Purpose of BookCourse

The job of this BookCourse is to equip you with three skills:

1. Create and transmit high-quality messages that do their job.
2. Respond skillfully (best response) when you receive messages from others.
3. Do both with maximum enjoyment and minimum drawbacks: effort, cost, stress, hassles, conflicts, and so on.

Rewards from Skilled Communication

Be ethical while being effective. Get your voice heard. Be understood. Get reasonable requests met. Persuade when persuasion is appropriate. Sell without sleaze. Build strong relationships and connections. Learn efficiently from others. Get accurate information. Reduce battling and unnecessary conflict. Succeed in communication-heavy roles such as advertising, storytelling, marketing, leading, managing, fiction writing, teaching, and more.

Path

Skilled communication is a superpower. Jump in and start reaping your rewards. Before long, you’ll say “I’ve got this, it’s easy, it makes total sense, and is it sure worthwhile!!”

1. Describe Communication

Path (Skills to Learn)

Define and describe the main concepts of communication and how they fit together. Use a simple, repeatable recipe for sending high-quality messages. Use a parallel recipe for receiving and responding to messages.

Rewards

A clear mental model of communication that feels like common sense. A simple, systematic approach to sending and receiving messages that you can apply immediately and continue refining on your path to excellence.

Lessons and TwFs (Tasks with Feedback)

1. Success (Sender Role):
   Define success by achieving the results you want.
   
2. Success (Receiver Role):
   Define success by grokking the senders message and then achieving the results you want.
   
3. How to Succeed (Sender Role).
   Purpose → Message → Channel → Send → Observe and Reflect
4. How to Succeed (Receiver Role).
   Deep Understanding → Purposes → Best Response → Observe and Reflect
5. How Communication Works.
   Understand any communication by modeling it as the flow of information between 8 boxes. Apply this understanding to create high-quality communication and to trouble shoot and fix problems.

2. Send High-Quality Messages

Skill Set

Define what quality means in the sender role. Measure message quality, improve it, and reliably achieve it. Design, build, and transmit high-quality messages. Assess and improve elements of quality: accuracy, clarity, completeness, concision, persuasiveness, connection, and so on.

Rewards

Messages that consistently do their job with minimal drawbacks. Less conflict, stress, wasted time, cost, hassle, and struggle. Higher payoff from the effort you put into communicating.

3. Responding to Messages → Best Results

Skill Set

Define quality in receiving and responding to messages. Measure and improve response quality. Practice active listening. Apply information literacy. Read for understanding. Handle small talk skillfully. Recognize and respond appropriately to manipulation. Judge the quality of claims.

Rewards

More accurate and balanced views of reality. Better choices. Stronger and more durable relationships. Deeper understanding of others. Little or no unnecessary conflict. Improved learning and problem solving. More productive discussions and debates.

4. Success in Communication Roles

Skill Set

Apply core communication skills to specific roles, depending on your goals and responsibilities. This may include advertising, selling, leading, managing, teaching, writing fiction, storytelling, and other communication-intensive roles.

Rewards

Excellence in the roles that matter to you. Leaders inspire and guide effectively. Teachers help learners do useful things well and enjoy the process. Managers run teams and projects smoothly and get strong results. Sales professionals sell a lot and earn well. Writers and storytellers create work that audiences enjoy and value.