How to Talk to Absolutely Anyone: Confident communication in every situation

by Mark Rhodes

Be a people magnet! Improving your people skills and becoming a people-person is a surefire route to success, happiness, and confidence. Weíve all looked enviously across the room at that person who seems to effortlessly interact with everyone – humorous, confident and well liked. That person is confident with people they donít know, they have no fear of rejection, they can handle difficult situations with apparent ease. Well now you can too. How to Talk to Absolutely Anyone will show you exactly how to develop better communication for better results. With Mark Rhodes sound advice you will be able to build rapport with absolutely anyone.

Learn how to:

• Overcome fear of rejection
• Be confident with people you donít know
• Deal with difficult situations
• Get better outcomes from disputes
• Communicate better to win you more business and more sales
• Be more effective at networking at both business and social
events

Genres: Nonfiction, Communication, Personal Development, Self Help, Psychology, Business, Audiobook

200 pages, Paperback

First published May 29, 2013

Reviews

[Tharindu Dissanayake · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Making a good first impression will determine the quality of the response you get."

May be I'm being a little too critical here but there's very little beyond applying common sense and being confident about one's self here. However, this would be quite good for someone just getting in to communication.

"Hesitation kills spontaneity and spontaneity is your friend."

[Dina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Марк описал 4 стадии типового разговора и основные препятствия на пути к качественному и интересному диалогу.
По сути все эти слова стары, как мир. И нового мира Марк Роудз для меня не открыл.
Но его книга хороша для тех, у кого вообще не клеится разговор, не знает с какой стороны подступить к собеседнику, а также для тех, кто мучается от приступов паники только при мысли о том, что ему надо будет подойти к незнакомому человеку и что-то сказать.
Марк дает очень практичные и простые советы, которые будут подспорьем для новичков, ну или совсем уж в запущенных случаях.
Для меня с точки зрения информативности эта книга на уровне 2х звезд.
Но за структуру и за подсказки в общении могу накинуть еще 1-у.

[El · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is written in a very straightforward style. While this makes it very easy to understand the author, this already-short book is fattened up with pointless, obvious statements such as "Fear is your emotional response to a situation that is happening or that you imagine might happen". The author contradicts himself a few pages later in saying "Fear is generally based on a definite situation that is actually happening right now." Contradictions like these are quite frequent throughout the book. While most readers will still be able to understand Rhodes' main gist, it can be frustrating to filter through the writing at times.

Rhodes has a lot of suggestions for how to deal with certain problems. For fear, he suggests meditation and observing anxious/fearful thoughts in a detached manner. For incidents where someone rudely brushes past in public, he advises that you should say "Sorry, am I in your way?" as a way to 'stand your ground' and speak up. In my view, saying 'sorry' to a person who has wronged you is almost less satisfying than saying nothing.

Some other interesting advice includes telling everyone about it if you have a failed interaction (being ignored somehow making a hilarious anecdote?), interrupting a busy-looking person with a "You look busy!" observation, and matching the pace of someone else's speech, not necessarily to mirror them but because people who speak slowly also think slowly (apparently!)

I was going to stop with the criticisms there, but two paragraphs are insufficient. In the chapter titled 'Common Pitfalls', Rhodes suggests brushing negative feedback off by saying 'that's interesting' or 'ok'. Perhaps in a handful of contexts, this would be appropriate, but most people would probably find a dismissive response to be rude.

While there's a lot of less-than-spectacular advice, a lot of the advice is pretty useful. I liked the suggestion of starting a conversation with an end goal in mind, avoiding polar questions in order to maintain a quality conversation, switching dominant and submissive modes to increase the likelihood of a positive reaction, and using stories as a rapid way of building rapport and facilitating understanding. He also suggests saying 'and' instead of 'but' when trying to present another point of view to someone.

It was hard to rate this book given the very mixed bag of advice, but I ultimately decided on two stars given that this could have been a lot better with more polishing. Nevertheless, I still think it's worth a read as there are still good suggestions in the book that most people probably wouldn't have considered before.

[Ron Vereggen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good solid book on the foundations of effective communication and influence - Mark does a great job of explaining NLP techniques in easy to understand and ethical ways

[catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall a good starting point for me, I really like the examples given towards the end in dealing with difficult conversations. My problem that I was hoping to get an idea of working around is that I don't see the value in talking to people about many things - I don't see the point in complaining about the weather, I don't watch tv or films so I can't join in conversations about them, I'm not into fashion or make-up...

[Mariia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good book for people with social anxiety

I liked this book, it gives useful advice for begginers. Helps to improve the conversation skill. Good for different working situations

[🌶 peppersocks 🧦 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reflections and lessons learned:
“A good enough reason to overcome hesitation…”

Most of this should be common sense if it weren’t for questioning brains holding us back. We shouldn’t just open our mouths of course, as that wouldn’t adhere to social norms, but taking a chance to reach out and connect surely should? Responding vs reacting… some great tips for all types of communication moments including some great interview thoughts - more practical than I expected which added tithe enjoyment

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought it was ok, some useful points but some points felt quite patronising. The book seemed to advocate forcing communication even when it’s not really needed and that sometimes it’s ok to be quiet.

[Lola · Rating 2 out of 5]

- did not learn much new information 🥀
- felt trivial💔

[Kate Sergejeva · Rating 1 out of 5]

Достаточно примитивно

[Jecca Grice · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty weak. Didn't feel I learnt anything new.

