Simply Said

🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences

This book is about how to communicate simply and efficiently. It provides a framework for understanding how to communicate well. Simple is elegant.

🎨 Impressions

Tossing Latin into your writing makes you about as popular as correcting people’s grammar or calling people lazy. -- So funny and true.

I liked the book, it was concise and to the point.

One of the most important lessons from the book is about courage, it is about taking steps and being fearless.

There are also some simple things. Stay with a person for a sentence, always have with you

✍️ My Top Quotes

• If we want to improve our ability to connect with others, to understand them and to be understood more clearly, the easiest and most effective way to do so is to focus less on ourselves and more on the other person.

• We communicate in a professional context to accomplish one of two goals: we either want to convey a specific point, or we want to build rapport with someone.

• In a professional setting, you’re not graded on smarts. People assume you are smart. You’re graded on having impact. That means getting people to take action based on your ideas.

• Introducing yourself from the perspective of how you add value communicates not only your contribution to the world around you, but that you view yourself as having impact, rather than just having status.

• We just saw that as X decreases, Y increases by a factor of ten. Talk about the substance, not the medium.

• This is the oldest format in the world for conveying information. Tell them what you’re going to tell them. Tell them what you’ve got. Tell them what you’ve just told them.

• There’s a well-known acronym in business—WIIFM—What’s in it for me? That’s all anyone cares about in a work context. That’s not selfish or Machiavellian. It’s practical. We are all at work to get something done.

• Look at one person at a time for a complete sentence. If you stay with someone for a full thought, five to seven seconds, you’ll experience a number of benefits. First, you’ll relax. Most of us aren’t afraid of speaking to one person. If you only talk to one person, regardless of how many are in the room, you’ll automatically calm yourself.

• In general, it takes less energy to be nice to everyone than to figure out whom you have to be nice to.

• The goal with inflection is variety. It’s easy, especially on the phone or when reading from notes or a prepared text, to allow our voices to go flat.

• Your goal with your body language is to minimize the audience’s ability to misperceive you.

• A confident, genuine self carries a certain sense of being comfortable.

• Why keep your hands apart? As soon as your hands come together, they are likely to engage in the fidgety behaviors that make us seem nervous.

• Another partner said, “An associate came in my office the other day to tell me we had won on our motion to dismiss a major case. His facial expression was so flat you would have thought he was telling me he ordered a salad for lunch.”

• When presenting information face-to-face, one of the keys is to smile. I mentioned this earlier when discussing tone of voice. But it’s equally important from the perspective of an overall impression.

• He said, “Not much. But I am conscious of giving someone my attention. When someone comes into my office, I put my laptop screen down and I flip my iPhone over. Then I push them to the side so there is no barrier between me and the person I am talking to. That’s all.” This is Charlie Murphy’s differentiator. He built an extremely strong personal brand as a good listener by getting the clutter out of the way and giving all of his attention to the person sitting across from him. Little changes, huge impact.

• “Why listening skills?” they responded that a leader needs to be known as a good listener in order “to gain trust and respect.” We have all known people who aren’t good listeners. People tend to avoid them. They are viewed as being wrapped up in themselves. Think of someone at work who is known as a good listener. People seek that person’s advice and guidance because she comes across as looking at the bigger picture, as being able to see beyond herself.

• How can I help? It’s the most basic question, and yet all too often we don’t ask it.

• Listener: So what’s the toughest job you ever had? Speaker: It was back in college. I sold organs. It was mostly to older people. Listener: Wow! That sounds really interesting. How did you find your target market? Speaker: Well, they gave us lists of people to call who had expressed interest or a need. They’re pretty easy to use. Listener: (Looking a bit puzzled) I wasn’t aware that kind of list existed. Was it from some national database? Speaker: I don’t remember. There was also a lot of cold calling involved. Even though these are big purchases, a lot of people buy them around the holidays. Listener: (Looking very puzzled) It must have been very difficult to cold call someone to sell an organ. How did you do that? Speaker: (Seeming nonchalant) It was no big deal. They gave us a script. The conversation progressed a bit further, but soon I could see they were both in trouble, so I interrupted. I turned to the speaker and said, “These organs you’re talking about, they’re similar to player pianos, right?” “Yes,” he replied. “Oh!” the listener said. “I thought you were selling, like, kidneys!”

• Ask questions that can’t be answered in one word. I avoid: “How many . . .” “How much . . .” and I ask very few “When’s.”  Instead, I ask: “What was it like?” “What did you think of. . . ?” “How did you decide to. . .?” and “Then, what happened?” I listen and respond with whatever comes naturally like: “Wow.” “Really!” “That sounds (tough, exciting, terrible, challenging).” and I follow up with another question.

• Read the heading: “Acme’s Performance” Identify the type of graph: “Here we have a bar chart showing our sales performance compared to goal for last year.” Define the parameters: “Along the vertical, we have the sales in millions from $0 to $50 million. Along the horizontal, we have each month. The shaded bars represent our sales goals for each month. The solid bars represent our actual sales.” Explain the most important data points: “For the first six months, we exceeded our goals. In the second six months, we had mixed results.” Tell me the “so what” of your slide.

• Being a better communicator is about being present for and helpful to others.

• In fact, in many professions, the value you bring to the conversation is not that you have all the answers. Your value lies in understanding the issues and situation so well that you can ask the right questions and then go find the answers.

• There’s a four-step process to responding to questions: Listen to the entire question. Gain time to think. Answer and reaffirm your main point. Ask for the next question.

• I am working on another book on how to politely and effectively correct the grammar of family, friends, colleagues, and the general public. It's tentatively titled, “How to Lose Friends and Alienate Everyone You Meet.” Always ask yourself: “Why is the reader reading this document?”

• If you are a grammar geek, as I am, keep it to yourself. I am working on another book on how to politely and effectively correct the grammar of family, friends, colleagues, and the general public. It's tentatively titled, “How to Lose Friends and Alienate Everyone You Meet.”

• Tossing Latin into your writing makes you about as popular as correcting people’s grammar or calling people lazy.

• Aim for a maximum of 17 words per sentence.

• There are about 124 billion emails sent every day.

• You’re in business to solve other people’s problems.

• It takes a brave person to be willing to derail an entire meeting by opening the conversation to the unknown. But then, timid people never become the rainmakers.

• The moment we step into a management function, we realize that dealing with the “people stuff” takes the majority of our energy.

• Coaching only works well if the person being coached has a say in all elements of the coaching and knows that nothing is being done behind his or her back. Coaching is professional development, not a setup or an intervention.

• Strong leaders know themselves. They understand their strengths and their weaknesses and accommodate both—leverage their strengths and account for their weaknesses.

• We are all basically self-focused. To other people, our issues are always, out of necessity, secondary to their issues.