People Skills [Paperback]

Improve your personal and professional relationships instantly with this timeless guide to communication, listening skills, body language, and conflict resolution.

A wall of silent resentment shuts you off from someone you love....You listen to an argument in which neither party seems to hear the other....Your mind drifts to other matters when people talk to you....

People Skillsis 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.

People Skillswill show you:

· How to get your needs met using simple assertion techniques

· How body language often speaks louder than words

· How to use silence as a valuable communication tool

· How to de-escalate family disputes, lovers' quarrels, and other heated arguments

Both thought-provoking and practical,People Skillsis filled with workable ideas that you can use to improve your communication in meaningful ways, every day.CHAPTER ONE

Skills for Bridging the Interpersonal Gap

I wish I had some way to make a bridge from man to man...Man is all we've got.

Cross Daman in Richard Wright'sOutsider

COMMUNICATION: HUMANITY'S SUPREME ACHIEVEMENT

When one person communicates to another through the medium of language something takes place between them that is found nowhere else in nature. This ability to turn meaningless grunts into spoken and written words constitutes humanity's most important distinction. Languagls#