Adversaries Into Allies: Win People Over Without Manipulation or Coercion

So who's this book for? Well, if you work in sales in any industry, you'll definitely want it in your toolkit. Knowing how to persuade people to buy your product or sign up to your service is great for business. This applies equally to selling cars, cleaning products, coaching sessions, financial advice, or works of art.

But this book is about much more than selling. It's about building successful, win-win relationships – and many of us need some help with that.

Perhaps you want to win colleagues over to a new way of working. Maybe you're a teacher who's battling to get your pupils to behave or see the value of what they're learning. Or perhaps you're a parent who's looking for ingenious ways to convince your children to eat their vegetables, help with the housework, or study for exams.

This book also has some great tips for everyday, hard-to-handle situations. You want to check into your hotel room early but the receptionist says you can't. Or you want to return items to a store but you've lost the receipt. "Adversaries into Allies" will show you how to make your point or persuade people to say yes, while staying calm and making sure they don't get upset.

Author Bob Burg is an authority on negotiation and managing relationships. He's a sought-after speaker who presents to international organizations including Fortune 500 companies, and he's the author or co-author of a number of best-selling books, including "The Go-Giver," "Go-Givers Sell More," and "It's Not About You." His books have sold more than a million copies in more than 20 languages.

So keep listening to hear how to stay cool in a crisis, how to seek clarification to avoid confrontation, and how to get your point across with tact.

In his introduction, the author says life success comes down to 10 percent technical skills and 90 percent people skills. You can be the most intelligent, capable, creative person in your field, but if you don't know how to get people to take notice of you or believe in you, your skills could go to waste, or your business could flop.

But if you can get people to like and trust you, and convince them there's something in it for them – genuinely, without manipulating or offering false promises – they'll want to do business with you.

To achieve this, you'll need to follow five principles. First, control your emotions so you respond calmly rather than react rashly. Second, understand that everyone operates within different belief systems that often clash. Third, acknowledge the other party's ego, and make them feel good about themselves. Fourth, set the proper frame by approaching conflicts from a place of compassion and helpfulness. And fifth, communicate with tact and empathy.

Many of the author's points aren't complicated and they're not particularly original. Readers may already be familiar with the concept of gratitude, the art of thinking before you speak or act, pausing before firing off a nasty email, or treating others with kindness and diplomacy. The author also draws a lot on the advice of other respected authors in the field of negotiation and relationships. For instance, he quotes from Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People" and "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey.

But this book ties up everything that's gone before in a neat package. The author throws in his own ideas too, along with colorful examples and anecdotes that bring these theories to life.

So let's take a look at his first principle: controlling your emotions.

We're emotional beings – some of us more than others – and we can be prone to react in haste or anger, rather than take time to respond calmly. But our ability to "respond" rather than "react" is key to winning respect and becoming people of influence.

To start reining in our emotions, the author suggests we use a combination of visualization and practice. We can imagine situations where we'll have the opportunity to respond instead of react, and see ourselves doing it really well. This will help us be prepared for the real thing, just like an astronaut simulating a flight.

We can also rack up small successes throughout the day, by reacting calmly to difficult situations or people. These will stand us in good stead when something really challenging happens. And how about writing the words, "Respond versus React" on post-it notes and sticking them in places where you're likely to be triggered – near your computer, or your phone?

If we can change our default setting to "calm" and keep it like that in tricky situations, it'll be much easier to persuade others to see our point of view.

We can also learn how our colleagues or friends respond or react to certain situations, and find ways to help them change or moderate their default setting. The author shares an anecdote about a female friend who immediately becomes anxious when he suggests she do something. Her default setting is to think she can't manage it, it'll be too much for her, or she'll feel uncomfortable doing it. The author's now learned to suggest that she think about the idea for a day before making up her mind. This gives her a back door or an emotional escape route. She's more likely to weigh up the options rationally, rather than emotionally, when she doesn't feel pressured into deciding straight away.

The author also offers seven steps to overcoming anger. While some are common sense – like being aware of your anger and committing to react calmly – we were skeptical about one of them. He suggests we pretend we're in the midst of an outburst of anger and imagine that a seven-foot-tall, 450-pound, ferocious-looking man wielding a machine gun enters the room, saying, "If you don't stop your anger right now, you're in trouble."

This mind game should help you stop being angry immediately, the author says. We're not so sure – but feel free to try it!

On a serious note, we think the author omits some tried-and-tested anger management techniques. Anger often comes up for a reason, and suppressing it – without processing it in a healthy way – can lead to resentment or worse. We don't recommend holding on to a grudge, but feelings of anger sometimes need to be expressed or handled with care.

