And your life is literally shaped by it.Many of the decisions you make are decided by talking. You may be in a restaurant asking a waiter for an unusual substitution, urging a service manager to get your car finished sooner rather than later, or trying to sway your significant other toward a particular film or show. Or you might be trying to build more cooperative relationships at the office.No matter why you engage in face-to-face talk, though, there's no way to insulate yourself from the dangers of miscommunication. Your ability to use the art of talk to effectively convey who you are and to build solid relationships not only influences the success of your friendships, romantic life, and everyday encounters, but also how you experience your workplace. Studies show that using conversational skills properly in that arena makes you more productive, happier, and less stressed.But the truth is that most of us don't understand nearly as well as we could how conversation really works, whether in the office or out of it, with both parties often having entirely different perceptions of what the words and gestures passing back and forth are meant to convey. Even more important, most of us aren't as successful as we could be in making those conversations work better for us. Even when we're more skilled at it than the average person, we often give up the opportunity to be even better, leaving a lot of potential success and happiness on the table.Effective Communication Skills is your chance to learn more about how you communicate verbally, the common problems you can encounter in doing so, and how you can improve your own effectiveness—especially by overcoming the psychological and biological hard-wiring that too often gets in the way.In 24 mind-opening lectures, Professor Dalton Kehoe of Canada's York University brings more than four decades of experience as an award-winning teacher, author, and successful business consultant to this exploration of what's really going in any conversation you take part in.

    As presented by Professor Dues, these lectures will show you how to effectively deal with conflicts of all kinds, using the "win-win" model that has dominated the field for the past six decades.You'll gain effective techniques for handling conflicts in your workplace, other organizational settings, or your personal life, whether you're dealing with supervisors, coworkers, acquaintances, close friends, or family members. You'll learn the best ways to analyze conflicts and work through the steps toward resolving them, including clarifying goals, handling difficult emotions, and negotiating agreements. And you'll grasp the fundamental tricks of the trade that experienced negotiators have long used to deal with even the most seemingly intractable moral and cultural conflicts.While drawing on the latest groundbreaking research, Professor Dues has designed these lectures to be as practical as possible. Requiring no background in conflict management, negotiation, or psychology, they offer you not just knowledge, but strategies and tactics you can put to work in your own life right now. Best of all, you'll be able to see those strategies and tactics in action through 70 professionally acted dramatizations that illustrate different conflict situations at home and in the workplace.You don't have a choice about becoming involved in conflict. You do, however, have a choice about learning to manage it successfully by using the invaluable tools these lectures can give you.

    Yet many of us live in fear of public speaking. We experience stage fright or believe that speeches are best left to those with more intuitive talent. But nothing could be further from the truth.As you'll learn in these 12 invaluable lectures, all it takes is confidence, practice, and the knowledge of techniques and strategies used by history's greatest public speakers, from Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King, Jr.This insider's look at public speaking shows you three key components to help you succeed in any situation: How to prepare for public speaking: Learn from Patrick Henry and others how to overcome stage fright, control your voice, use humor, and personalize your delivery. How to craft a great speech: Learn how to build captivating speeches from people such as Susan B. Anthony and how to use stories, examples, logic, and impressive visual images. How to handle your audience: Learn from Gandhi and others how to focus on your audience, invite them to share your vision, and inspire them to change.Whether you want to finally become the confident public speaker you've always wanted to be or are just looking for fresh advice on how to strengthen your skills, this inspiring course is packed with practical advice to help you learn one of the most important skills in your personal and professional life.©2010 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2010 The Great Courses

    You meet someone new—at a party or at work—and you just hit it off. There is an instant sense of camaraderie. In a word, you “click.” From the bestselling authors of Sway, Click is a fascinating psychological investigation of the forces behind what makes us click with certain people, or become fully immersed in whatever activity or situation we’re involved in.    From two co-workers who fall head over heels for each other while out to dinner and are married a month later (and fifteen years later remain just as in love), to a team of scientists who changed the world with the magic of their invention, these kinds of peak experiences, when our senses are completely focused on the moment, are something that individuals—and companies—strive to achieve. After all, when you’re in the “zone,” you’re happier and more productive. Why is it that we click in certain situations and with certain people, but not with others? Can this kind of magical connection be consciously encouraged?  Is there a way to create such peak experiences, whether on a date or in your job?   According to Ori and Rom Brafman, there is.  In a powerful, story-driven narrative that weaves together cutting-edge research in psychology and sociology, the Brafmans explore what it means to “click”: the common factors present when our brain and senses are fully engaged. They identify five “accelerators” that increase the likelihood of these kinds of magic connections in our work and relationships.  From actors vying for a role on a popular TV series to police officers negotiating with hostage takers, we learn how one can foster an environment where we can click with another person and shape our thinking, behavior, and emotions.  A fascinating journey into how we engage with the world around us, Click will transform our thinking about those moments when we are in the zone and everything seems to fall into place. Acclaim for Sway:“A provocative new book about the psychological forces that lead us to disregard facts or logic and behave in surprisingly irrational ways.” –New York Times “A unique and compulsively readable look at unseen behavioral trends.” –Fortune"A breathtaking book that will challenge your every thought, Sway hovers above the intersection of Blink and Freakonomics."--Tom Rath, coauthor of the New York Times #1 bestseller How Full Is Your Bucket?“[An] engaging journey through the workings—and failings—of the mind…Their stories of senselessness…are as fascinating as the lessons we learn from them.” –Fast Company"Count me swayed--but in this instance by the pull of entirely rational forces. Ori and Rom Brafman have done a terrific job of illuminating deep-seated tendencies that skew our behavior in ways that can range from silly to deadly. We'd be fools not to learn what they have to teach us."--Robert B. Cialdini, author of New York Times bestseller Influence"If you think you know how you think, you'd better think again! Take this insightful, delightful trip to the sweet spot where economics, psychology, and sociology converge, and you'll discover how our all-too-human minds actually work."--Alan M. Webber, founding editor of Fast Company

