Book Review: 25 Ways to Win With People

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Book Review: 25 Ways to Win With People

This book is authored by John C. Maxwell and Les Parrott. It’s a sequel to John’s Winning with People and talks about how to create and maintain successful relationship with people, which is reflected in the book’s alternative title: How to Make Others Feel Like A Million Bucks.

John C. Maxwell is a well known leadership guru and has written many bestseller books. His friend, Les Parrott, who is a professor of Psychology, a successful speaker, and an author of relationship books, phoned John one day to suggest some specific things that he should teach his readers and they decided to write this book together.

This book is divided into 25 chapters, each with specific things to do to achieve successful relationship with others. In each chapter, John teaches how he works with people while Les helps readers to understand the Psychology behind the practice. Here’s the structure of a chapter:

Les… on seeing the practice in action
This part is Les’s observation on John’s real life action and speech. It shows how John applies the chapter’s lesson in his daily life.

John… with a Maxwell mentoring moment
This is the main pillar of a chapter where John teaches his stuffs. Sometimes he adds stories to make the chapter memorable and interesting. This is the part where we should pay more attention to.

Les… on bringing it home
In this part, Les adds his Psychological knowledge to the chapter, so that readers can see it from technical perspective. Expect a few jargons from Psychology.

To apply John’s teaching to your own life…
This is the summary of the whole chapter in four short quotes:

1. Forget about (things to avoid)
2. Ask (things to ponder)
3. Do it (actions to take)
4. Remember (short facts)

This book has a few minor weaknesses, where some of the chapters seem overlapped or recycled, and Les gives a lot of obvious John-worshipping and over praising. Despite these weaknesses, it’s still an excellent book. The lessons are NOT “self improvement junks” – common sense stuffs that can be churned out by any Tom, Dick, and Harry.

I applied some of the lessons in real life and found them effective. I notice that more people on MSN messenger initiate chat session with me after I practiced the things John preaches. I guess the lessons in this book work well and I’ll continue to apply them.

The unique format of this book enables me to relearn the chapters easily. From time to time I’ll browse through the list of content to recall the lessons. If I forget what I have read, I just go to the short summary of that specific chapter and relearn it easily. The story telling in each chapter helps to make the lessons concrete, interesting, and memorable.

I would say this book succeeds in adding values to readers’ lives. Social and communication skills are some of the most important skills to live a successful life. We can’t succeed without other people. This book manages to help readers to improve such essential skills. I would recommend you to have this book on your bookshelf!

Finally, I would like to highlight some of the chapters in this book that I find useful. I’m not going to name the chapters (I don’t want to give spoiler), so I’ll put down the chapter numbers here: 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 13, 15, 18, and 23. Practise these lessons and people will like to come near you!

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Readers’ contribution:

Lisalicious says:

I saw his books on leaderships, bought one about 360degree leader and find it a good book indeed. And, share’s it with my immediate boss..lolx

foongpc says:

I agree improving social and communication skills are very important to have a successful and quality life. What a great and timely recommendation! Will check out this book during MPH member sales this week! : )

KCLau says:

One more plus point for John Maxwell’s books - they are priced lower than the average books. Sometimes, even cheaper than books by local author.

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