Description
This timeless book outlines the guiding principles and rules for preventing turmoil in relationships. It shows you how to get others to align with your personal and professional goals. Another great read from Dr. Jim Murray.
Understand the games people play and why normal emotional responses are ineffective. Find out how to benefit from human nature rather than fighting it. Learn how to get your work done without undue frustration, anger and confusion. Take back control of your life.
Discover how to befriend bullies, manage manipulators and tame tough guys. Learn how to win over bureaucrats, dinosaurs, know-it-alls, pessimists, wafflers, whiners, rebels and other challenging players in the game – the ones who cause the greatest stress, conflict and sheer wasted time in our lives.
Early readers summed up their feelings about the book this way:
“… uncanny insight on what makes people tick.”
“It’s always in my briefcase…”
“One of the most rewarding books on maintaining important relationships I will likely ever read.”
“ … a reader friendly book filled with helpful, practical every day examples.”
THE BOOK
If life is a game, this book tells you how to play it. And win consistently. Written by an expert in influence psychology, The Game of Life reveals which tactics are most effective in changing obnoxious and insensitive behaviours. It demonstrates how to take control of difficult situations and encounters. It provides practical strategies and guiding principles each of us can use to prevent tension and turmoil in important relationships. It tells us how to master the game and thereby enhance the quality of our lives. Which is really what winning is all about.
Unfortunately, “the rules” for success in life are rarely to be found in one place. We tend to learn them from experience, sometimes painful. If only we knew “what to do” before the encounter, our lives could be richer and our relationships more harmonious.
Whatever we do in life – whether buying or selling, persuading superiors or motivating subordinates, dealing with demanding customers or family members – our primary objective is to get others to agree with us. For that accomplishment is central to our ability to satisfy personal or corporate needs, exchange ideas, change attitudes, improve relationships and influence behaviour.
This reader friendly book will help you better understand “the games people play” as well as your own emotions as these games unfold. It will show you why your normal approaches to persuasion are likely ineffective. Discover how to benefit from human nature rather than continuing to fight it. Create opportunities to get your work done without undue frustration, anger and confusion. Take back control of your relationships.
The Game of Life defines the purpose of the game, its primary rules and 14 of the most challenging players you are ever likely to encounter. These players can be the bane of our existence and they are largely immune to our usual methods of influence. Unfortunately, we probably know most of them. For they are people with whom we work or live or deal with as customers or clients. They are also people you have not yet met, but likely will.
When you discover how to play and win the game of life, you will experience life with greater intensity than ever before. Knowing the important principles and the heretofore unwritten rules of the game will enable you to play more masterfully, as well as with grace and style.
ryan –
Want to know if you are a smart player or just an unwitting victim in dealing with the games people play? Dr. Jim Murray may have the answers. I found his insights and examples on how to turn conflict into cooperation to be personally relevant and useful, especially in the today’s changing workplace where customers and knowledge workers can be especially demanding.
The structure of the book adds to its value. Murray begins by establishing the premise for “life as a game” and clearly indicates its purpose and relevance in important business and interpersonal relationships. Getting people to align with your needs and interests is the name of the game. He then proceeds to lay out the rules that we tend to accumulate through these difficult encounters, largely through trial and error. Murray wants us to avoid those errors.
I found the most helpful part of the book to be the player profiles – thirteen compelling social-psychological profiles of what makes the most challenging players tick and the tactics that motivate them to change their insensitive behaviors. As Murray demonstrates, true to rule #4 (“if you don’t know who you’re playing, you cannot play their game”), each one possesses an Achilles’ heel that is vulnerable to a critical manouevre designed to accomplish your objective.
Murray’s observations on power, creativity, listening and confrontation, based on decades of research and teaching courses on influence psychology, conflict management and negotiating are worth reading. But his advice on how to gain a competitive advantage in a win-win way is what should make this book a business classic. His observations on the game are worth reflection. He tells us “we have a natural predisposition to filter our encounters with people through our past experiences. We perceive and react to stereotypical behaviours rather than seeing the other person with fresh eyes and a thinking mind every time we meet. We do not look for insights that highlight the individualism of the people with whom we play the game. We do not benefit from our awareness of player prototypes. Rather, we allow ourselves to be creatures of habit and we react accordingly.”
Most of us have learned the rules of the game from sometimes bitter experience. This book tries to eliminate the pain. The real purpose of The Game of Life, I believe, is to level the playing field. For that reason alone, I can heartily recommend the book.
– T. J. Reidel, CEO (Automotive Parts Manufacturer)