Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone
Mark Goulston · 2009
Drawing on his work as a psychiatrist and hostage-negotiation trainer, Mark Goulston reveals that getting through to anyone isn't about what you say to them but what you make them tell you. Master the brain science and simple moves that turn resistance into buy-in with even the most difficult people.
Practical psychiatrist-developed methods for breaking through resistance and truly being heard.
Three of the ideas you’ll keep
The Clif summary of Just Listen pulls out 7 insights. Here are the first three.
- Persuasion is a cycle, not a push: move people from resisting to listening to considering to acting by lowering their defenses first, not by arguing harder.
- When someone is upset their amygdala hijacks their thinking brain; name the emotion out loud (theirs or yours) to switch the rational prefrontal cortex back on before you try to reason.
- Make people 'feel felt' by reflecting their emotion back accurately ('You feel ___, and the reason is ___') so they sense you genuinely get them.
The other 4 — and the full 9-minute summary — are in the app.
What’s inside: 9 chapters
The whole summary runs about 9 minutes, read or listened to.
- The Persuasion Cycle: Buy-In, Not Bulldozing
- Calm Yourself First: From 'Oh F#@&' to 'OK'
- Make People Feel 'Felt'
- Be Interested, Not Interesting
- Remove Dissonance and Bare Your Neck
- Quick Techniques: Empathy Jolt, Impossibility Question, and 'Hmmm'
- Side-by-Side, Fill-in-the-Blanks, and Aiming for 'No'
- The Power Thank-You and the Power Apology
- Putting It to Work and Avoiding Toxic People
Finish Just Listen tonight.
Read or listen to the full summary in about 9 minutes, then keep the ideas with a minute of review a day. Start with the 2-minute quiz — no card required.
Close to Just Listen
-
Supercommunicators Charles Duhigg Recent bestseller decoding what the best communicators do to connect across any conversation type. -
You're Not Listening Kate Murphy A working journalist's case that listening isn't a technique you perform but a curiosity you cultivate, and the most underrated… -
Between Parent and Child Haim Ginott The book that taught a generation of parents that how you say it matters more than what you say, and that a child's feelings are… -
Come Together Emily Nagoski It dismantles the myth that fading spontaneous desire means your relationship is broken, and replaces it with something you can… -
Eight Dates John Gottman & Julie Gottman The Gottmans' research-backed antidote to drift: eight essential conversations every couple should schedule before they think they… -
Friendship Lydia Denworth Reported science woven through the author's own long friendship, quietly reclassifying friendship from a luxury of leisure time to…