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Compelling People: The Hidden Qualities That Make Us Influential (2013)

by John Neffinger(Favorite Author)

3.76 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1594631018 (ISBN13: 9781594631016)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Hudson Street Press

review 1: This is a book with the simple thesis that there are two qualities that make people "compelling" to other people: warmth and strength. The challenges are that you have to actually be / feel those two traits and you have to know how to express them. Not only that, since warmth and strength are to some degree in direct conflict with each other, you have to be able to carefully balance them.Co-authors Neffinger and Kohut also touch on other models of personality and character, such as the familiar "big five" model that includes five facets: conscientiousness, neuroticism, agreeableness, introversion/extraversion and openness to experience. There is only a somewhat messy overlap between these five traits and warmth + strength. This calls into question whether there is much tha... moret is particularly objective about one or both of these models if they don't coincide terribly well with one another. The argument could be made that some traits don't really matter for being "compelling" or charismatic, and so it's valid to focus on only a subset of the whole. Presumably, whether someone is compelling or not is primarily based on qualities that are more or less immediately apparent -- such as being an introvert/extravert -- whereas other big five qualities that take longer to assess -- such as neuroticism or conscientiousness -- can be left out of the picture.In any event, Neffinger and Kohut do a good job of making their argument, and focus most of their book on examples of behavior that make their theory more vivid and graspable. They also devote some space, though not enough, to how to put their theory into practical effect. The authors are also personal coaches, so perhaps they did not want to give away too many of their operational secrets lest they undercut demand for their own product.Worth reading, though I admit I only read a few selected chapters.
review 2: Started off dry, with descriptions of stereotypes on ethnicity, height, gender and definitions of warmth versus strength, but then it really gets interesting. Transitioning well from different scenarios, from work to social, marital to interactions with children, Compelling People brilliantly describes many broad communicative situations in how different styles and behaviors can be generally perceived. less

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