I'm not sure why I ordered this book other than that it was free. I am not the type of person who reads self-help or business books and the one or two times in my life that I was forced to do so I couldn't see the point of the book nor did I derive anything beneficial. I have been in sales most of my life and at various points have been known as one of the top salesmen in my field. I've often been asked to share what has made me successful so I have taught classes on selling. It seems to me to be an exercise in futility. I wish it was easy to simply tell some one how to be or what to do and that success will follow. It is my belief that human beings are infinitely more complex than what the business & self-help books portray and they do not change easily, if ever. I am sure that there are people who have benefitted from this class of book but I have never met one and I suspect they are rare. People are what they are and even if you get them excited for a short time they soon revert to their norm.

As far as this book goes it seems neither better nor worse than other books in its class. It relies on telling stories to show people how they might use different behaviours to achieve more influence. I don't think reading this book is going to enable anyone to make a profound change in their lives, just as the past twenty years worth of self-help and business books haven't seemed to make a bit of difference to anyone I know personally or within society in general. There is an old saying, "Those who can, do, those who can't, teach". That's why I don't teach anymore. It's depressing to try and teach something and see that the message sent just isn't ever received because of the fundamental difference in experience, motivation, outlook and thought processes between two different people. I would also offer this thought....the only way you'll change your life or influence others successfully is simply to go try doing it and get better. In other words, there is no magic words/spell/book that is going to change your world. There is only doing, practice, and gaining experience. Save your time and money, skip the book, and go practice influencing others. You'll fail a lot, but then you get better incrementally, and you'll have made progress. It's as unlikely that you'll make progress reading a book as it is unlikely that you'll learn to play the piano by reading a book. People make a lot of money by the lure of a shortcut to be found within the pages of their book but I don't know of any shortcuts to playing a piano or in learning to influence others. I sure didn't see any in this book.

Great book for educators. Should be required reading for all who work with people. Practical and effective information taught in a comprehensive and understandable fashion. Our faculty is doing a group study and application to our school with great results!

Terribly realistic research and data. Contains absolutely practical insights and solutions for use in my leadership development organization. After referring this to over 50 colleagues, the reports back to me are; 'Grateful', 'Glad you thought of me', 'Hit me again', 'Going to put this to use immediately',and more. Phil at http://maximizeothers.wordpress.com

In general, I am not easily impressed by these business books that purport give some great insight into how to make things work. If somebody really had the ability to "change anything" then he wouldn't be wasting time writing books, he'd be out there changing things, if not for the better, then to his advantage. With that caveat in mind, however, I have to say that I enjoyed this book.

There are a couple of reasons why I enjoyed it. First, it is so much better written than most. I don't know how its five authors actually collaborated to produce this volume but it reads very well. It doesn't show the effects of too many cooks. It delivers a series of very clear, easy to follow steps. If it doesn't support itself with a lot of quantitative research, it has a selection of well-chosen anecdotes. The Guinea worm stories and the Delancey Street stories have etched themselves into my memory. I've already shared them with a number of people.

Second, the six sources of influence, the elucidation of which takes up the bulk of the book, are simple to understand and seem very reasonable. In fact, most of us have used or experienced each of the types of influence before. It is the author's cleverness to synthesize them for us. Not only that, that demonstrate how to use them effectively. Ultimately, they make the point that, to have real success in influencing others, you must use as many of the sources of influence as possible, preferably all of them. Too often, change doesn't happen because we don't use all the sources of influence available to us.

Like many books of this type, it wouldn't have suffered any by being a little bit more compact. Still, as someone who works for change in my day to day life, I was able to draw a lot of useful information out of it. Perhaps more useful things than in any book I've ready recently. That's high praise indeed.