Author: Steve Nakamoto

ISBN-10: 0967089352

ISBN-13: 978-0967089355

Too shy to strike up a conversation?  Can get one started but cannot keep it going?  Or is it that you are often putting your foot in your mouth?  You’d be surprised at how many of us out there need help in basic communication skills.  Steve Nakamoto, the author of Talk Like a Winner: 21 Simple Rules for Achieving Everyday Communication Success, is considered and expert in this area.  Steve has been interviewed on a plethora of media outlets:  television, radio, newspapers, magazines…  But until now Steve Nakamoto has been considered more of a dating expert.  He was previously the author of the best sellers Men are like Fish and Dating Rocks which shot him initially to fame and led to his career as the “Ask Mr. Answer Man” on iVillage.com.  Steve has helped a multitude of women with dating and now he aims to open up the field with his sage conversation advice.

Steve’s book focuses on the 21 areas where people often find themselves weak when it comes to communicating with others.  Personally when I looked at the table of contents I thought “Well, if there are any areas listed here where I am weak, it is because it is an area that I haven’t cared to focus on.”  But in reading the book I started to see areas that I thought before I was adequate and found that maybe I did need a little more work.  Examples?  Adjusting to get the listener more involved and controlling the flow of the conversation better to keep it from turning unnecessarily negative.  The book is full of advice that, when heeded, will act as fillers to wherever you might have gaps in your skills.  And in the areas where you might not have gaps Steve’s advice can act as a reminder.

Talk Like a Winner was written in a way that if you already have a good idea of where your weaknesses lie you can go directly to the area in the book that covers the issue you might feel weak on, whether it be listening, smiling, responding or whatever, and you can focus on developing that part of your communication repertoire from the very beginning.  Or you can do like I did and read the book from page one to the end and evaluate as you go.  It is up to you really.

Steve Nakamoto’s book was interesting to me overall mainly because I have always considered myself a fair conversationalist and have even considered that I get better with age because I feel more interested in others’ life stories.  When I was in high school I had even won awards for extemporaneous speaking at the Future Business Leaders of America conferences in my home state.  But in reading this book I was reminded of one of the best conversationalists I have ever met in my life who’d been in the back of my mind for some time now.  This person was a man named Jason Kulgelman and he interviewed people for Pacifica Radio.  Whenever you had finished a conversation with Jason you always felt like some kind of genius because he seemed genuinely interested in what you had to say and he asked lots of questions and he complemented you along the way.  In reading Steve Nakamoto’s book I was taken down a notch.  I realized when going over Steve’s various points that it wasn’t that I was so smart but more likely that Jason was a master communicator.

But I suppose this is the whole point Steve Nakamoto was making with this book.  If you master the art of interpersonal communication and learn to talk like a winner, you will be more interesting to lots more people.  They will go away feeling special for having conversed with you and you will go away feeling involved and enriched.