The Art of Asking a Favor

32 Powerful Influencing Words,,, and 10 that are overrated

Much has been written on the art of influence, but many of my clients find such advice too difficult to implement. 

They’ve had more success in trying to influence someone’s behavior or attitude by, where appropriate, using the 32 words I list in my PsychologyToday.com article today.
 

Real Acting: Tips for acting on- and especially off-stage

We tend to think of acting as something done on stage, in the movies, or on TV.
But we’re all acting, all the time: at work, in relationships.

Off-stage acting is viewed as unseemly, phony but, framed more accurately, it’s the appropriate adapting to your counterpart's needs, the opposite of the narcissism so often written about these days.

Of course, acting can be used for nefarious as well as benevolent purposes but that’s true of most tools--from intelligence to a pocket knife. That doesn’t obviate the value of learning how to be a better actor. To that end, as my PsychologyToday.com article today, I offer tips for how to act without being discovered as acting

A Kinder, Gentler Approach to Kim Jong Un

Today, C-SPAN broadcast the United Nations’ unanimous Security Council vote to increase sanctions against North Korea and its nuclear-threatening Supreme Leader, Kim Jong Un. Speech after speech seem psychologically oblivious, merely returning threats of might with threats of greater might.

Of course, it’s possible that the sanctions will work. Some people understand nothing but pain and the threat of more pain. And it’s possible that Kim Jung Un is simply "crazy:” a psychopathic, megalomanical, sociopathic monster, as is often claimed.

But on the possibility that Kim Jong Un is not crazy but just a human being who for, some psychological and practical reasons, has felt backed into a corner and thus feels he must threaten and alienate the world with nuclear threats, assassinations, and human rights violations, even at the cost of great pain to his people, I thought it might be instructive to you if not to him to write a letter to him.

I can't imagine he'd actually read it, so its primary purpose is to offer my readers an approach to dealing with a hated person and to conflict in general that is more consonant with Psychology Today's and its reader's humanistic sensibilities. Perhaps the tactics I use in the letter may be useful as you address conflicts in your life. In that letter, which I post on PsychologyToday.com, I embed those tactics in parentheses and italics.

My Next Book

I'm thinking of writing these books. Do you think either is worth the effort?

What It's Really Like to Teach in Oakland
30 Teachers Tell Their Story


Manipulated

40 Ways They Deceive You in Politics and in the Workplace