The Ultimate Guide to Power & Influence by Robert Dilenschneider is a must-read for any leader or anyone aspiring to be a leader. Having power and not using it to influence others or having influence without using it to make those around you better is a waste of your gifts. Here is why I recommend this book.
For starters, I know Bob Dilenschneider longer than almost anyone else, having met him when I was starting my practice and he had first arrived in New York from Chicago. Because of this, I know a lot about his abilities, skills, accomplishments and his extraordinary circle of contacts and influencers. That is also why I have read every book he wrote. Once he told me about this book, I preordered the Kindle version, which appeared on my laptop like magic at midnight on the day it was published, and immediately read it. I have never failed to learn from what he writes and not just from his books but his insightful and penetrating short monographs, reports and red booklets.
Bob is a public relations counselor representing the highest echelon of leaders and their companies, including many of the Fortune 100 companies. It is hard to identify his strengths since he covers the entire gamut of his clients’ needs, including many needs they were unaware of. He is adept at helping clients head off potential problems in their nascent period to showing them how to build on budding strengths and everything in between. His book provides a small glimpse, through illustrations, of some of the many very well-known people he provided life-altering guidance to.
This new book is his magnum opus, putting together his accumulated knowledge, experiences and observations of many business and personal actions his clients and others have been confronted with—most with successful results, but not all.
I posted a blog about one of his previous books, and if you search his name on this site, you’ll find a few more mentions of him.
This book provides an opportunity to be the proverbial fly on the wall of countless boardrooms, offices (or business lunches) when big decisions were made. The book also provides a template on how you can adapt and apply these principles to your everyday interactions and hone and grow your power and influence. As I was reading the book on my iPad, I took screenshots of pages and circled sentences I wanted to go back to or mention in this review. I will just provide a few of the gems I highlighted. These are all quotes from the book.
- With power comes a great responsibility to use it wisely. You carry this obligation most of all to your family but also to your colleagues, community, social organizations, town, state, country – to humanity.
- “The fundamental role of a leader,” [Indra] Nooyi says, “is to look for ways to shape the decades ahead, not just react to the present, and to help others accept the discomfort of disruptions to the status quo.”
- Effective communication is at the heart of good management. Effective communication stems from how you convey your message, how you make it memorable, and, importantly, how you listen.
- Know your values. Be ready to advance and defend them if necessary. Be true to them.
- Be honest with yourself…you have to be genuinely aligned with who you are.
There are so many more in this book. Bob also provides a ton of great advice, including subtle ways to connect and network, the right way to correct your mistakes and handle crises, ways to establish and then protect your reputation, be a memorable manager and predict trends. I know a lot of what he says works because I do a lot of it. Some I learned by seeing what he does, some from many others I interacted and worked with, some from books and articles I read and presentations I attended and ugh, some from mistakes I’ve made.
This is a short book very long on useful information that I know that people with power and influence use and follow. Do yourself a favor and read this book.
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