Review: Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust & Get Extraordinary Results

Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust & Get Extraordinary Results by Judith E. Glaser
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This really didn’t feel right as a book. It felt as if the author wanted to write a typical business communications book, similar to many that have already been written, but wanted to differentiate this book from the crowd. The choice was to add content that related in scientific terms what might be happening in your head and body when you are happy or when you make decisions. So you learn some science. But knowing this doesn’t really help you communicate, or at least if it does it isn’t explained here.

Strangely for a business communications book, as I read it I kept thinking of things my Mom would tell me, like “put yourself in other people’s shoes”, “people like hearing their own name”, and even “nobody likes to get yelled at”. This is a book that provides guidance that can be summed up with these kinds of platitudes. The author represented a person’s thoughts while communicating as passing through 3 layers:
- an “animal brain”, handling the basic needs, fight or flight, limbic brain.
- What I’d call a political brain, looking for angles to better a person’s standing
- What I’d call a cooperative brain, working for the greater good
The author thought that leader’s communication could be categorized as coming from one of these levels, with that coming from the top level tending to have better outcomes. I’ve run across this concept in many business communication and sales classes over the years, so it ended up being quite familiar. Adding to the familiarity, the book was written with noticeable repetition. Overall, I found this book a reasonable review, and I found the author's voice and choice of examples were good, albeit repetitive at times. But for me it did not tread new ground, and the added science seemed more for show.


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