I just got back from the Shania Twain concert at the MCI Center in Washington, DC and then 5 days in Las Vegas. Sin city, the most profligate waste of money in the world today! I took time off from thinking about work, but was able to finish reading two books I've had on the shelf for a bit. The first one I'll blog on later, as I am going to tie it into some recent work I've done on Scrum.
The second one was Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. This was an excellent book, 5 stars for my Amazon rating. The book categorizes the main tricks marketers, what the author calls "compliance professionals," use into six topics. He delves into each topic in detail; there are only 7 chapters in this 300+ page book. Not only does Dr. Cialdini give many clear examples, he also instructs us on ways to turn the compliance tricks back on the compliance professionals themselves.
Perhaps what struck me most was how well this describes negotiation situations. Negotiations was one of the best classes I took in the MBA program. Throughout the semester, we had to negotiate with classmates, and our grades were determined in large part on our outcome compared to the rest of the class. Talk about motivation to do well! We used, consciously and unconsciously, every trick in Influence for our practice negotiations. About midway through the semester, though, we had to read another excellent book, probably the definitive tome on principled negotiations, Getting to Yes by Fisher and Ury. If you haven't read this book, go buy or borrow it and read it today! It is a very quick read and well worth the time.
Negotiating is an important skill in the agile developer's toolkit due to the close interaction with the customer. Getting to Yes will show you the "how" in negotiating, focusing on getting the most value for everyone involved, rather than the "us vs. them" mentality. Influence will show you specific types of tricks that the other side will most assuredly use against you and how to avoid them. If you are afraid of negotiating or feel you are unskilled, you owe it to yourself to check these two books out.