Three books.
One of the questions I like to ask people is, what book do you routinely recommend to people or that has had a big influence on your thinking? With that question in mind, I’ll offer up three of my own top book picks.
Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss is a spectacular book. I first listened to it as an audiobook (I recommend the version narrated by Michael Kramer on Audible) and took so much away from the experience that I went out and bought the physical book. The author is a former FBI hostage negotiator, and this book describes a number of real life, high-stakes hostage negotiations. While this might be considered a book about negotiation, I think the lessons from this book goes far beyond negotiation and are very apt for collaboration. What I particularly enjoyed was how Voss covers some practical and easy to understand tactics, such using a late night FM DJ voice and tactical empathy, but then explains how and why those tactics work from a behavioural point of view. A fantastic read.
Second on my list is a book by Roger Fischer (a negotiator) and Daniel Shapiro (a psychologist) called Beyond Reason: Using Emotions As You Negotiate. Beyond Reason speaks to how emotions play a key role in how we interact with other and that there is a fairly simple way to think about the wide variety of emotions that may come to play in any situation. The authors introduce the 5 Core Concerns of Appreciation, Affiliation, Autonomy, Status and Role as a way to structure your thinking and get to the drivers of emotional response. Again, this book would be considered a negotiation book, but the lessons it teaches are also applicable to other parts of your life (although I suspect the authors would simply say that the other areas are just different forms of negotiation). This book is also on Audible and is read by the authors.
The last book I’ll put up is one called The Compelling Communicator: Mastering the Art and Science of Exceptional Presentation Design by Tim Pollard. I found out about this book through the One Percent Better Podcast and then I proceeded to buy the book. What I like about this book is how Pollard describes how to structure effective communications and explain why in terms of the behavioural science (are you starting to see a trend here). As it turns out, how well you communicate depends a lot on how you structure your message. I’ve quoted material directly from this book (i.e., pyramid of planned outcome) for projects I’ve worked on.
Three books in three paragraphs. While they are not the only books that have influence my thinking, these three are ones I highly recommend and have given as gifts. What books do you typically as gifts?
Happy collaborating.
Scott Millar, through Collaboration Dynamics, often works as a "peacemaker" by gathering people with different experiences and values and helping them navigate beyond their differences to tackle complex problems together. As the host of the Cool Collaborations podcast where he explores fun stories and insights of successful collaboration with guests from around the world, and then dives into what made them work. Cool Collaborations is currently available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify.