    Introducing Argumentation and Rhetoric History of Argumentation Studies Formal and Informal Argument The Emergence of Controversy Resolutions and Issues Stasis The Focal Point of Dispute Presumption and Burden of Proof Argument Analysis and Diagramming Claims and Evidence Reasoning from Parts to Whole Moving from Cause to Effect Establishing Correlations Analogy, Narrative, and Form What Makes a Sound Argument? Fallacies in Reasoning Validity and Fallacies Reconsidered Assembling a Case Attack and Defense I Attack and Defense II Language and Style in Argumentation Arguments between Friends Arguments among Experts Public Argument and Democratic Life The Ends of Argumentation

    Packed with eye-opening studies, experiments, and exercises to strengthen your self-control when dealing with money, fitness, personal relationships, and more, this course will have you wondering why you ever doubted yourself.Whether you're looking for new ways to resist temptation, make a strong first impression, or better control your emotions, this is your guide to understanding—and mastering—what is a frequently misunderstood subject. In clear language, your award-winning professor introduces you to the general theories behind self-control: what it is, how it works, and how you can take steps to improve it.Among the topics you'll investigate:How researchers discovered that delayed gratification can lead to better individual well-being in everything from higher self-worth to less sensitivity to rejectionOne of the most influential theories about how self-control works - the limited resource model, which argues that self-control relies on limited energy that becomes depleted after useHow scientists discovered the link between the prefrontal cortex and aggression, and how people at risk for violent anger show abnormalities in that region of the brain.Alongside groundbreaking scientific findings and research, you'll get personal exercises, activities, and thought experiments you can use to practice strengthening your self-control skills to meet whatever specific goals you want to achieve.Disclaimer: Please note that this recording may include references to supplemental texts or print references that are not essential to the program and not supplied with your purchase.©2013 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2013 The Great Courses

    Now that connection is infinitely easier to make through Nicholas Boothman's program of rapport by design.How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less is the work of a master of Neuro-Linguistic Programming whose career is teaching corporations and groups the secrets of successful face-to-face communication. Aimed at establishing rapport-that stage between meeting and communicating-How to Make People Like You focuses on the concept of synchrony. It shows how to synchronize attitude, synchronize body language, and synchronize voice tone so that you instantly and imperceptibly become someone the other person likes. Reinforcing these easy-to-learn skills is knowing how to read the other person's sensory preferences-most of us are visual, some are kinesthetic, and a minority are auditory. So when you say "I see what you mean" to a visual person, you're really speaking his language. Along the way the book covers attitude, nervousness, words that open a conversation and words that shut it down, compliments, eye cues, the magic of opposites attracting, and more. It's how to make the best of the most important 90 seconds in any relationship, business or personal.

    Phil M. Jones has trained more than two million people across five continents and over fifty countries in the lost art of spoken communication. In Exactly What to Say, he delivers the tactics you need to get more of what you want.Best-selling author and multiple award-winner Phil M. Jones is highly regarded as one of the world's leading sales trainers.

    Bad arguments, fallacious reasoning, misleading language, and built-in cognitive biases are all traps that keep us from rational decision making-to say nothing of advertisers and politicians who want to convince us with half-truths and empty rhetoric. The Philosopher's Toolkit: How to Be the Most Rational Person in Any Room offers the skills to do just that. Taught by award-winning Professor Patrick Grim of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, this applied philosophy course arms you against the perils of bad thinking and supplies you with an arsenal of strategies to help you be more creative, logical, inventive, realistic, and rational in all aspects of your daily life, from the office to the voting booth.

    Most of us, however, have never been taught the fundamental skills of communication—or how to best represent our true selves. Effective communication is as important to our well-being and happiness as the food we put into our bodies. It can be either healthy (and nourishing) or toxic (and destructive).In this precise and practical guide, Zen master and Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh reveals how to listen mindfully and express your fullest and most authentic self. With examples from his work with couples, families, and international conflicts, The Art of Communicating helps us move beyond the perils and frustrations of misrepresentation and misunderstanding to learn the listening and speaking skills that will forever change how we experience and impact the world.

