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Are You Enchanting?

Guest post by: Bruna Martinuzzi

Article Overview: This is a review of Guy Kawasaki’s book, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions.

Are You Enchanting?

Have a highlighter next to you when you set out to read this book, as this is that kind of a book: it is instructive and practical, full of actionable advice and real-world tips that we can all use in our lives. While written primarily for entrepreneurs seeking to promote their business, or marketers wanting to spread their organization’s message, this book will benefit everyone: whether you are a senior executive who wants to sharpen the saw, an emergent leader who wants to position herself for career success or an individual contributor who wants to attract positive attention, this book will help you.

So what is enchantment? The author defines it as “the process of delighting people with a product, service, organization or idea,” which results in long-lasting support that is voluntary and beneficial to you and to those you enchant—whether it’s your customers, your employees or your boss. The perfect example of a company that enchants is Apple.

To be enchanting, you need to have three components: Likability, Trustworthiness and a Great Cause.

Likability:

The book includes 12 practical steps for being more likable: for example, defaulting to yes when someone asks for something (“A yes buys time, enables you to see more options, and builds rapport.”) Other aspects of likability include basics such as a genuine smile, dressing in a manner that respects your audience, and a proper handshake. While this is common-sense advice, it is not always common practice, unfortunately, and one can never be reminded enough of these aspects of civility. On the question of dress, for example, how often do we see someone show up for a presentation under-dressed which signals disrespect for the audience. The likable thing to do is to dress the same as the audience: “Equal dressing says, “We’re peers.”

Trustworthiness:

There are 10 important aspects for achieving trustworthiness. Trustworthiness is key as the entire premise of the book is based on a foundation of integrity: influencing others without compromising our integrity. Emerson said: “Imitation is suicide.” This book is not about imitation—it’s about being inspired by others, and learning the best practices for enchanting so that you can make them a part of your personal operating system. An example of one of the concepts of trustworthiness that the author provides has to do with developing a mentality of abundance. In “Bake a Bigger Pie,” Kawasaki discusses the two types of people in organizations, which he calls the Eaters and the Bakers: “The Eaters want a bigger slice of an existing pie; bakers want to make a bigger pie.” We have all worked, at one time or other, with eaters. People who are trustworthy are bakers not eaters, that is, they believe in creating abundance for themselves and others. Eaters, on the other hand, come from a position of scarcity.

A Great Cause:

Great products have special features. The author conveniently describes these with the acronym DICEE. Deep (having many features), Intelligent (anticipating your needs and solving them in a smart way), Complete (offering the totality of the experience, e.g. service, support, bells and whistles), Empowering (giving the consumer the power to perform existing tasks better or providing the tools to do new things that one hadn’t even envisioned) and Elegant (e.g. a product designed with empathy for the user interface and experience.)

How to Launch:

With the three-legged foundation of enchantment established, Guy now gives you 11 tips on how to launch your cause or product, one of which is “Plant Many Seeds.” Thriving in the new world, some of these seeds need to be planted not just in the traditional way, with experts and those who yield influence, but targeting what Guy calls “the nobodies:” This could be the 15-year old who adopts your cause and makes it spread with his or her network: “The more nobodies you reach, the more likely they turn into somebodies for your cause.”



How to Overcome Resistance:

There are 14 practical chapters in this section which includes some timeless weapons of influence such as providing social proof (people are influenced by what others do), or creating the perception of scarcity (to fuel the desire for what you provide.) Also useful is the three-step advice for framing the competition.

Other Chapters:

Other chapters that I found extremely useful, as well, are the ones on how to use social media to influence others and get results: One chapter is on PUSH TECHNOLOGY (which “brings your story to people”—this includes presentations, e-mail and Twitter) and PULL TECHNOLOGY (which “brings people to your story—this includes Websites, blogs, Facebook, Linkedin and YouTube.) There is also an intriguing chapter entitled “Think Japanese.”

In the book, you will also encounter Guy Kawasaki’s 10, 20, 30 rule. If, for some reason, you are not familiar with Kawasaki, you can get a flavor of his down-to-earth style and his great sense of humor in this video where he talks about this powerful rule that is guaranteed to improve your PowerPoint presentations. The book is written in the same style.

And that’s not all: there is smart advice on how to enchant your boss, your employees (and even volunteers!) and a 9-point chapter on how to resist non-ethical enchanters—these are the people who have mastered the influence and persuasion techniques and use them on us for causes that are not in our best interest. For example, Don’t Fall for the Example of One: “…one glaring data point doesn’t determine a trend.”) Each chapter also ends with someone telling their own personal story of a moment when they were enchanted. These are inspiring, indeed. You will never forget, for example, Eric Dawson’s story.

As well, throughout the book, you discover items that catch your attention and send you to interesting websites such as the reference to dysphemistic swearing. Even the quotes at the start of chapters are interesting: “A great man is one sentence” (Clare Booth Luce) or “Create like a god, command like a king, work like a slave” (Brancusi.)

The book ends with a useful 20-question quiz to find out how enchanting you are. You can also take the quiz online here. The book’s website provides useful resources such as slides and audio/video presentations on the topic of enchantment, as well as an info-graphic for the book. They are well worth a visit.

This volume is based on solid research in the field of influence and persuasion: in the bibliography, Kawasaki lists 20 books that he consulted during the course of his research. You will find many interesting case studies. Ultimately, the book is a primer on how to influence others—if you want to become more persuasive and enhance your ability to inspire others, read Enchantment and make full use of all of resources that it provides.

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Article Tags: 20, 30 rule hearts minds, Bruna Martinuzzi, Cialdini, Enchantment, Guy Kawasaki, Influence, Persuasion, the 10



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