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How to talk and listen well

Book: Effective Communications

Book: Effective Communications

Author: Steve Shipside

Publisher: Dorling Kindersley

Reviewer: Victor Mecoamere

Atrocious communicators can be likened to toddlers with limited social and actual vocabulary.

Such people bumble their way through life, oblivious to other people's sensitivities, reservations and even resentment, creating enemies and all the while convinced and confident that they are on top of their game.

Alas, effective communication is erroneously thought to be the preserve of corporate types.

Fittingly, effective communication is everyone, and truly anyone's, business, responsibility and treasure.

All because it is an investment and the profit is in being understood and respected by others because effective communicators are really worth sharing space and pace with.

In this manual, or workbook, the author of Effective Communications , Steve Shipside, helps the user or reader to live true to the related subtitles; Transform the way you live and work and Get your message across and learn how to listen .

Granted, many life-skills books, like motivational books, talks and sessions, sound the same as the last and next one.

But if you have not attended a motivational talk or read a motivational book, the world around you is a haze, compared with having an experiential knowledge of the books, talks or sessions on motivation or effective communication.

Shipside's offering is compact and easy to follow. It covers the usual stuff that we tend to take for granted, including good listening and talking. Yes, plain talking; but to be understood, as well as talking in groups, managing your life in a multimedia world and, most importantly, dealing with conflict.

Some people mistake silence for cowardice. But good listeners take their own good time before blurting out answers with the potential to blow a lucrative deal sky-high, spoil a friendship before it could start, or blow a gaping hole in one's armour of respectability.

Shipside encourages the reader to listen attentively, think smart by taking notes or paraphrasing so that your answer or response shows that you have been applying yourself competitively in a conversation, discussion, conference or interview.

Good listeners know when to shut their mouths and listen, consider or digest what they are hearing and what or whom they are listening to. They are not thinking about or planning a response while others are putting their point across.

Bad communicators are friendless. Shipside says that factors of terrible communication which affect relationships include an overblown reliance on, or inferior regard for, status, class, race and culture, age, gender, work skills or discipline, education or wealth.

Effective Communications is worth owning or diverting to friends or colleagues.

It helps clear the communication cobwebs. Those who take themselves seriously will heed this hint.

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