An engaging and thoughtful four-point plan to help clarify the goals of communication.
A guide offers a blueprint for improving communication in all areas of work and life.
“Communication is at the root of who we are,” writes Gerber at the start of her book. “It’s the glue that holds any relationship together.” And yet, she immediately notes, most people are terrible at it. In response to this, the author introduces the concept of four “Emotional Magnets” and lays out insights for how readers can identify and analyze their own Magnets. Relationships, both at home and work, tend to stand or fail on the index of communication, Gerber points out. Emotional Magnetism is all about concentrating on what people need by using the four Magnets: “Safety, Achievement, Value, and Experience.” The author examines each of these, reminding readers that “no one is 100 percent driven by one Emotional Magnet.” The emphasis will change depending on the person and the circumstance, but the importance of the Magnets remains constant. Gerber draws on her own experiences working with people and training them in order to flesh out some of the ways individuals tend to be lazy, inefficient, or simply clueless in their communications with others. The author makes liberal use of bullets in order to clarify her points, and her advice is sound throughout. “As a good communicator, I don’t force people into things; I communicate in such a way that they see the value of what I’m saying,” Gerber writes. “I entice them to do things by being honest about what they’ll get out of it.” This sentiment clearly guides the whole book; at every turn, she’s empathetic without excusing faults, provides encouragements without downplaying difficulties, and focuses on her concept of Emotional Magnets without being doctrinaire on any subject. Readers who feel their own communication skills are lacking will find a great deal of useful counsel in these pages.
An engaging and thoughtful four-point plan to help clarify the goals of communication.Pub Date: May 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-77458-199-5
Page Count: 196
Publisher: Page Two Books
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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