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Ignite a Shift: Engaging Minds, Guiding Emotions and Driving Behavior
How effective leaders use communication to spark “Terrific insights and tools on how to create behavioral shifts.” —John Howlett, President, Bunzl Canada
The ability to persuade and influence is the cornerstone of successfully navigating change management. In Ignite a Shift, internationally acclaimed speaker Stephen McGarvey explores the subtleties of effective communication and highlights the essential fact that thinking impacts emotions, which drive behavior.
Ignite a Shift is the quintessential guide to communication, positive persuasion, and influencing with integrity. It reveals the proven techniques that the world’s most effective leaders are using to motivate themselves and others to excel professionally and personally.
“An insightful guide that supplies readers with practical tools to help influence, persuade, and motivate the people around them. The focus on the power of positivity, linguistics, and storytelling are crucial techniques whether you are leading a team, negotiating a contract, or simply attempting to better frame conversations in everyday life.” —Michael Baghramian, Financial Advisor, Forbes List of America’s Next Gen Advisors, 2019 & 2021
The ability to persuade and influence is the cornerstone of successfully navigating change management. In Ignite a Shift, internationally acclaimed speaker Stephen McGarvey explores the subtleties of effective communication and highlights the essential fact that thinking impacts emotions, which drive behavior.
Ignite a Shift is the quintessential guide to communication, positive persuasion, and influencing with integrity. It reveals the proven techniques that the world’s most effective leaders are using to motivate themselves and others to excel professionally and personally.
“An insightful guide that supplies readers with practical tools to help influence, persuade, and motivate the people around them. The focus on the power of positivity, linguistics, and storytelling are crucial techniques whether you are leading a team, negotiating a contract, or simply attempting to better frame conversations in everyday life.” —Michael Baghramian, Financial Advisor, Forbes List of America’s Next Gen Advisors, 2019 & 2021
315 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 17, 2022
24 people are currently reading
60 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 3, 2022
Stephen McGarvey’s new book is titled Ignite a Shift: Engaging Minds, Guiding Emotions and Driving Behavior. In it, McGarvey talks about the value of being an expert communicator, navigating the even murkier waters of transaction with the intangible, yet equally powerful tool of words. “No person is an island,” he writes at the beginning of the read. “Every day, we realize more and more how interconnected we all are, and how much we impact each other, both consciously and unconsciously. And each and every day, our individual success relies to some extent on our ability to persuade and influence others…On this journey, you will discover the importance of rapport as the foundation for persuasion and influence. We’ll explore a number of communication and memory techniques and examine the often under-appreciated impact that language has on engaging and guiding others. You’ll understand how to identify and harness various motivational factors that drive people’s choices and behaviors. You’ll also learn how to negotiate effectively. We’ll consider the significance of ‘SMART’ outcomes in the context of setting well-defined objectives, which will greatly increase the likelihood of achieving them. All of these topics—and many more—will be discussed within the context of how to move from the Current State to a Desired State.”
He adds, “If you were to survey individuals about what it takes to be persuasive and influential, you’d get a variety of answers. Some people might say, ‘You need all the facts,’ or, ‘You have to know the best sales strategies,’ or perhaps even, ‘You either have to be very charismatic or very assertive—or both.’ Let’s look at these statements one at a time. Is having all the facts at hand enough? While it’s certainly impressive, think of all the political candidates who rattle off fact after fact, then make a poor showing in the polls. As for sales techniques, we’ve all been annoyed by salespeople running their lines, pushing us to ‘buy today because the price is doubling tomorrow,’ or using some other ‘tried and true’ gimmick to attempt to persuade us. And personality? Having a charismatic one is helpful, of course, although we all know certain very charming people who are popular and at the same time lack the ability to effectively influence others.”
I appreciate how McGarvey is able to communicate so concisely, without resorting to overtly simple word choice at the expense of the ideas’ impressions themselves. He has a sense of coyness at times, even playfulness, that makes him affable and trustworthy as both a narrator of the book’s depicted scene, and as a guide of said scene. “Applying the knowledge and strategies in this book will change your life!” he cautions in aforementioned vein. “I know this to be true because applying them has definitely changed my life as well as the lives of many of my clients, customers, and friends. I’m not suggesting that you will enjoy every page or that you will learn things at an unconscious level because I have heard from a very respected source that your unconscious knows more than you are consciously aware of.”
He adds, “If you were to survey individuals about what it takes to be persuasive and influential, you’d get a variety of answers. Some people might say, ‘You need all the facts,’ or, ‘You have to know the best sales strategies,’ or perhaps even, ‘You either have to be very charismatic or very assertive—or both.’ Let’s look at these statements one at a time. Is having all the facts at hand enough? While it’s certainly impressive, think of all the political candidates who rattle off fact after fact, then make a poor showing in the polls. As for sales techniques, we’ve all been annoyed by salespeople running their lines, pushing us to ‘buy today because the price is doubling tomorrow,’ or using some other ‘tried and true’ gimmick to attempt to persuade us. And personality? Having a charismatic one is helpful, of course, although we all know certain very charming people who are popular and at the same time lack the ability to effectively influence others.”
I appreciate how McGarvey is able to communicate so concisely, without resorting to overtly simple word choice at the expense of the ideas’ impressions themselves. He has a sense of coyness at times, even playfulness, that makes him affable and trustworthy as both a narrator of the book’s depicted scene, and as a guide of said scene. “Applying the knowledge and strategies in this book will change your life!” he cautions in aforementioned vein. “I know this to be true because applying them has definitely changed my life as well as the lives of many of my clients, customers, and friends. I’m not suggesting that you will enjoy every page or that you will learn things at an unconscious level because I have heard from a very respected source that your unconscious knows more than you are consciously aware of.”
July 18, 2025
How cool is it that I get to work with the author and do this for a living?!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews