(Part 3) Reddit mentions: The best communication skills books

Wheel of Time fits the bill for GoT but not GoT. I’m on a re-read right now. Robert Jordan’s Conan series is great as well. The Time Machine is a classic and being a novella can be read in an evening or two. I love 19th century literature most of all.

Actually disregard everything I just wrote, and get a copy of The L & L Bean Counter's Catalog: Survival Gear for Your Carreer by Larry Bliedner.

i would check out this book. "How to Self-Promote without Being a Jerk" - by Bruce Kasanoff

He's got tons of good stuff on LinkedIn and great reviews on the book. You might save yourself some money and do the job you are requesting in a more natural way instead of paying someone.

Here's the book.

Here's his LinkedIn profile and articles.

Business Communication Essentials (7th Edition) by Courtland L. Bovee (Author),‎ John V. Thill (Author)



ORGB (5th Edition) by by Debra L. Nelson (Author),‎ James Campbell Quick (Author)

$5 for each of their PDF please. PayPal only. Thank you!


EDIT: Bought

Yup that makes three of us, I'm sure there's more people in this subreddit like this.

I know I have lost friends and relationships over this thing, so here's the conclusions that I have reached, please correct me if I'm wrong because I also need the feedback:

• It's all about being social nowadays isn't it? social media, social networks, everything is SOCIAL now, the internet used to be the one public place where we could hide in but not anymore, we're living in introvert's hell in a way, good thing there's places where we can meet where we don't have to take pictures of ourselves and can just write anonymously right? (thank you for this reddit)
  
  
• I think all introverts at some point realize that even though we have been like this since we were born, the world as it is right now is not made for the introvert but for the extrovert. Being social is seen as a quality whereas being withdrawn is seen as a defect of character, I never knew what the world was like for left-handed people until now.
  
  
• We are introverts till the day we die, we are never going to like being social as much as the next guy but that's ok because we hold a lot of wonderful and amazing things in higher regard than becoming socialites. That being said I don't think introverts want to be stigmatized as social outcasts (everyone wants to feel included) so until people become more tolerant about it we have to work on our social skills but without straining ourselves unnecessarily.
  
• As it is pointed out in this neat little article right there on the right hand side of the screen there's a difference between being introverted and being shy, so we have to work on dealing with the shyness (if we have it) as much as possible, perhaps it is a matter of raising self-esteem or as it is now more aptly called: self-compassion.
  
  
• In some other cases it may be a matter of learning how to trust people more, even strangers (I know it takes me a while to warm up to people) so we can talk to them as easily as we do to the people that we have known for years.
  
  
• We have to work on our people skills, social etiquette, emotional intelligence, perhaps learn how small talk even if we hate it (I know, I know, boring conversations we can't relate to, etc.)
  
  
• BUT we also have to learn the limits of this: first and foremost that we cannot ever become extroverts, so if we can't get it 100% right in social situations and can never learn to enjoy socialization as much as the rest of society THAT IS OK, if we can educate the people that love us into understanding us, they will eventually learn to tolerate what they may perceive as shortcomings. Socialization is not our biggest strength but we have many others and we have bigger fish to fry.
  
  
• Finally, I believe it is important to present yourself as you are, yes "faking it till you make it" is an invaluable tool that can take you very very far, especially if avoiding social situations is becoming an obstacle in your career or love life, but if you fake it all the time (especially with people you are intimate with) and create a false persona, eventually you're gonna get tired and the mask is going to fall off and although it is unfair, people are going to be disappointed.
  
  Better to be with people that know you are an introvert and know that you are trying your best, than with people that only like you because they think you're an extrovert and as years go by, come to realize that you are not.
  
  THAT being said, I wouldn't begin courting someone by stating that I'm an introvert, I might as well say that I'm shy weirdo, not very sexy (of course, this may change in the future).
  
  (I brought enough grammatical errors for everyone, please don't get excited about pointing them out, English is my second language and I'm at work so I can't proofread what I just wrote)

If she's interacting with a lot of users I would suggest reading Practical Empathy. Observing the User Experience is another great resource for learning about user research. User experience is all about people so it's always a good idea to read up on human behavior, psychology, cognition, perception, learning and memory etc. e.g. books like Hooked, Bottlenecks, Design for the mind, Designing with the mind in mind, 100 things every designer needs to know about people, 100 more things every designer needs to know about people, Thinking fast and slow, Predictably Irrational and I would also recommend Articulating design decisions and Friction.

The Book of the Underdog:

Synopsis:

The Book of the Underdog is a guide in the methods of ascension.


You'll learn:


-Why you didn't get that job (hint: you weren't part of the two "Tribes") 

-90%+ of online Resumes get trashed and it's not even your fault 

-What is absolutely essential to scale up your career 

-How to wrestle the power away from your boss

-How CEOs play the game of power

-How to use anger to your advantage 

-Why fear is not an emotion

-CEOs and politicians have the largest number of psychopaths among them

-Is there a " Psychopath School"? 

-How to find out what people want most and use it to your advantage 

-Why the path to the corner office is not what you see on TV and Conference talks 

-How the Underdog forges alliances 

-What it is to be awe-inspiring at C-Suite level

-How to capture attention: from low-level to high-level

-How to shun a competitor who is better than you


Before defeating your boss, you need to elevate your game to the next level. You will learn the ins-and-outs of boss survivorship methods. Unmasking your rivals is not enough; it is necessary to bring yourself up. Learn to apply the two most important top boss traits. See yourself to the top of the food chain.


Do you want to be more confident? Included and discussed in the Book of the Underdog are the three factors your confidence depends on. The Underdog will master those.


You're not going to give your boss any more breaks after reading this book.


From The Book of the Underdog:


"Don't just read through the book though. I want you to actively take notes, match it to your situation, jot down on your pad or notes app:" What I must do when I see my boss. How I will act next time I see my manager." -Max Cantor


Max Cantor's mission is to have the Underdog defeat his boss: make it mission accomplished.


These are the ground rule tactics everyone needs to rise in their careers. The Book of the Underdog is a must read for anybody in highly competitive professions: law, finance, technology, sales, publishing, government and public relations and entrepreneurship.

Welcome!

You might enjoy this book. I found it very helpful in the workplace.

I recommend this book to all introverts.

If you want to understand social formalities/small talk, this book is very handy. Short, easy to read, gives you actual stuff to do that works (the title is unfortunate, just ignore that).

It's a delicate issue either way. If there's a biological cause then it can be classified as a "disease" that "needs to be cured". If it's a choice then it can be classified as a "mental derangement" "demons" or just a "sin" either way, opponents of it will spin it to justify their cause.

On the flip side, if it's biological then that person is living the life they've been given, just as any of us, and being honest with themselves, and if it's a choice then it's simply a freedom and a human right to make that choice.

That being said, I did read somewhere that using cat scans of infants they could see that amygdala of males, who turned out later to be gay were significantly smaller (more comparable to that of a female). the amygdala is involved with aggression. This suggests a biological predisposition. I cant remember where I read it, I think it was the Owner's Manual
http://www.amazon.com/Owners-Manual-Brain-Applications-Mind-Brain/dp/1885167652
an amazing book loaded with fully referenced scientific studies.

I highly recommend this book.

The process of 'understanding' a given topic involves your brain linking together a variety of concepts that are related to that topic. If you want an audience to understand a topic, you need to provide both the concepts and the links. This is why good explanations always begin with an initial concept that the audience already understands (or that can be understood very easily). This initial concept gives you something to link new concepts to. As a good explanation unfolds, it continues introducing new concepts step-by-step, linking them back to previous concepts that the audience already understands. Stories and visuals are extremely useful tools for introducing concepts and creating links.

When deciding where to begin an explanation, you have to take your audience and what they likely already know into consideration. Imagine explaining the concept of an e-reader to someone from the middle ages who is already familiar with books. You might start your explanation by showing them how swiping on the screen is just like turning a page in a book. If you were taking an e-reader back to a time before written language, you're going to need to start somewhere else - perhaps by introducing the concept of written language by tying it to spoken language and some precursor to written language they are already familiar with (e.g., cave drawings).

When explanations fail, it is almost always because the explainer has introduced a new concept without helping the audience link it to a concept they already understand. The audience will either give up immediately or they will spend mental cycles trying to create these links on their own, causing them to fall behind and lose track of your explanation.

I would suggest checking out How to Say it at Work. I have referred to it a lot during my career for things like this. Basically, it says don't burn any bridges on your way out, and "unless you are firmly bent on leaving, you should approach the terminal conversation as if you are willing to entertain (or are even seeking) a counteroffer from your boss.". I would love to plagiarize the entire chapter on quitting here, but I can't type that much, obviously. Go check your library or Kindle. Just remember that the world of software can be a small world and you may cross paths with the same people again, or you may wind up wanting to go back to your company later.

Edit: you will want to get your next job squared away first, obviously. The book assumes that you already have an offer or another job in mind before engaging your manager as well.

This doesn't justify it, but here is an explanation of why it happened:

This is reflective of the Style Guide that Reuters has chosen to follow. The executive editor of every publication chooses certain style to abide by. Here is the 384-page style guide for the NY Times for example. These guides include things like word choice saying "undocumented immigrant" instead of "illegal immigrant", "firefighters" instead of "firemen", and in this case "event" instead of "emergency". The goal of this is to not use words that have a strong negative (or positive) connotation, but rather just use plain words that state the facts.

The original writer would have directly quoted, writing "emergency". The overzealous editor changed the wording to follow the style guide ignoring the fact that the word at hand was in quotes. They should not have changed it, but as you can see it is probably far more innocent that many of you think. It is part of most publication's natural process to take out words that may display bias.

