From the Publisher
Communicating with courage is life changing. Michelle draws from extensive experience to provide immediately actionable Pro Moves. Her extraordinary empathy comes through with relatable examples from diverse worlds, from music to business to sports. You’ll read this book more than once because it will help you transform your relationship with yourself and other people.”
—Jillian Ihsanullah, PhD, leadership and inclusion researcher and former Senior Vice President, Right Management
“I wish I had read this book decades ago. Michelle provides immediately useful ways to shine a light on habits we often can’t see that get in the way of effective communication. An indispensable read.”
—Jonathan Walker, MD, founder of Modestly Mindful LLC
“I wanted to make sure my performance evaluations with my senior leaders were meaningful. I hired Michelle to help, and she taught me some of the Pro Moves in this wonderful book. You will benefit greatly from applying them to your own personal and professional life.”
—Karl W. Einolf, PhD, President, Indiana Institute of Technology
Kirkus Reviews
2024-03-19
Consultant, coach, and speaker Gladieux offers a series of exercises and concepts designed to improve communication skills.
The author writes in the opening pages of this brief book that she intends it to be a “bravery manual”—one that will instruct readers on how to embrace risk in a wide array of circumstances and turn it to their advantage. She draws on her decades of professional experience as a communications specialist and an executive coach as she puts forward the concept of “brave communication.” This approach involves confronting what she calls the four “hidden challenges” that one encounters in personal and professional dialogues, which include “Hiding From Risk,” “Defining to be Right,” “Rationalizing the Negative,” and “Settling for ‘Good Enough.’” She expands on the nature of each idea in dedicated chapters. She also explores what she calls “Pro Moves,” or ways “to send or receive messages more deftly than the average bear.” Such moves include such practical tips as “Don’t wait for someone else to celebrate you—reward yourself” as you strive to meet new communication challenges. Each chapter includes an “Exercise” that’s designed to assist readers in implementing a specific type of risk-taking communication; one suggests that readers “ask a few open-ended questions to someone you perceive as different from you….This exercise requires courage to admit that you’ve got a limited perspective on many things in life.”
This combination of straight talk and personal challenges runs through the whole of Gladieux’s book. She not only champions aspects of direct communication but also practices them in the text; she frequently presents hard lessons she’s learned while facing her own limitations before launching into discussions of how readers may overcome the same obstacles. Readers are also likely to find her blunt assessments of the importance of her subject to be appealing throughout: “I’ve never stood at a memorial service and heard anyone fondly recall how the departed was great at going along to get along and managed to never make any waves,” she notes at one point. She’s refreshingly plainspoken about the inevitably uncomfortable elements of any important conversation, whether one is speaking with a colleague or with a family member, and she consistently peppers her broad discussions with small nuggets of practical advice to help readers find value in difficult talks. Her tips include recommendations to avoid using the phrases “you always” or “you never,” which are inherently confrontational and frequently inaccurate, and to “ask others for changes in behavior, not changes in their often long-held beliefs.” Gladieux skillfully works in her own stories of coaching clients, and she also offers inspiration from historical figures: “To call forth courage,” she writes at one such point, “I often think of how aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart framed it: ‘Decide whether or not the goal is worth the risks involved. If it is, stop worrying.’” Readers who’ve worried about tough dialogues of any kind will find many moments of useful wisdom here.
A straightforward and compassionate guide to engaging in more effective conversation.
