Alan C. Fox - People Tools: 54 Strategies for Building Relationships, Creating Joy, and Embracing Prosperity

Copyright 2014 by Alan C. Fox

All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

People Tools is a trademark of People Tools 13 LLC.

This edition published by SelectBooks, Inc.

For information address SelectBooks, Inc., New York, New York.

First Edition

ISBN 978-1-59079-142-4

eISBN: 9781590791455

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fox, Alan C.

People tools : 54 strategies for building relationships, creating joy, and embracing prosperity / Alan C. Fox. -- First edition.

pages cm

Summary: "Author presents strategies people can employ to build and strengthen the personal relationships he believes are the hallmarks of a successful career and enjoyable life"-- Provided by publisher. ISBN 978-1-59079-142-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Interpersonal relations. 2. Interpersonal communication. 3. Success.

I. Title.

HM1106.F69 2014

302--dc23

2013029442

Interior book design and production by Janice Benight

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is dedicated to Nancy Miller, who pushed me for twenty years to complete the manuscript, and to my wife, Daveen, who enjoyed the benefit, or burden, of my practicing People Tools on and with her for thirty-five years. Most important, People Tools is dedicated to you, the reader, with my hope and belief that it will add years of joy to your life.

FOREWORD

Craig R. Fox, PhD

Professor of Management and Psychology, UCLA

I f you're still trying to decide whether or not to buy this book, dont waste your time on the forewordskip ahead to the introduction. Or pick a chapter at random and dive in. Each entertaining segment delivers a nugget of deployable wisdom, mined from seventy-three years of a life well-lived and well-observed. But I warn you: find a comfortable chair, as the anecdotes will reel you in and you may have a hard time putting the book down.

My father is larger than life to many of his clients, colleagues, and friends, and Ive often wondered where that magic comes from. No doubt some part of the Alan Fox mystique comes from his considerable business success, which enables him to live comfortably with occasional flourishes of extravagance and generosity. On top of that he somehow finds time to edit a poetry journal, oversee a charitable organization, remain connected with an impossibly expansive network of clients and friends, read voraciously, attend a surfeit of theater, music, and sporting events, and travel extensively. It seems like Alan Fox does more before breakfast than most of us dare dream up for our to-do lists.

But even were you to strip away all of the personal accomplishments and manic efficiency, I believe that my father would remain a powerful figure in the lives of those around him. Something about the way he comports himself and interacts with the people in his orbit seems to elevate them. A big part of his interpersonal success, I believe, comes from his skillful deployment of an ever-expanding array of people tools.

Ive certainly been on the receiving end of people tools myself. For instance, a couple of months after I began my first tenure-track job at Duke University at age twenty-eight, Hurricane Fran bore down on North Carolina where I had just purchased my first home. The storm ripped two dozen massive trees out of my acre of forest, badly damaged the roof, and shattered a multilevel deck. I was devastated and didnt know how to begin to clean up while I was beginning a challenging new job.

On hearing about the carnage my father cheerfully exclaimed, This is wonderful news. I was stunnedit was as if he hadnt heard a word I had said. He continued: Now you have an opportunity to learn all about working with insurance agents, architects, and contractors. Your lot will be more sunny and when you rebuild you can have exactly the kind of deck you want. My fathers upbeat tone and forward-looking perspective caught me off guard. But I must confess that his response made me feel more than a little better, and it was the first truly constructive response I had received since the hurricane hit. And it was quintessential Alan Fox: optimistic, practical, wise.

My fathers tool of moving on quickly from the past and treating each setback as an opportunity (make lemonade) is a lesson that has stuck with me in the seventeen years since the hurricane. And his tool of embracing contagious optimism rather than wallowing with me in my misery (smiley face) has since helped me to be more effective when supporting friends and acquaintances in pain.

Many years ago I served as an undergraduate research assistant for an eminent psychologist who would later win a Nobel Prize. One day I asked the great man how he came up with ideas for the many remarkable studies he had published over the years. Had he scanned the literature for gaps in evidence or opportunities to improve existing theories? Not at all, he answered. I view my job like that of a good novelist. I observe peopletheir patterns, their idiosyncrasiesand from that I form hypotheses that I test in my experiments. Only later do I return to the literature to see what has been done before.

Ive sometimes joked that my father is a pop psychologist. The truth is that his fresh perspective as a non-psychologist with the instincts of a novelist have helped him to independently derive several important insights that have a good basis in behavioral science research. For instance, his observation that we can sometimes bring out behaviors in others that we expect (self-fulfilling prophecies) has been confirmed in numerous experiments by social psychologists; the insight that prior actions are more predictive of future behaviors than are statements of intention (belt buckle and patterns persist) also has a good basis in research; the notion that reward can be more effective than punishment (catch them being good) and that we tend to overestimate how much others share our values and beliefs (parallel paths) also have found support in scientific studies.

A few of my fathers people tools are so keenly observant that they could inspire new research. For instance, in his chapter on sunk costs he observes that purchasing a ticket to an excursion should be viewed as buying an option to go on the excursion rather than buying the excursion itself. This subtle psychological distinction makes it easier to skip the excursion if one later finds a better use for the timethe rational course of action. In behavioral economics we call that a framing effect: people are more willing to walk away from an alternative when it is seen as a foregone gain than when it is seen as a loss. Thus, my fathers idea to explicitly label sunk costs as options is an ingenious tool for self-management that, so far as I know, researchers have not yet formally investigated.

PEOPLE TOOLS ARE NOT ONLY useful for self-management. They can also be useful in managing others. A friend of mine who used to teach at Harvard Business School (HBS) tells me that the institution once surveyed its alumni and asked them what they learned at HBS that they found most useful in their lives beyond Harvard. Apparently the top answer they received from their alumni was people skills. This accords with my own experienceI find that students typically enter business school hungry for quantitative tools of finance,accounting, and strategic analysis. Yet what often serves them best years later are the interpersonal skills they learn in a leadership or negotiation class that enable them to build better networks, lead others, and manage conflicts more effectively. Indeed, I often find myself sprinkling my fathers people tools into my own lectures to appreciative MBA students and business executives.