(Lets see how high an informative post can get!)

Most will be created by
design graduates who will utilise Adobe suites... Illustrator and photoshop.

No reason why you can't use a less technical program for simple visual information.

All depends on what your end goals are. I personally like the homemade Microsoft paint style pieces as long a they show thought on how best to display the info that makes it easy for the reader to understand.

A decent book that is usable for non designers... http://www.amazon.co.uk/Power-Infographics-Pictures-Communicate-Audiences-ebook/dp/B008CG2T30/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1410982607&sr=8-13&keywords=Infographics

I suggest you get It's the Way You Say It: Becoming Articulate, Well-spoken, and Clear: https://www.amazon.com/Its-Way-You-Say-Well-spoken/dp/1450215165

I've recommended it for 5 years. You can see my review of it in top place. That's the resource to go to.

Following that, your awareness of the issues you brought up show great progression towards that next step of fixing what you don't want.

Jerry Weissman's "Presenting to Win" is a great resource. Here's the amazon link.

It may make you seem crazy, but read out loud every night. It may not seem like there is any connection, but it gets you used to your own voice for long periods of time which is something that I used to have issues with. Once you can break your mind away from focusing on what you sound like, it takes some stress away.

I read this book The Exceptional Presenter and it seemed to help me out. You have to mentally get past the point where you think you're a terrible presenter, and into an area where you think you could actually be a very good presenter.
The main difference between a bad presenter and a good presenter is confidence. When you're going to present something, make sure you understand what you're talking about, and understand that the crowd is just a group of people. In reality most people don't want to see someone do poorly (at least in person) and will actually give you the benefit of the doubt more than not.
Last part is just practice, it's a cliche but it's the only thing that pulls it all together.

I very clearly remember learning about this in a comm class freshman year of college.

http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Computer-Mediated-Communication-Functional/dp/0757598226

Chapter 7 covers this topic, 7 and 8 are all about relationships and interaction with others online. I don't have access to the textbook anymore but that's the best I can do

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.com

amazon.co.uk

amazon.ca

amazon.com.au

amazon.in

amazon.com.mx

amazon.de

amazon.it

amazon.es

amazon.com.br

amazon.nl

amazon.co.jp

amazon.fr

Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, amazon.nl, amazon.co.jp, amazon.fr, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.

There's a book called Talk Like Ted.

It's interesting that in education now narrative writing is not being given as much emphasis as math, science, etc. But the thing that makes most of the TED talks interesting is that they start with a story that really grabs the audience.

Tools

Protovis (JS)

Axis (Flex)

28 Rich Data Visualization Tools


Blogs

Flowing Data

Infosthetics

Information is Beautiful

Visual Complexity

Cool Infographics

Infographics Showcase

Data Pointed

http://www.datavisualisation.co.uk/


Books

The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics

Now You See It: Simple Visualization Techniques for Quantitative Analysis

Beautiful Visualization: Looking at Data through the Eyes of Experts

> I don't see anything wrong with the way this data is represented

• What are the columns ordered by? The most effective way to scan the data would be by value (17,35,69,119,598 or descending)
  
• There's no legend, what does 598, 35,... mean?
  
• What is the total size of the sample?
  
• Why are there 2 different bar colours? Does the colour mean anything? If it doesn't, 2 shades of the same colour would be less confusing.
  
• Why is there a gradient on only 1 bar (Alcohol)?
  
  One of my favourite books is The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics, this is just a small sample of what is wrong with this.

I was flipping through this book at a bookstore:

https://www.amazon.com/Talk-Like-TED-Public-Speaking-Secrets/dp/1250041120

Going from memory, there was a chapter analyzing the proportions of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos used in certain TED talks. Want to guess what the proportions were?

Ethos (credibility) was the least, Logos (logic/reasoning) came in second, but Pathos (appeal to emotion) formed something like 80% of the "persuasiveness" of TED talks.

And personally, I have a problem with TED talks...at least what they've become. Needless to say, I didn't buy that book.

http://www.amazon.com/PeopleSmart-Developing-Your-Interpersonal-Intelligence/dp/1576750914/ref=sr_1_13?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1345627931&sr=1-13&keywords=Small+Talk

http://www.amazon.com/Small-Talk-Socialising-Kathy-Schmidt/dp/1741106192/ref=sr_1_16?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1345627931&sr=1-16&keywords=Small+Talk

http://www.amazon.com/Conversationally-Speaking-Increase-Personal-Effectiveness/dp/1565656296/ref=pd_cp_b_0

http://www.amazon.com/Its-Way-You-Say-Well-spoken/dp/1450215165/ref=pd_cp_b_2

I've read all of these books, and they really helped me with my communication skills.

Hmmm. I can't figure that out. But the answer will be here: www.amazon.com/York-Times-Manual-Style-Usage/dp/0812963881