In the book “Compelling People,” by J Neffinger and M. Kohut say that in order to be more influential in your life, whether it's your career, your romantic relationships or your friendships, you've got to have two basic qualities: Strength and Warmth. Strength is someone’s ability to affect the world and to get things done.
|We respect people with strength. We give our attention to people with strength. And we do this because we know that people with strength can either use their strength in a way that will help us or in a way that will hinder us. People who lack strength don’t have the ability to assert themselves. Because of this, people who lack strength never successfully builds businesses, move up the corporate ladder, or become leaders in their fields|.
Warmth, on the other hand, is the feeling we get when we know someone shares our interests and goals. We’re happy when people we feel warm towards get their way. We like people with warmth. And we want people with warmth to succeed. At any moment that we are in the presence of others, we are unconsciously communicating both strength and warmth.
Unfortunately, the most difficult thing about strength and warmth is that it is very hard to project both at one. This is because strength and warm are in direct tension with one another. The things we can do to project strength tend to make us seem less warm, and vice versa. This provides us with a dilemma.
The ability to project both at once is difficult, but it can definitely be learned.
Martin Luther King Jr., for example, learned how to do this. He was the master of balancing both strength and warmth. So is Oprah Winfrey.
In order to be influential, we must learn how to cultivate this skill as well.
There are many things that this book says you can do in order to do this, but if you can't, you'll always struggle to better influence and connect with all the people you encounter on a daily basis.