How to Win Friends and Influence People
Dale Carnegie
Pocket Books, 1981 revised edition
ISBN 671723650

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A classic! An inspirational, highly readable book full of stories about how to get along with and work well with people to accomplish our goals. Includes sections entitled "Fundamental Techniques in Handling People," "Six Ways to Make People Like You," "How to Win People to your Way of Thinking," "Be a Leader: How to Change People without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment."

Table of Contents:

Part Four, "Be a Leader," includes sections that apply to leading people into their best performance, an important skill for any project manager!

1. If you must find fault, this is the way to begin
2. How to criticize and not be hated for it
3. Talk about your own mistakes first
4. No one likes to take orders
5. Let the other person save face
6. How to spur people on to success
7. Give a dog a good name
8. Make the fault seem easy to correct
9. Making people glad to do what you want

I like the practicality of this book. I think our ability to be leaders as project managers is very tightly tied to our own behavior around our team members, and how consistent that behavior is. This book is one I go back and re-read occasionally to remind me of these simple approaches for dealing effectively with those we need to lead-- techniques that are so easy to forget day-to-day in the heat of the battle.

Contributed by Cinda Voegtli, ProjectConnections staff