Leil Lowndes’ book How to Talk to Anyone promises the reader 92 actionable tips to help them shine in any social situation. By the end, you would hope to be able to stand face to face with everybody you meet and glide through conversations effortlessly. We’ll break it down in this How to Talk to Anyone book review.
Background
By profession, Leil is a communications expert. She’s spent decades helping people refine their professional and social approaches. In that pursuit, she has also produced a pile of books, lectures, video material, and online content all geared towards the same.
Given that, I’d say she has some authority to talk on the topic and provide some valuable insights. Interestingly, she largely stays away from her professional experiences in this book, choosing instead to focus on sidebar anecdotes of a more personal variety. “My friend”, “at a party”, “while eating dinner” types of insights.
Naturally, this gives the book a more personal flavor. However, I think it cheapens her professional experience a bit.
On the flipside, the personal take may be needed since the majority of us just want to communicate well in social situations. We don’t necessarily care about boardroom etiquette.
Just an observation.
Chapter Breakdown
The book itself is broken down into these overarching chapters:
- How to intrigue everyone without saying a word
- How to know what to say after you say hi
- How to talk like a vip
- How to be an insider in any crowd
- Instant rapport
- How to differentiate the power of praise from the folly of flattery
- How to work a party like a politician works a room
Each chapter is diced up by the actual tips themselves so it’s a belt-fed machine gun type read. Tip heading -> brief intro -> anecdote -> summary block -> repeat.
Personally, I like the style. I think each tip is dedicated the right amount of gravity and detail with it laying out as a quick go-to reference if needed.
Could she have waxed poetic on a few of the individual tips and cut half the subchapters out? Sure.
If you look close enough, are some of the tips basically the same and could be condensed into one? Also sure.
However, the present style gives the reader just enough to keep things lively. Each tip comes across as a self-contained summary. What is it, example of how it’s applied, summary.
I’d argue that the summaries could be done away with since the subchapters are so small. Do you really need a summary if each tip only gets five dedicated pages? Probably not.
The book did originally come out in the 90s though. It fits that era of self-help book style exactly.
Content
The tips and tricks in the book shine in the following ways. Each is:
- Brief
- Actionable
- Memorable
Brief
With 92 tips in the book, you make a tradeoff. Every tip receives less page real estate, but it cuts down on some of the excess fat per technique.
Yeah, some fat still gets in. Did we need three separate tips for the same “don’t give people terse answers” theme? Nope. But overall, the techniques have just enough information to tell you what, why, and how.
This brevity makes it a convenient reference material in the future. I don’t need to put sticky notes in the ones I like or skim chapters to find something. Every item is indexed and searchable.
Actionable
On top of being brief, each tip is also something that you can instantly implement yourself. I believe the true power in these tips lies in the fact that they’re actions you can toss out as desired.
Leil does a good job of staying away from abstract things like, “You just need to build confidence. Become more interesting and people will find you interesting.” Doesn’t help me.
“Make sure you’re sharing information about yourself or the other person won’t have anything to engage with.”
“Try a new hobby once a month so you always have real life experiences to talk about.”
“Enter rooms with your shoulders pulled back. Stand in the doorway for a moment to project confidence.” Sounds familiar.
These are actual techniques with real-world application. This is what a person wants when they’re trying to refine their social game.
With nearly a hundred individual items, not every technique is going to be useful to you. I wouldn’t expect them to be.
However, the volume allows you to sift for the ones you actually care about and gives you plenty to try. Toss aside the clutter and keep what works for you.
Memorable
On top of actionable, the most useful tips in the book are also memorable.
With names like:
- Hang by your teeth
- Big baby pivot
- Hans horse sense
- The tombstone game
the individual tricks stick readily in your mind. When you go to use them in a conversation, you need only think of the outlandish name and it’ll readily evoke images of the anecdote from the book.
Yes, a few of the anecdotes are ridiculous and likely largely hyperbole. But that’s the hallmark of a memorable tale.
You don’t remember the fish story where the guy caught a 10 oz fish. The 10 pound fish though, now that’s a tale.
Content Value
Leil is a salesman through and through. She may work under the title of communications specialist, but it’s just sales under the hood.
You can hear it in her writing and gather it from the technique headings alone.
Given that, a decent portion of this book is about rubbing elbows with the elite.
There’s a real tone of “put on this mask so people will invite you in”.
Wowing. Networking. Maintaining poise and class. All fine.
The thing I find odd about the more professional themes in the book is that they feel largely juxtaposed. As if they were meant to go into a separate book and were only given a passing thought in this one.
Sure. The layout is exactly the same and they follow the same flow as everything else in the book.
Plus, the title of the book is How to Talk to Anyone not How to Talk to The Same Two Friends you Always Do.
Still, you come across chapters all of a sudden talking about “big cats” and “small cats”, VIPs, celebrities and you come away feeling like you missed something.
Personally, I think the entire chapters of “How to be an insider in any crowd” and “How to work the room like a politician” could be cut and put into a dedicated book of their own.
Professional communication is a special beast that requires emphasis in the right areas and a more tactical approach.
Don’t get me wrong, a ton of the techniques in this book can still apply in a professional setting. But the title and several anecdotes in the book give off an undertone of more casual conversation. Half of her anecdotes are about parties, finding dates at parties, or making phone calls to book vacations.
With that, the professional communication sections feel out of place.
Other Reviews
I’ll be honest, if you go out to a site like Goodreads and read some of the more critical reviews there, I think people are nitpicking just for the sake of nitpicking in some cases.
Yes. Some of the anecdotes/analogies are ridiculous. Wolves chasing jackrabbits through jungles… yeahhhh.
Sure. A handful of the potentially contrived scenarios don’t make sense if you hold them under the magnifying glass. For example, would a communications expert such as Leil really be completely stumped by a person that just stated their hometown rather than spouting off a random fact about it as well? Doubtful.
Yep. Some of the writing is clunky.
Uh-huh. She spends a good amount of time holding her nose at her less socially adept friends and critiquing their failures.
Despite all of that, there are some useful techniques in this book. Some of them are downright handy like the tip about dropping little nuggets of information about a person when you introduce them to a stranger.
The style may not be for everyone. It comes across as very emphatic, somewhat scatterbrained, and sales-y. But I think that’s just Leil’s personality coming through in the writing. Watch three minutes of her YouTube videos and you can see the same.
Overall
Will this book change your life? Any book might, but probably not this one.
Can this book teach you all of the intricacies of professional communication? Nope.
Are you going to come away with a handful of useful techniques after a light read and a few funny stories? Yep.
I’d suggest reading the book and forming your own opinion rather than letting any reviews out there scare you away.
Thanks for reading.
-Two-Bit Stoic