By Kenneth L. Shropshire
Wharton School of Business
One of the key ways to move forward professionally is to increase your business knowledge. An easy path? Business books. Whether you read the old fashioned hard copy way, on a kindle, or some other electronic reader, you can advance your understanding of business by developing this habit that many successful business people follow. I’ll start off with two of my favorites, both for their simplicity and impact. Also both focus on the most basic element in business: how to treat and interact with other people.
For the past two years I have advised business students to read: Mandela’s Way: Lessons on Life, Love and Courage by Richard Stengel. This is not a traditional book, but the content can make you a better business person. The book contains fifteen life lessons essentially on how to treat people and how one of the greatest world leaders in history has done it. I look at Mandela’s life as one great negotiation. The book does a great job of illustrating how the smallest of steps constituted a negotiation to get what he wanted while considering the impact those steps would have on the relationship. He strategically, for example, learned the Afrikaans language of his enemy as well as their sport, rugby, so that he could eventually bring a nation together. This book is valuable as both a compelling story as well as one that causes you to reexamine the way you interact with people and how you should be living your life as you strive to be successful. Mandela spent 27 years in prison, rising to be president of the “Rainbow nation” and minimizing bloodshed in the end. He also has had three wives. What could we not learn about relationships from this man? The book is only a few years old but I have already read it over several times
Where Mandela provides fifteen broad lessons on how to interact with people, the next book, The Personal Touch: What you Really Need to Succeed in Today’s Fast Paced Business World by Terrie Williams, provides the reader with concrete steps on how to live your day-to-day life in terms of relationships. The author, a public relations executive for the likes of Eddie Murphy and Miles Davis, provides simple strategies and weaves in stories on how they can be successful. From the power of hand written thank you notes to remembering and using someone’s name in an introductory conversation, the tips are simple and easy for all to execute. The book was written in 1996, but remains a gem in terms of that most important business tool: impactful interpersonal skills
Kenneth L. Shropshire is a professor at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and Special Counsel at Duane Morris LLP.