Verbal Judo : The Gentle Art of Persuasion

by Thompson, George J.; Jenkins, Jerry B.

• ISBN13: 9780688137861
• ISBN10: 0688137865
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-10-28
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

How often do you flnd yourself on the losing end of an argument? What percentage of your success in life depends on your success in conversation? Believe it or not, if you are like most people, your answer would be 98 percent or more.

Do you have a plan ready when you find yourself confronting an adversary at work? At home? On a dark street at night? Or do you just react from habit or emotion? As George Thompson says, "When you react, the event controls you. When you respond, you're in control.""Verbal Judo" is a philosophy that can show you how to be better prepared in every verbal encounter: How to listen and speak more effectively; how to engage people through empathy (the most powerful word in the English language); how to avoid the most common conversational disasters; how, instead, to have a proven, easily remembered strategy that will allow you to successfully communicate your point of view and take the upper hand in most disputes.

Author Biography

George J. Thompson, Ph.D., is a former English professor and a black belt master of karate. He created and crash-tested verbal judo when he was a police officer on an urban beat. He is now a popular lecturer and lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Jerry B. Jenkins was most recently the co-author of Miracle Man: The Nolan Ryan Story.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Communication as a Noncontact Sport	p. 11
Birth of a Communication Samurai	p. 15
Movitating the Disagreeable	p. 21
Baptism of Fire	p. 25
Taking Crap with Dignity ... and Style	p. 31
The Nice, The Difficult, and the Wimp	p. 39
Eleven Things Never to Say to Anyone (And How to Respond If Some Idiot Says Them to You)	p. 47
The Crucible of the Street	p. 55
The Most Powerful Word in the English Language	p. 63
The Greatest Speech You'll Ever Live to Regret	p. 71
The Only Way to Interrupt People and Still Have Them Love You	p. 79
Verbal Judo Versus Verbal Karate	p. 87
The Five-Step Hard Style	p. 95
The First Great Communication Art: Representation	p. 103
The Second Great Communication Art: Translation	p. 111
The Third Great Communication Art: Mediation	p. 121
What Makes This All So Difficult	p. 127
Readin', 'Ritin', and Rhetoric	p. 135
How to Diagnose a Verbal Encounter	p. 147
The Language of Reassurance	p. 153
How to Fight Fair	p. 161
Take the Giant Leaps	p. 167
Applying Leaps to Your World	p. 175
Persuasion for Fun and Profit	p. 179
The Misunderstood Motivator	p. 185
You Can Punish Without Drawing Blood	p. 195
Dancing When You Might Have Stumbled	p. 199
Verbal Judo as an Automatic Response	p. 211
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