Business Communication Skills

Being a great leader means getting the fundamentals right. It also means consistently doing the "little things" that make a positive difference in the lives of employees, customers, and other stakeholders. The Busy Leader's Handbook: How to Lead People and Places That Thrive is a practical, easy-to-use book filled with gentle reminders of what we should be doing every day - especially when work is at its most intense.

We all say things we shouldn't. What is important is how we deal with the gaffe. If a slip-of-the-tongue at a family gathering, office meeting, or social setting causes you to inadvertently embarrass or offend someone, the strategy presented here, will help you to smooth things over as quickly as possible. But what about when you really mess up?

People Skills is a communication-skills handbook that can help you eliminate these and other communication problems. Author Robert Bolton describes the twelve most common communication barriers, showing how these "roadblocks" damage relationships by increasing defensiveness, aggressiveness, or dependency. He explains how to acquire the ability to listen, assert yourself, resolve conflicts, and work out problems with others. These are skills that will help you communicate calmly, even in stressful emotionally charged situations.

The story of Captain D. Michael Abrashoff and his command of USS Benfold has become legendary inside and outside the Navy. Now Abrashoff offers this fascinating tale of top-down change for anyone trying to navigate today's uncertain business seas. When Captain Abrashoff took over as commander of the Benfold, a ship armed with every cutting-edge system available, it was like a business that had all the latest technology but only some of the productivity.

During her 20 years in broadcasting, award-winning news anchor Suzanne Bates conducted more than 10,000 interviews, during which she witnessed business leaders, politicians, and celebrities at their best and worst. Now a top CEO communication coach, Bates is renowned for her uncanny ability to transform even the shyest oratorical mouse into a public-speaking lion.

We're trying to get something done that really matters to us. To do this we need to work with others. But these others include people we don't agree with or like or trust, so working with them seems impossible - like collaborating with the enemy. What can we do?

Drawing on the enduring wisdom of the Buddha, Confucius, Rumi, Gandhi, and others, The Art of Quiet Influence shows anyone, not just bosses, how to use influence without authority, a key mindfulness principle, to get things done at work and in life. Through the classic wisdom of 12 Eastern sages, relevant insights from influence research, and anecdotes and advice from 25 contemporary experts, Davis lays out a path for becoming a "mainspring", an unobtrusive yet powerful influencer.

What did your boss mean in that email? Is your mechanic stretching the truth? Whether you’re engaged in a casual conversation or a high-stakes negotiation, it’s critical to understand the subtext of a situation. But with so much interaction happening on screens—via email, texts, or video chat—we are losing the ability to interpret expressions and cues. Furthermore, since many are now savvy about the meaning of body language, it’s become even harder to discern someone’s true thoughts or intentions.

In Getting Past No, William Ury of Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation and author of Possible, offers a proven breakthrough strategy for turning adversaries into negotiating partners.

Today, in an instant, leaders can find themselves face-to-face with crisis. An active shooter. A media controversy. A data breach. In You're It, the faculty of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative at Harvard University takes you to the front lines of some of the toughest decisions facing our nation's leaders - from how to mobilize during a hurricane or in the aftermath of a bombing to halting a raging pandemic. They also take listeners through the tough decision-making inside the world's largest companies, hottest startups, and leading nonprofits.

From an era when 'self-help' books had genuine depth, Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People has influenced the world. No book in the self-help category matters more than this one. Learning to relate to people in the ways Carnegie instructs will help you personally as well as professionally. This book is a classic because Carnegie teaches timeless truths in timeless ways. This is a condensation of the original book.

Keeping someone's attention while telling a story is a trick not everyone knows. Just regurgitating facts and figures is no way to achieve it. You need something relatable that your audience can feel and see themselves in. Using storytelling while communicating a message is one way of doing this.

Human behavior professor and award-winning executive career coach Melody Wilding has helped thousands of clients advocate for their needs at work while navigating the minefield of office politics. In this clear, tactical guide, Wilding shows you how to operate from a position of power—even if you lack formal authority—to build the emotional intelligence, relational capital, and negotiation savvy to succeed in a world of competing stakeholders and remote work.

With the tips and techniques taught in this power-packed audiobook, you'll learn to respond to the most difficult situations with dignity, diplomacy, and poise. Even when you're put on the spot, you'll learn to use these simple scripts (and create your own!) to work through a variety of tough situations and get your point across, guilt-free. Plus, you'll learn about the importance of the inflection, tone, and timing - because how you say it is just as important as what you say.

Let's face it: We all know people who are irrational. No matter how hard you try to reason with them, it never works. So what's the solution? How do you talk to someone who's out of control? What can you do with a boss who bullies, a spouse who yells, or a friend who frequently bursts into tears? In his book Just Listen, Mark Goulston shared his best-selling formula for getting through to the resistant people in your life. Now he brings his communication magic to the most difficult group of all - the downright irrational.

Taking a brass tacks approach to communication, How to Have Confidence and Power in Dealing with People explains how to interact with others as they really are, not as you would like them to be. The goal is to get what you want from them successfully - be it cooperation, goodwill, love or security.

As a White House speechwriter, Terry Szuplat helped craft hundreds of speeches for President Obama. But when it came to public speaking himself, Szuplat—like many people—was gripped by anxiety and preferred to stay in the shadows. When he was invited to give the first major speech of his life, he faced a choice: keep hiding from what scared him, or finally face his fears.

Communication should be clear and concise, and we should get to the point quickly. The problem is we don’t always know how to do this. What does it mean to be concise? How can a complex topic be summarized in just a few lines? This award-winning book is a step-by-step guide for clear, concise communication in everyday work conversations. Being concise is not about trying to condense all the information into 60 seconds. It is about having clear intent, talking about one topic at a time, and focusing on solutions instead of dwelling on problems.

Among the many pieces of expert advice in The Essentials of Persuasive Public Speaking is this nugget: "To capture attention, define a problem that keeps listeners up at night." Wyeth may as well be talking about the audiobook itself - for nothing keeps us up at night like the prospect of giving a speech in the morning. In this brief and lucid guide to presenting, Wyeth counsels how to calm a thumping heart and reveals techniques on preparation, delivery, and visual aids as he gives you vivid stories and rubber-meets-the-road advice.

When Bo Seo was 8 years old, he and his family migrated from Korea to Australia. At the time, he did not speak English, and, unsurprisingly, struggled at school. But, then, in fifth grade, something happened to change his life: he discovered competitive debate. Immediately, he was hooked. It turned out, perhaps counterintuitively, that debating was the perfect activity for someone shy and unsure of himself. It became a way for Bo not only to find his voice, but to excel socially and academically. And he’s not the only one.