★★★★☆
Review
"[The deepest urge in human nature is] "the desire to be important." - John Dewey
"A person usually has to reasons for doing a thing: one that sounds good and a real one." - J.P. Morgan
Everyone has read this book. It’s a foundation for social skills and you can’t go wrong with it. It focuses a lot on appeasement and understanding other people’s points of view. On the other hand, it can come across as inauthentic (I’m reminded of the quote - “Nobody is better at being you, than you”)…
Depending on your personality, and how high up the Machiavellian sliding scale you are, this book will have varying utility to you (in whether you want to weaponize the learnings here, or just be aware of the messages ). Again, this is personality-dependent. My take on this one is that it is best paired with “48 Laws of Power” (and all of your life experiences), as otherwise in and of itself, the material here is far too naïve and folks that are more Machiavellian (as discussed) will absolutely take advantage of you.
This being said, the Leadership section is incredible and anyone who has had bad bosses in the past will understand exactly why.
I have summarized the book below.
In addition to this book, I find Dave Packard’s sayings on this topic useful. He has 11 simple ‘rules’, which I have presented below.
Dave Packard’s 11 Simple Rules