[Alfred Lotho · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book started out really weak discussing the basics of "talking". At the start, the author explains about fear, visualizing the outcome, thinking about a negative response from the person you're talking to, etc. And then, it suddenly jumps to complicated make-your-speech-unnatural suggestions such as using the same language as the person (i.e. 5 senses) or being careful with the choice of words. They are indeed useful advice but the biggest problem is that most of them don't stick. A few hours after reading the book, I asked myself what the 4 steps of "how to talk to absolutely anyone" was and I couldn't remember even 1 of them.

[M · Rating 1 out of 5]

Spoiler alert: go up to someone and talk to them. Problem solved.

[Paweł Rusin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book promises a lot and delivers little

[Gayle · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting guide and suggestions on how to strike up and conversation. It talks about what you want from the chat and how to move the chat to what you want.

[Alan Oliveira · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who enjoys connecting with people, whether at work or in social settings, I found this book to be full of valuable insights and strategies.

The early chapters are full of great tips on overcoming fear and building confidence, which are crucial for anyone who feels hesitant about striking up conversations. The author also introduces clever ways to keep conversations flowing, making it easier to engage with strangers. These lessons were immediately applicable to both my personal and professional life, especially in my public-facing role.

Unfortunately, I felt that the book overstayed its welcome in the final section. For me, the zero to hero part felt repetitive and less relevant compared to the rest of the book. While it might be interesting for other readers to practice what was taught, I think the book could have concluded before diving into this segment.

Overall, this book is a fantastic resource to improve conversational skills. It’s smart, practical, and packed with actionable advice that can transform our approach to everyday interactions.

[Ajay · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a much needed lesson in confidence, conversation skills, and the art of connection. From starting with the fundamental question of why -- why should we speak to strangers? Why should we want to be better at conversation? -- to the little tips and tricks which are obvious yet I had utterly missed in my personal experience this book does a lot right. But, overall the read was short, unmemorable, and I don't believe that it addressed the deeper root causes of the issue.

Advice like spend today reflecting on what are you afraid of in speaking to a stranger? Is a good first step, but a book may not have the power to offer much more.

Overall, a decent read but could be missed.

[Lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

Improving your people skills and becoming a people-person is a surefire route to success, happiness, and confidence. Weive all looked enviously across the room at that person who seems to effortlessly interact with everyone - humorous, confident and well liked. That person is confident with people they don't know, they have no fear of rejection, they can handle difficult situations with apparent ease. Well now you can too.

While the basic fundamentals are there I did not really get anything out of this book and nothing was really sticking after I finished it.

[Julie MacKay · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of it is probably common sense, but sometime people need to be reminded of these things anyway, especially if talking doesn't come naturally to them. I thought it was good and worth reading again occasionally for some pointers/reminders. There are some good tips in there. Even though it tries to be fairly general, there does seem to be a quite a bit of a business/corporate world mindset throughout the book at times, which doesn't really apply to me.

[Yasin Ghasembaik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great book recently finished it. I did take notes and used some skilled that were mentioned in the book which really helped and communicate and become more confident in starting conversations. However the only problem I had was that some chapters were a little based on business and how to deal with staff and so on. The examples were also business based as well. But the first couple of chapters were really great and helpful.

[Jorden · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really struggled to get through this. I feel that some information could be useful, but most of it seemed weird to me. I feel a lot of what is said to do in this book could make you come off as rude and not actually help you with communication at all. I would say it's about 20% useful and 80% not useful information. I found myself a lot of the time reading with my eyes and not actually reading. I probably wouldn't recommend this book.

[Astri · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has great and useful tips to start and sustain conversations in our everyday life, whether it's in the coffee shop, bookstore, and also in our work. There is also an exercise in the last chapter that you could do to start practicing your communication skills. A must read for anyone having difficulties or struggling with communicating confidently.

[Freyr · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great advice in here but I felt it would be more use for someone in the business world and isn't as confident talking to others as most. If you already have a confidence that lets you talk to most people anyway this book won't teach you a lot you don't already know. I want to rate it 3.5 cuz 3 feels a tad too harsh but 4 feels too generous. All in all, worth a read if you feel you need it.

[Julia Balutina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Прекрасная книга, которая помогает выстроить процесс общения на понятном уровне для собеседника, используя подходящие виды коммуникаций: через образы для визуалов, чувства - для эмпатов, слух - для тех, кто воспринимает все на слух. прекрасные примеры для обсуждения сложных ситуаций. Так много закладок я давно не делала! Рекомендую!

[Natalie ♥ · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wouldn't say it was packed full of stellar advice but there were some bits that I did find useful - one being to replace 'and' with every time you want to use 'but'. It wasn't quite what I was looking for but I do think that this would be good for those maybe who do struggle a lot with striking up conversations.

[Francesca · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a nice and easy read. There are some good points made and it's helpful to underline the key points. However, didn't particularly give the correct guidance in how to handle certain situations and the examples were quite obscure.

[Lauren Millington · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book a little rudimentary for what I was looking for and actually a lot of it affirmed what I already do. I found chapter 13 to be the most helpful with how to deal with specific awkward conversations, especially in the work place.

[Tori Pauling · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first 70% was written for the Sheldon Coopers of the world who need some help with basic conversational skills. The specific examples at the end were helpful and more of the guidance I was looking for. They gave advice on moving past simple pleasantries and having a real conversation.

[Ahmad · Rating 3 out of 5]

A majority of this might be common sense but I enjoyed it and couldn't stop reading it. The sections on NLP are interesting. Definitely need to follow that up. The Zero to Hero plan was severely underwhelming

[Andreea R · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting book, I just feel it wasn't the right time for me to read it. I just wasn't in the mood to read a self-development book. However, some of the tips are really good and I will implement them.