FOCUS (9780142180730)

Do you play to win? Or do you play not to lose?

We all want to experience pleasure and avoid pain. But there are really two kinds of pleasure and pain that motivate everything we do. And as Tory Higgins and Heidi Grant Halvorson have discovered in their work at the Motivation Center at the Columbia University Business School, if you understand that simple but crucial difference in how we focus, you will have the power to motivate yourself and influence everyone around you.

If you are promotion-focused, you want to advance and avoid missed opportunities. You are motivated by rewards- you always see the brass ring. If you are prevention-focused, you want to minimize losses and keep things working. You are motivated to hang on to what you've got- you want to make sure nothing goes wrong. If you are promotion-focused you want that bonus you don't think about losing your job. If you are prevention-focused, you don't think much about the bonus but you will do everything you can to make sure your job is secure.

Showing how promotion/prevention focus applies across a wide range of situations from selling products to managing employees to raising children to getting a second date, Halvorson and Higgins show us how to identify focus, how to change focus, and how to use focus exactly the right way to get results. Short, punchy, and prescriptive, Focus will help you see not just what's going on around you but what's going on underneath.