Limited scope leaves little to gain
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I usually find books like this leave me impressed with the understanding the writer has of the subject, but I was disappointed and found this book limited.
There were a few useful points early on, but there was a lot of repetition, and I thought the scope of the book was very narrow. Areas I thought wuld be explored as a matter of course were not covered and there seemed to be a large focus on social conversations with people you work with. Perhaps the biggest impression this has left me with is the difference between American and British conversation; samples phrases given as examples were generally the type seen as cheesy and false by the British but work well in the States. It was hard to read without an American accent in my head.
Essential areas I expected but were not covered included:
Assertiveness
Dealing with confrontation
Persuasive techniques
Calming aggressive people
Getting quiet people to talk
The role and use of open and closed questions
Instead the repetetive returns to social work settings had me flicking back through the book to see if I'd accidentally put my bookmark in the wrong place and was re-reading an old chapter.
I think this may be useful to people who really do have a difficulty in talking to anyone, but to those with limited skills looking to understand conversation better, I would not reccomend this book.
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United States | 
United Kingdom | 
Canada