Being influential is a superpower, according to Yale professor Zoe Chance, and she shares the secrets to unlocking these hidden superpowers in her new book.
Key Details
- In her book, Influence Is Your Superpower: How To Get What You What Without Compromising Who You Are, author Zoe Chance gives readers insight into how to unlock their influential superpowers.
- The skills that make a person influential are often the same skills that individuals have been taught to repress, Chance explains.
- Chance asks readers to reevaluate their preconceptions about influence, like the idea that asking for more will make them look unlikeable.
- In her book, Chance shows readers how some of their current negotiating strategies are exactly what is holding them back from success.
Why it’s important
In Influence Is Your Superpower, Chance argues that the polite, passive manner in which readers have been taught to behave is holding them back from success.
Fortunately, characteristics that make readers more influential can be learned and developed. Traits such as charisma and negotiation skills are learned habits. In Chance’s book, readers can learn how to become better negotiators and watch for manipulators.
Chance also draws on real-world examples of influential people, like skydivers, Jennifer Lawrence, Genghis Khan, and even a few alligators. By starting change within, the reader can ethically wield influence and start changing the world by beginning from within.
Chance frequently writes about interpersonal influence as one of her favorite passion projects. When she is not working on these topics, she is a writer, teacher, researcher, and climate philanthropist. She has written Influence Is Your Superpower: The Science of Winning Hearts, Sparking Change, and Making Good Things Happen.
She has a doctorate from Harvard but now teaches Mastering Influence and Persuasion at Yale School of Management. She has been published in multiple academic journals and media outlets.
Influence Is Your Superpower was published by Random House Trade on June 20, 2023.