    Whether it’s a friend who can’t quit smoking, a colleague afflicted with alcoholism, or a relative abusing prescription drugs, we all know someone who suffers from some form of addiction—we may even have an addiction ourselves. By some estimates, roughly one in four Americans might be considered addicts. On the other hand, many of us use substances such as alcohol recreationally, without suffering the physical or psychological symptoms of addiction. So what is the difference between drug use, abuse, and clinical addiction? What causes addictions? What happens when your brain is on drugs, and why do addicts behave the way they do?12 Lectures 1. Addiction 101 2. The Psychology and Neuroscience of Reward 3. How Addiction Hijacks the Brain 4. Genetics: Born to Be an Addict? 5. Your Brain on Drugs 6. Why We Crave Coffee and Cigarettes 7. Alcohol: Social Lubricant or Drug of Abuse? 8. The Science of Marijuana 9. Stimulants: From Cocaine to Ritalin 10. The Science of Poppies, Pleasure, and Pain 11. The Gambler's Brain 12. Junk Food, Porn, Video Games: Addictions?Listening Length: 6 hours and 23 minutes

    He was also producing for the ear. In the audiobook version of Talking to Strangers, you'll hear the voices of people he interviewed--scientists, criminologists, military psychologists. Court transcripts are brought to life with re-enactments. You actually hear the contentious arrest of Sandra Bland by the side of the road in Texas. As Gladwell revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, and the suicide of Sylvia Plath, you hear directly from many of the players in these real-life tragedies. There's even a theme song - Janelle Monae's "Hell You Talmbout."Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don't know. And because we don't know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world.

    This is the book that brought gender differences in ways of speaking to the forefront of public awareness. With a rare combination of scientific insight and delightful, humorous writing, Tannen shows why women and men can walk away from the same conversation with completely different impressions of what was said.Studded with lively and entertaining examples of real conversations, this book gives you the tools to understand what went wrong -- and to find a common language in which to strengthen relationships at work and at home. A classic in the field of interpersonal relations, this book will change forever the way you approach conversations.

    We struggle to understand people who aren't like us, but find it easy to hate them. Studies show that we are less caring than we were even thirty years ago. In 2006, Barack Obama said that the United States was suffering from an "empathy deficit." Since then, things seem to have only gotten worse.It doesn't have to be this way. In this groundbreaking book, Jamil Zaki shares cutting-edge research, including experiments from his own lab, showing that empathy is not a fixed trait--something we're born with or not--but rather a skill that can be strengthened through effort. He also tells the stories of people who embody this new perspective, fighting for kindness in the most difficult of circumstances. We meet a former neo-Nazi who is now helping to extract people from hate groups, ex-prisoners discussing novels with the judge who sentenced them, Washington police officers changing their culture to decrease violence among their ranks, and NICU nurses fine-tuning their empathy so that they don't succumb to burnout.Written with clarity and passion, The War for Kindness is an inspiring call to action. The future may depend on whether we accept the challenge.Praise for The War for Kindness"A wide-ranging practical guide to making the world better."--NPR"Relating anecdotes and test cases from his fellow researchers, news events and the imaginary world of literature and entertainment, Zaki makes a vital case for 'fighting for kindness.' . . . If he's right--and after reading The War for Kindness, you'll probably think so--Zaki's work is right on time." --San Francisco Chronicle"In this landmark book, Jamil Zaki gives us a revolutionary perspective on empathy: Empathy can be developed, and, when it is, people, relationships, organizations, and cultures are changed."--Carol Dweck, author of Mindset

    In turns out anyone can be creative. You just have to know how to think creatively.In today’s hyperactive world—where bold new challenges can seem to bring about the same stale answers—creative thinking is more important than ever. And it’s about more than just writing a novel or composing a piece of music. Creative thinking involves taking a broader, more imaginative approach to analyzing and solving the everyday challenges we all face, whether in the office or at home.Because creativity is a set of skills that anyone can improve, you can learn how to wield the same research-based tools and techniques that today’s creative people use in their own work. All you need is an open mind, a determination to succeed, and The Creative Thinker’s Toolkit. Award-winning Professor Gerard Puccio of Buffalo State–The State University of New York—an expert in creative thinking and a consultant to individual clients and large companies—has crafted 24 lectures that take you step-by-step through the creative-thinking process and that use real-world scenarios to show you this vital skill in action.Whether you want to overcome writer’s block, look at your career with a fresh perspective, solve a complex business problem, introduce a new idea to the marketplace, or figure out the best way to resolve a tense argument, Professor Puccio’s course will give you everything you need so that when other people are dodging life’s challenges, you’re uncovering the potentially successful opportunities they’ll have missed.