Let's now look at what the book says about belief systems and how to avoid a clash.

It's important to note that the author uses the term "belief system" very broadly. Belief, in this context, is not about faith or ideology. Rather, it's about what we believe to be true about the world – what we're used to and how we've learned to interpret ideas and even words. This has been influenced by many factors – how we were parented, the environment we grew up in, and the experiences we've had throughout our lives.

We take these beliefs into our personal and professional relationships, where we come to face-to-face with other people's beliefs, which can bear no resemblance to our own.

The author gives a really simple example of how our belief systems produce different versions of the truth. A friend of his was planning on moving to his area, and asked whether a house he'd seen advertised was close to the ocean. The author told him it was pretty far away, so the guy lost interest in it. But when the friend showed up for a visit, he went to see the house – and he couldn't believe that the author had told him it wasn't near the coast.

The house was seven miles from the sea. This was a really long way for the author, who lived two blocks from the shore in Florida. For his friend, who lived in the Midwest, it wasn't far at all – to him 700 miles would have been far away. These opposing points of view, based on individual experiences and interpretations, led to miscommunication.

Take this idea into the corporate world, and you could end up with all kinds of misunderstandings and conflict. For one person, a tight deadline could be six hours, for another it could be one week; a short report could mean two pages to one person and 200 to someone else.

The author offers four tips to defuse conflict and avoid misunderstanding. First, ask yourself how your personal beliefs are distorting the actual truth of the situation. Second, ask how the other person's belief system is doing the same. Then think what questions you could ask the other party to clarify their beliefs, or version of the truth. Finally, think about what information you can offer, so the other person understands your point of view.

The author reminds us that in a conflict situation, there are generally three truths: your truth, the other person's truth, and the actual truth.

He drives his point home with a hypothetical example from the workplace. Dave tells his project partner Margaret that they have to hand in a proposal soon, so they need to plan accordingly. Hearing urgency in Dave's voice, Margaret stays on a few hours at the end of the day to finish her share of the work. She even misses taking her son to a ball game. But the next day she discovers Dave hasn't finished his part of the project. Margaret's angry and confronts Dave, who explains that "soon," to him, meant in the next week or so. They had different interpretations of the same word.

This is a simplistic example, but we think it's really effective. Too often we shy away from clarifying instructions for fear of pestering people or appearing foolish, only to end up with a much more embarrassing or annoying situation on our hands. The author suggests we use phrases like, "Just for my own clarification, how would you define soon?" or "What do you mean by a brief report?" so there's no miscommunication or potential for discord.

Communicating with tact and empathy is the last of the author's five principles, although it underpins the preceding four. Knowing how to say the right thing, in the right tone, at the right time is key to winning people over or persuading them to do something they might be reluctant to do.

This section includes some great lead-in phrases that can help sway people's opinions in a diplomatic way, particularly if they prefer not to take advice or direction. We imagine these phrases could come in handy in the workplace, especially if you're a manager trying to get an employee to see your side.

Here are some examples: "I might be wrong about this, but …" and, "This is just a thought …" and, "This is only my opinion …" And our favorite, "You know more about this than I do, but …" Sometimes the pill is easier to swallow when mixed with applesauce, the author notes.

These lead-in phrases can open the mind of the other party, flatter their ego a little, and make your opinion or suggestion easier to take. They can also open the mind of the person saying them, prompting them to question whether they are actually correct.

We think the myriad of phrases the author offers to persuade people to see our side of the story or get us out of sticky situations are the highlight of this book. You'll learn how to give people an escape route so they don't feel pressurized, and are more amenable to buying from you.

You'll also learn how to say no politely, while maintaining good relations and keeping the door open to future offers, and how to cope with someone who constantly interrupts you when you're speaking. We particularly like the phrase, "Would you like me to finish my first thought, or answer the question you just asked?" – although you'd need to say it in a warm and friendly way, to avoid alienating the other person.

The book also covers the difference between influencing and manipulating, and why coercion is the wrong course to take, even if it can bring short-term success. And you'll understand why empathy is better than sympathy.

As you heard at the beginning, many of the author's suggestions aren't new or original – he quotes from Carnegie, Abraham Lincoln, and many others – but he's done a great job of collating some really effective material, expanding on it, and adding in his own. He also writes in a way most readers can relate to. His tone is conversational, and his language is easy to understand. You'll find yourself smiling and nodding, sometimes grimacing, and probably wanting to take notes.

"Adversaries into Allies" by Bob Burg is published by Portfolio Penguin.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.