Customer Reviews

On Communicating

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According to research recently conducted by the American Management Association, poor communications is the main stall that delays progress in organizations of all sizes. A key reason for this problem is that each of us does not take the time to let others know the best way to communicate with us. Mr. McCormack does so in this book in an effective way. If you were one of his clients, colleagues or employees, this book would be invaluable. If everyone you worked with described how they would like to get ideas and information from you, you would have the same benefit. My subjective reaction to Mr. McCormack's personal style is that unless you are a CEO of a large organization with a lot of demands on your time, his suggestions may not always work. This would be a good book to have people read in order to stimulate their thinking about how communications in your organization could be improved. I greatly preferred his earliest book, WHAT THEY DON'T TEACH YOU AT HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL, to this one.

In an easy to read format, and in his absolutely honest way, Mark has written a fantastic guide for communication with anyone in business. While some people are different and have odd preferences, the ideas in this book show how deal with just about anyone in a professional manner. A must read.

What a painful book to listen to. I kept the book playing through the first three (out of four) tapes because the author has such a good reputation...I thought there would be enough nuggets of useful information and advice to make it worthwhile. I was wrong.

After listening to him mispronounce "thesaurus" during his section explaining how another salesman lost his respect by mispronouncing some word, I was embarrassed for the author. When he offered painful redundancies just as he was getting into a passage about how terrible it is to be redundant, I found that *I* had lost respect for *him*.

The difficulties with this text litter the book right from the start: His introduction is boring, and part of it is about not being boring. He tells the listener that something is a useful method of communicating, and then two chapters later tells the listener that the same thing has no place in good communication.

The author comes across as a bad example of the problems he is trying to provide a cure for. Full of himself, contradicting of his own advice, advises authenticity but makes regular suggestions for hiding or distorting the truth...

It occurs to me that I could create a laundry list of frustrations with this audio book, but it would get boring. Therefore, using advice from the author's work, I will get to the point: don't buy this book...don't even check it out from the library.

The famed sports marketer shares his street-smarts on effective business communication. It's on the short list of recommended resources in my book The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course in Business Writing and Communication.