellent resource for executive coaches, important background material for presentation and media trainers

What’s it about? This week’s recommended reading is a just released book about judgments: Those judgments we make about others and how others size us up. Media consultants (and professors) John Neffinger and Matthew Kohut suggest it is all about “strength” and “warmth”.

They define strength as “a person’s capacity to make things happen with abilities and force of will”. And they define warmth as “the sense that a person shares our feelings, interests and view of the world”.

I am going to quibble here. I am bothered by two things. First, it seems to me that while strength and warmth are extremely important, what else is at play? What else needs to be examined? Second, the opposites of strength and warmth (according to the authors) are weak and cold. That seems overly harsh.

The reading leads to the traditional four box examination of a topic. In this case the most desirable box would be strength/warmth. The least desirable would be weak/cold. I think the authors might have a stronger case if they had been able to put the topics on continuum, allowing for stronger/weaker, warmer/colder.

That being said, there is still much to recommend. I think they are at their best when writing about “Who am I?”. I think most of us would like to be seen as having strength and warmth. But in perhaps the most interesting discussion within the book, the authors point out how difficult to be both at the same time. They point out the tensions between the two characteristics. We project a stern face to show strength; a smile to show warmth. Kind of hard to do both simultaneously.

You know a book has something to offer when you find yourself doing introspection. I found myself thinking about how I prefer to show warmth, and I now understand how that might (and probably does) leave me short on projecting strength.

There is a lot more to this book than I have suggested above. If the topic of interest, I do recommend the book as long as you keep asking yourself questions as you read. Not every topic or suggestion applies equally to all readers.

This is also a very, very important book for people who make presentations. Some of the suggestions in the book are aimed directly at presenters. Others can be inferred, but if you do a lot of public speaking this could be a very important book for you.

If you haven’t got time for the book, but would like additional information about the topic, you can also learn about “strength” and “warmth” at Compelling People. There are several related articles including the previously reviewed and excellent “Connect, Then Lead” which they co-authored along with TED presenter Amy Cuddy.

Catch you later.

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.