For the depraved among us that sit around watching for the demise of influential people, I have some bad news: Everyone Communicates, Few Connect is not John Maxwell’s memoir of apostasy, denouncing a lifetime of values-based leadership. In fact, the latest installment of leadership guidance from the celebrated church and business leader is a continuation of an old theme: leadership is about influence; influence is about connections.
There is more bad news (this time for everybody): apparently, achieving interpersonal connections is not a function of blog optimization and tweet frequency. Supposedly, smart phones cannot perform Maxwell’s connection techniques. We’ll actually have to engage with other people. In an age more or less defined by the rapid elimination of physical barriers to communication, Maxwell points out a troubling little detail: at some point along the way, the message has to justify the medium, and people have to be listening.
What’s Hot
Storytelling existed long before the iPhone 4 and Maxwell relies somewhat heavily on personal anecdote to convey the ideas in the book, rather than emailing you a “Connections” app upon purchase. This is putting his money where his mouth is, but it also reflects a core principle: communication is about content; connection is about how content is received. On a macro-level, most of us are aware that an individual’s affect influences the way information is perceived. In Everyone Communicates, Few Connect, Maxwell exhorts leaders to be more mindful of how they prime their audience. And no, the answer is not with swag. You may think that’s a joke, but a common mistake among communicators is misidentifying the motivations of an audience, a foible that often yields less—rather than more—influence with intended recipients.
What’s Not
If not overtly guilty of redundancy, Maxwell teeters on the edge at times. The book’s purpose is clear from page one, making it easy to follow and on par with Maxwell’s other titles, but in the middle the message languishes a bit before coming to its conclusion.
The Bottom Line
In truth, the message is strikingly similar to Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. Effectiveness is not reach, but a mixture of empathy, sincerity, and direction. This is to Maxwell’s credit: Dale Carnegie wrote to an audience suffused with…printed media and telephones. Today, the unscrupulous leader wields tools of devastating reach: social media has made it easy for millions to wave a hefty club at millions of so-called listeners. We could use the update.
Everyone Communicates, Few Connect is Maxwell’s voice of reason, imploring any who care to distance themselves from the ephemera of daily futility and enter a realm of true, lasting influence over actual, living human beings. We communicate more than ever before, but connections are what we crave. Maxwell wisely notes that leaders providing meaningful connections will be the ones that master their messages; all others will drown in a sea of tweets.
I am giving away 5 free copies of Everyone Communicates, Few Connect signed by John Maxwell himself. Leave a comment about your connection exploits for your chance to receive a copy.
