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How to Communicate: The Ultimate Guide to Improving Your Personal and Professional Relationships
Both authors are PhDs in Psychology. Practically every advice written in this book is backed up by some empiracal evidence or study. The book covers all aspects of communication such as listening, body language, and influencing others using operant conditioning. One should note that this book focuses improving relationships through better communication. Hence, this book is not suitable for situations where antagonistic and competitive communication styles are warranted. For example, I thought the chapter on negotiation was poor due to the fact that the book promotes a "nice guy who will listen" approach to negotiation. Such approach to negotiation with no competitive strategic objective will spell disaster against a well seasoned negotiation sharks in a professional environment. Overall, the book offers solid scientifically based advice on personal communication. Just don't rely too much on it in a setting where competition, not cooperation, can be the norm.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 2, 2013
One thing I liked about this book was the fact that it had exercises at the end of each chapter for you to apply whatever you learned in your own life, and adapt those teachings to new situations effectively.
My grandfather sent me this book after I bombed an interview at GE or a position that I'm not sure I was even qualified to have, but encouraged me to read it in case I could learn something new that might help me in future interviews.
As a communication major, I was slightly insulted, but read it anyways. It took me 5 years on and off to finish it. I would get through a few chapters, something more interesting would happen, and months later, I'd forgotten everything I read. So I'd have to start over. After this happened 3 times, I decided that I'd start taking notes through the whole book, and have everything written down so I could easily reference it later. This was great.
The book was written in a fairly informal tone, so it was a quick read, and had a lot of great scenarios that better illustrated specifics about the points it was making. This included hypothetical dialogues between people experiencing that particular chapters problem, and samples of how certain conversations can go right as well as how they can go wrong.
The content itself is fairly basic, and covered a great deal of what I had learned in school already. Some of the lessons and methods could definitely be challenged by different schools of thought, but as long as you don't take them literally, they basic message can be useful.
It had a few chapters about communicating about intimate and sexual topics, which I found very uncomfortable to be taking notes on while in a family diner.
This was a helpful, and enjoyable book.
My grandfather sent me this book after I bombed an interview at GE or a position that I'm not sure I was even qualified to have, but encouraged me to read it in case I could learn something new that might help me in future interviews.
As a communication major, I was slightly insulted, but read it anyways. It took me 5 years on and off to finish it. I would get through a few chapters, something more interesting would happen, and months later, I'd forgotten everything I read. So I'd have to start over. After this happened 3 times, I decided that I'd start taking notes through the whole book, and have everything written down so I could easily reference it later. This was great.
The book was written in a fairly informal tone, so it was a quick read, and had a lot of great scenarios that better illustrated specifics about the points it was making. This included hypothetical dialogues between people experiencing that particular chapters problem, and samples of how certain conversations can go right as well as how they can go wrong.
The content itself is fairly basic, and covered a great deal of what I had learned in school already. Some of the lessons and methods could definitely be challenged by different schools of thought, but as long as you don't take them literally, they basic message can be useful.
It had a few chapters about communicating about intimate and sexual topics, which I found very uncomfortable to be taking notes on while in a family diner.
This was a helpful, and enjoyable book.
November 25, 2018
How to Communicate is a lucid introduction to human relationships. Although people talk to others, the basics of human communication are sometimes lost to a great number of people. They pay attention only to what was said and don’t notice the posture of the person or the timbre of their voice. Most communication is wrapped up in these little cues, and as I said, many fail to take notice.
The authors put together a number of situations that could arise in your day-to-day life. For instance, asking for a pay raise, getting a better deal for a used car, getting into fights with a significant other or child. All of these situations are covered in this book.
The book is slightly old, but the only way you can really tell is because they talk about ‘tape decks’ in cars. The advice is pretty timeless, so that doesn’t really add or subtract from the book, I merely thought it was interesting.
The authors put together a number of situations that could arise in your day-to-day life. For instance, asking for a pay raise, getting a better deal for a used car, getting into fights with a significant other or child. All of these situations are covered in this book.
The book is slightly old, but the only way you can really tell is because they talk about ‘tape decks’ in cars. The advice is pretty timeless, so that doesn’t really add or subtract from the book, I merely thought it was interesting.
November 7, 2020
Tõesti väärt mõtted, millel on ka praktiline väärtus. Kohati küll kohmakalt tõlgitud. Kui vähegi suudate inglise keeles lugeda siis eelistaksin originaalkeelt.
Want to read
September 23, 2022setting this on aside for now, will return to it in due time
May 4, 2025
igav hakkas
February 23, 2014
This book has been sitting on my bookshelf for a few years and I finally decided to finish the rest of it. It really is a great resource to improve communication skills in a variety of contexts whether close interpersonal relationships or in professional work settings.
The contents include
Basic skills (listening, self-disclosure, expressing)
Advanced Skills (Body Language, Paralanguage/Metamessages, Hidden Agendas, Transactional Analysis, Clarifying Language, Culture and Gender)
Conflict Skills (Assertiveness Training, Fair Fighting, Negotiation)
Social Skills (Prejudgment, Making Contact)
Family Skills (Sexual Communication, Communicating with Children, Family Communication)
Public Skills (Influencing Others, Small groups, Public Speaking, Interviewing)
Chapters are easy to follow and McKay, Davis, & Fanning provide plenty of exercises. Communication is an essential, but overlooked skill to have in a social world and anyone would benefit from the contents of this book.
The contents include
Basic skills (listening, self-disclosure, expressing)
Advanced Skills (Body Language, Paralanguage/Metamessages, Hidden Agendas, Transactional Analysis, Clarifying Language, Culture and Gender)
Conflict Skills (Assertiveness Training, Fair Fighting, Negotiation)
Social Skills (Prejudgment, Making Contact)
Family Skills (Sexual Communication, Communicating with Children, Family Communication)
Public Skills (Influencing Others, Small groups, Public Speaking, Interviewing)
Chapters are easy to follow and McKay, Davis, & Fanning provide plenty of exercises. Communication is an essential, but overlooked skill to have in a social world and anyone would benefit from the contents of this book.
June 12, 2018
Very informative, lots of good information. This book covers public speaking, job interviews, handling conflict with family or others, and all kinds of basic and above communication techniques. I will be rereading a lot of it as needed. Some of the chapters didn't apply so much, but I'm sure they could help someone else.
April 13, 2017
Communication is weird. Sounds come out of our mouths via vocals cords and they transfer subjective experiences, opinions, abstract thoughts, emotional states and to top it off sub communications and body language is this other realm to decipher meaning from. It's annoying as fuck and I find it irritating but hey it's how we social creatures communicate so here is yet another book on how to expand that aptitude. The biggest lesson is active listening, like shut the fuck up and actually listen, stop thinking of what to say next, just shhhh, and then re iterate back what you heard for accuracy. At the same time be assertive and speak your mind clearly and without making the other person feel attacked if you have something to say. It's a balance of listening and also being proactive about the message you want to get across. Cool shit. Won't be the last time I read a book on this topic
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews