Learning People Skills

In a comment on an earlier blog post, a reader expressed interest in suggested reading related to personal growth. While I’m working on other writing projects, I thought this would be a good time to put up some books I’d recommend for developing better people skills. No matter who you are, no matter what you do, improving your ability to connect and communicate with other people will help you in pretty much every part of life. So here are a few suggestions for books to help you build your skills in this area.

• Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People. The classic book in the field. Although it was written many decades ago, it still has some of the best advice available for connecting and communicating with people.

• Terry Felber, Am I Making Myself Clear? A short book that in some ways is the greatest hits of the other books on communication. It summarizes all the key principles in communication, and includes a great chapter on self-talk.

• Les Giblin, How to Have Confidence and Power in Dealing with People. Another classic. In a lot of ways, I found this book even more practical than Carnegie’s.

• John C. Maxwell, Everyone Communicates, Few Connect. Explains a number of principles that enable us to go beyond simply communicating to people to establishing a real connection with them. This is critical if you are going to influence people in positive ways.

 Improving your people skills will bear fruit in all your activities, whether in your family, when interviewing, on the job, in your friendships, at church, in evangelism, …. So if you’re looking for a place to put some effort into self-improvement, these books will be a good place to start.