Instant Influence: How to Get Anyone to Do Anything—FAST

Psychologist Pantalon shares a thought-provoking system for influencing and motivating your employees—or yourself—that suffers from a clumsy presentation. A motivational coach and researcher and lecturer at Yale University, the author argues that by asking individuals the following six questions—why might you change? how ready are you to change, on a scale of 1 to 10? why didn't you pick a higher number? imagine you've changed; what would the positive outcomes be? why are those outcomes important to you? what's the next step, if any?—they will be coaxed into taking control of the situation and ownership of their decision to change their behavior. The author boasts that he can convince anyone—corporate groups, psychiatric patients, addicts, parolees, even himself—to make dramatic modifications in lifestyle, and his method of "autonomy restoration," "positive questioning," and "actionable change" sounds persuasive, but this book's constant repetition of the six questions and their many applications create monotony, like an infomercial stretched past its time. (May)