They’ll Eat Out of Your Hand – Book Review #Leadership

They’ll Eat Out of Your Hand If You Know What to Feed Them, is a new book by Dr. Laura Hills

This book looks at what the author says are the “30 Essential Communication Skills that Give Highly Successful Career Professionals Their Edge“. Split in to six parts, following a 6 point communications mode, Hills provides a well documented journey for developing professionals.

Taking a holistic approach Hills takes the reader on a journey through not just one area of communications skills, but and end-to-end journey. Starting with Speaking, and then moving through Writing, Listening, Reading, Non-Verbal Communication, Visual and finally into the world of Digital Communication

The book is broken down into the following chapters:

Chapter 1: Five Essential Speaking Skills for Career Professionals

Chapter 2: Five Essential Writing Skills for Career Professionals

Chapter 3: Five Essential Listening Skills for Career Professionals

Chapter 4: Five Essential Reading Skills for Career Professionals

Chapter 5: Five Essential Non-Verbal Communication Skills for Career Professionals

Chapter 6: Five Essential Visual and Digital Communication Skills for Career Professionals

Six point model  for Getting Others to Eat Out of Your Hand

The book opens with the model upon which the readers journey is based:Where:

Speak to Engage Others: An audience will form an opinion of you within the first few seconds of hearing you. Once that opinion is formed, good or bad, it will be difficult for you to change it. That’s why it is essential for career professionals to win over their audiences immediately, from the first moment they speak. That will make their communication task so much easier.

Write with a YOU Focus: A good writer doesn’t intimidate, overwhelm, bore, or otherwise discourage his or her readers. Your readers will be more inclined to do what you want them to do if you focus on them, and not on yourself or even, your topic.

Listen Actively: Listening actively will help figure out what a speaker wants and needs, even if that message is hidden below the surface.

Read Texts with Purpose: Being able to read between the lines in an email, memo, or report can help you discover the best approach with the writer.

Read and Use Physical Cues: Body language, when sincere, is nature’s polygraph machine. It’s a tool you can use to uncover hidden feelings and deceptions and to prevent yourself from sending out false or unintentional messages to others.

Harness Visual and Digital Media: How well we manipulate graphics and white space can make or break the effectiveness of our visual and digital messages.

Once into the chapters, we are greeted by a photograph providing you the reader with an instantly recognisable context to what follows. Not only are we given why some of these skills are important, but we are presented with a “business case” for improving!

Then we are taken through a number of skills that we can develop. Each section goes beyond the obvious, for example, in the chapter in speaking, Hills takes the reader through the impact of certain sounds we use in speaking, and their impact.

Each chapter ends with a self test or quiz to help you recap on the key points.

Summary

30 Essential Communication Skills that Give Highly Successful Career Professionals Their Edge – is the claim of the book. Yes this does seem to given enough information on 30 different “skills” to give users the edge. I say users, because anyone can read a book, but it takes a different type of mind set to put material from a book into action!

Much better than your average book on communications skills, where the “trap” of having one message and pushing it 42 different ways to the reader. This is a genuinely valuable resource to those of you setting out as professionals, and will be more than a useful reminder to those halfway up or at the top of the career ladder. This will be one book I will come back to, again and again.

This is a preview of the book, we will let you know when it is available for purchase.

About the author of the book:

Dr. Laura Hills, President

Blue Pencil Institute, LLC

Blog: Blue Pencil SharpenerTM: www.bluepencilinstitute.com/blog