Effective Communication Skills for Scientific and Technical Professionals,   ISBN:9780738202877

Customer Rating: 

I found this book to flow well, giving a lot of good tips on how to conduct better communications in a business/commercial environment. The layout is fairly simple to navigate, and sections that are uninteresting can easily be skipped. For those with more constrained time schedules, the book contains notes in most sections that give highlights of the main points that are made. Reading just these notes would give a pretty good review of the material, or exposure that may or may not make a lasting impression.

There are quite a few lists and tables that sum up the "need-to-know" points, so I think that reviewing material after reading the full text should be an easy task. I highly recommend this text for anyone that has never been taught effective listening skills, and also recommend the book for anyone else that feels even a slight motivation to improve their inter-personal communication skills.

Customer Rating: 

I gave copies of this book to everyone I managed at Microsoft. I can't say enough good things about it. There is nothing more important in the workplace than being able to get your point across and making sure you understand what is being said to you. The basic philosophy is, "all communication failures are your fault." It is your responsibility to make sure that what you are saying is understood, and it is your responsibility to make sure that you understand what you are being told. There is never a place for finger-pointing when communication breaks down. This book gives techniques, examples, and ideas to help ensure that information is transmitted and received properly. What's really interesting is that there is nothing that limits what he's talking about to the workplace. There are things to think about here that apply to dealing with family and friends, without the fluff you get in similar books in the self-help section.

Customer Rating: 

This book explains the difficulties in the communication among technical persons as well as between technical and non-technical persons. From my own experience I know that talking to technical experts can be very painful. At times they just shout at you and don't listen to what you say. They think that their expertise gives them the right to treat everyone else bad.

The best chapter in this book is chapter 4 "giving and receiving criticism". In the past I had difficulties to convey my critical comments
to technical experts and software developer. As they are very proud of their own work you need to take a lot of care not hurt them. The best way is to explicity state what they have done good before you say what they could do better to even improve their work. I am sure that I can apply these tipps in my work place

This book ist must-read for everyone in a technical environment and for everyone dealing with technical experts.

Customer Rating: 

Mr. Chambers has put together a practical book that dissects many of the basic concepts of communication, and provides some insights about technical professionals. While I don't agree with all his points and believe he tends to over-generalize, the content is solid and easy to understand. For any technical professional looking to increase their overall mastery of soft skills, I would recommend they go beyond this book and find a good set of workshops that allow for testing and practicing the types of concepts outlined.

Customer Rating: 

Good book. Details the issues in the "cubicle" world of today. Explains how to improve the number one problem in engineering (and business) today, communication!