Topics/Pillar V

Influence and social skill

Influence as warmth times competence.

Charisma is not a mystery and it is not a performance. It reads, reliably, as the product of two things people assess within seconds: whether you mean them well, and whether you are any good. Neither can be faked for long. These lectures are about developing both, and about the social reading skill that tells you which one is currently missing.

2 lectures on influence and social skill

The Unreadable Man

Restraint is not coldness or repression; it is the refusal to broadcast your internal state to people who have not earned it, and that refusal is one of the few durable forms of leverage available to an ordinary person.

17 min

Anger, Decoded

Anger is information about a boundary or a thwarted value, not an instruction to be obeyed, and learning to read the signal while refusing the command is the difference between a person who is used by his anger and one who uses it.

17 min

In the workshop

Related subjects

Clear thinking Emotional regulation Self-discipline Strategy and leverage Strength Athleticism