When I first picked up this book – on the recommendation of a dear colleague, who was always very supportive of my development – I read it so much that I wore it out. Pulling it off the shelf tonight, each dog-ear, underline, highlight, and margin note brings back memories of the challenges that I was facing when I first read it.

The cover is a little dated – who uses the word “correspondence” any more, but much of it still rings true. The content is solid. Yes, it covers things you may have learned elsewhere – the four communications styles (Director, Socializer, Thinker, and Relator), or Active Listening, or the Art of Asking Questions, or clarifying understanding, for example.

But it also covers things you may not have considered: the encoding and decoding that happens between the speaker and the listener; different methods for navigating conflict. How about “projecting a powerful image” through body language, would that be helpful? Effective non-verbal communications? Vocal variety? I got a refresher course on these when I joined Toastmasters, where we focused on each one of these sequentially with each project.

Have you thought about using spatial arrangements to communicate things? The first thing I did when I joined my current company was rearrange the furniture in the office I was assigned: most people had their desks in the center of the room, with their backs to the windows, guest chairs on the other side of the desk, monitor between them and the door, and a couch extending along one wall perpendicular to the desk. I placed the back of my desk against the wall, placed one guest chair at the end of the desk, and the other across the room, and pushed the couch next to the door, at a 90′ angle to my desk. That way, I wasn’t hidden behind the barrier of the monitor and – when people dropped by – there was nothing between us. It sent a message: I want to hear from you, your ideas are welcome here, come in any time. And it worked, to a person, people who came to my office said it felt welcoming and said that visiting me made them feel calmer.

The authors also go into how the timing of your communication matters and not just the timing, but what punctuality conveys, duration, and repetition. There is a long section on meeting management and a short section on written communications.

So, what’s missing? If I were writing this book now, I would devote a section to:

• Effective email and chat communications
• The politics of social media communications
• Commenting on documents and in project management/work process tools (JIRA, Figma, etc.)
• Video communications (meetings and etc.)
• Asynchronous vs synchronous communications

That said, this book provides some great guidance on skills that aren’t really taught much anymore – how often do you see a LinkedIn post about spatial communications? – a refresher could give you that edge that your colleagues lack…

Just sayin…