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Fritz Agency
Christian Dittus
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English

REINFORCEMENTS

Heidi Grant

How to Get People to Help You

New Ted Talk went live today! -- More than 50,000 views in 45 minutes.



From the bestselling author of 9 THINGS SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE DO DIFFERENTLY, comes this new book on how to use social intelligence to get people to work with you.

We all need help--especially in today's uber-collaborative workplaces. Here's the good news: humans are naturally wired to want to help each other. Now here's the bad: asking for help makes most of us wildly uncomfortable.

As a result, we do a poor job of calling in the reinforcements we need, leaving confused or even offended colleagues in our wake. This pragmatic book explains the research on what psychologists call social intelligence.

To elicit helpful behavior from their colleagues, you need to do two things:

1) Remove the obstacles that stand in the way of them helping you.

2) Trigger one or more of the motivations that make people want to help.

Whether you're a first-time manager or a seasoned leader, getting people to do things for you is what management is. This book will help you do so, and do it in a way that leaves your helpers feeling good about pitching in.

Dr. Heidi Grant is a social psychologist who researches, writes, and speaks about the science of motivation. She is Senior Scientist for the Neuroleadership Institute. She continues to serve as Associate Director of Columbia's Motivation Science Center and in that capacity now teaches Executive Education courses on topics related to her books. Her work has also appeared in industry magazines like strategy & business, Chief Learning Officer, and Leader to Leader. She received her PhD in social psychology from Columbia University.
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Published 2018-06-01 by Harvard Business Review Book

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Chinese Complex: Commonwealth; Chinese Simplified: Ginkgo Books; Japan: Tokuma Shoten (Japanese)

Named a Business Book of the Month by the Financial Times.

Heidi Grant is a social psychologist with a fear of asking for help, which, it turns out, is not unusual. She recounts the story of fellow psychologist Stanley Milgram's "subway study", in which he and others asked passengers to give up their seats. Milgram said that just having to ask made him feel "as if I were going to perish". Ms Grant points out that "reinforcement" has a triple meaning - strengthening, yes, but also the extra personnel sent to support an army and the process of encouraging a pattern of behaviour. Each "captures something really important about seeking support". The subtitle of this short book is what makes it irresistible, though, and Ms Grant's concise counsel amply fulfils its promise. Most people, she writes, will not ask for help because they are afraid others will say no, because they assume people will think less of them for asking, and they believe that "having to help is awful, and [they] have no right to ask it of anyone". None of these assumptions is true, she proves, using evidence from neuroscience and psychology. That alone makes this book, well, helpful. -- Financial Times

June 2109: New Ted Talk went live today! -- More than 50,000 views in 45 minutes. Read more...