A great book that covers various communication strategies for different situations (not just listening). Quite a powerful book about communication strategies and techniques to deal with a wide range of situations. Very clear, engaging writing. Easy to read and understand. I only wish he linked the ideas more clearly back to the Persuasion Cycle as an anchor (he did that for the 12 techniques but the way that was done was a bit confusing).

What it covers:
• The Persuasion Cycle which explains the steps involved in any type of persuasion (moving people from Resisting => Listening => Considering => Willing to do => Doing => Glad they did => Continuing to do).
• The 9 fundamental rules required to get through to anyone in any situation, including: Move yourself quickly from “oh f#@&” to “ok”, Open up your mind first, Make others feel “felt”, Be interested (not interesting), Make others feel valuable, Help people to exhale emotionally and mentally, Remove dissonance, When all else fails bare your neck, and Stay away from toxic people
• The 12 techniques to secure buy-in at different stages of the persuasion cycle situation. These include: The impossibility question, The magic paradox, The empathy jolt, The reverse play, "Do you truly believe that?", "Hmmmm", The stipulation gambit, Transformational questions, Cooperating side by side, Fill in the blanks, Aim for a "no", and the Power thank you & apology

Book summary at: https://readingraphics.com/book-summary-just-listen-mark-goulston/ ( )

The core message of this book is sound: getting people to listen to you requires you listening to them. Effective communication requires work to understand the person you are trying to communicate with. Beyond the core message, this book had a lot of practical tips with something of a laundry list feel to their presentation.

I like a lot of the tips, but I sometimes felt the author did not really address the concerns of an average person trying to learn how to listen and communicate better. If you're not like the author -- for whom these techniques seem easy -- it's not clear how you get good at using these techniques. The answer is probably that simple and boring one -- practice -- but the book did not really address or even acknowledge the gap between understanding the techniques and being able to use them.

The author often illustrates his techniques with stories that show what an awesome, wonderful, effective, magnificent communicator he is. It gets kind of annoying.

Overall, not a bad book and I learned a lot from it, but it wasn't quite good enough to be my go to book for recommending to others. ( )

Thumbed through this book again before shelving it this evening and realized that I must raise the rating from 4 to 5 stars: Already this week, I have used, almost subconsciously, two of the techniques outlined and modeled in this book, and both with good effect.

One simple, open-ended, fill-in-the-blank question, well-timed, elicited a clear expression of vision from a new client and corrected at least one presumption I had for their interest in engaging a financial / strategic advisor for their business expansion. This technique was common sense, but not something I have used consistently in the past. Another technique helped me change the course of a hyperbole-driven gripe session towards a more constructive end.

This is simple, yet heady, life-changing advise. Highly recommend for anyone seeking to improve their communication skills, respond more effectively and consistently to surprises and set-backs, and connect more deeply with family, clients and colleagues.

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Some interesting concepts here and some framework of use. It does appear somewhat manipulative but that is not the reason I gave it only 4 stars. For me any book that merits 5 stars must have a relatively clear and easy way of implementing the ideas contained within and although this has some actions points at the end of each chapter it would be hard to implement most of these ideas without a lot of practise. ( )

A great book for communication. Mark clearly knows what he is doing and explains in an interesting manner that makes you want to keep reading and rereading ( )