The Five Wise Monkeys of Communication

 

“In this exquisitely written book The Five Wise Moneys of Communication, the author brilliantly weaves together both ancient wisdom and modern scientific research to create a wonderfully engaging, intelligent, practical, and profound book that will forever change how you communicate.

Having travelled to the four corners of this world, I can speak and understand words in many languages but now realise I didn’t really know how to communicate well before I read this life-transforming book.

Not only will this labour of love make you better understood, and better able to understand others, it will also greatly increase your self-confidence which, in turn, will propel you into a more thriving lifestyle.

Through this book, Anil Bhatnagar successfully continues his quest to make this world a better place for all sentient beings.

If I could recommend only one book about communication for the rest of my life, this is it!”

— Jonathan Jordan,Social neuroscientist, executive coach, international speaker, president of Global Change Management Inc., and author of Brain Matters in Business, Florida, USA
“Although thousands of books have been written on the topic of communication, I believe that The Five Wise Monkeys makes a very unique contribution—there is a universal wisdom that these monkeys share that I have not come across in any literature on communication. East and West, left brain and right brain and heart and mind are integrated in a smooth and flowing way. Every individual and every organization will benefit from reading and applying the principles in this book.”

— Kobus Neethling, Ph.D., President of the South African Creativity Foundation and author of more than 90 books (most of them international bestsellers), Johannesburg Area, South Africa

To read and follow The Five Wise Monkeys of Communication is like employing a personal coach to help you sculpt your out-of-shape “communication” muscles into “killer” six-pack abs. And what a blessing is that to carry that advantage with you everywhere!

If the communication skills of people were to have visible physical bodies, most people will look either malnourished or awfully out-of-shape. Like someone’s out-of-shape physical body, our out-of-shape “communication” muscles, too, not only look unattractive to others but also suck us into a vicious cycle of increasingly serious issues. Unfortunately, owing to an unconscious self-serving bias, most of us can neither notice this unattractiveness nor the progression of this vicious cycle. Thus, when we get trapped in the routines of our daily lives, the extent of disadvantage we ceaselessly subject ourselves to, both at work and in life, because of our inadequate communication skills escapes our notice--and we not only get adjusted to who we are, we also become blind to who we could be.

However, what we refuse to notice in ourselves is revealed to others, with vengeance. The employees who, for want of adequate skills, cannot communicate effectively are liabilities that organisations can ill afford to promote or even retain, these days. This is so because more and more leaders are becoming aware that the effectiveness with which team members communicate within and across teams is the single most powerful determinant of any organisation’s performance.

Research reveals that irrespective of their profession, the people who understand the fundamentals of communication and learn to listen, remember, persuade and present effectively become leaders, inevitably. These are precisely the five domains of interpersonal communication that these five monkeys, who also represent our five senses, shall take turns to coach you in, in the five successive chapters of this book. For example, the daughter monkey Liz, who is a highly attentive and empathetic listener represents our sense of hearing. She shares her own story of how she herself became an active listener before introducing the Chapter on listening with a centre spread that shows the pictorial overview or “memory drone” of the upcoming chapter. (You will see for yourself how this invention of memory drone deepens your comprehension and retention).

Each chapter is sprinkled throughout with icons that highlight related research, inspiring quotes, supporting information, and counterintuitive tips. While inspiring anecdotes keep the reader engaged; metaphors, analogies, mnemonics and memory drones step up retention.  Similarly, self-discovery and visualisation exercises along with checklists help discover and close the gaps between how you communicate and how you could. Apart from these, each chapter concludes with a list of action points, dos and don'ts. The heightened awareness these chapters leave you with triggers subliminal inner work that subtly keeps transforming your unconscious psychological filters through which you listen, remember, persuade and present. 
At the end of the book, there are some very useful appendices on crucial issues that confront almost all of us on a day-to-day basis but leave us clueless about how to respond to them. For instance, through these appendices, you will learn: How to Develop Rapport with the Boss; How to Manage an Unethical Directive from Your Boss; How to Express Grievances Effectively; How to Overcome the Fear of Public Speaking; and How to Say ‘No’ and so on.

Contents:

The book is divided into six broad sections:

• Chapter 1: Interpersonal Communication: Fundamentals and Non-Verbal Components: Importance and essential elements; Characteristics and axioms; How Communication takes place; Factors that influence communication; Common reasons for breakdown of communication; Styles and the role of feedback, Relationship Between Intra- and Interpersonal Communication and acquiring skills for effective communication. Non-verbal communication.

• Chapter 2: Mindful Liz-Zen-Ing: To Love, To Learn and To Lead: How to listen effectively; barriers to listening; listening involves four skills; techniques for improving listening skills and seven ways to further improve your listening skills; points for action; Do’s and Don’ts
• Chapter 3: Developing A Razor-Sharp Memory with Nee-Ma-Nicks: Importance; what is memory; factors affecting memory; barriers t memory; what remembering involves; techniques for improving your registering, retaining and recalling skills; mnemonics; points for action; Do’s and Don’ts
• Chapter 4: Incisive Discussions, Decisive Meetings: The Two-way Persuasion Model: Importance; what does it take to persuade; six methods of persuasion; ethical persuasion; two-way persuasion in meetings.

• Chapter 5: Cutting Edge Presentations: Making What You Want to Sell Irresistible: How to prepare and deliver presentations; using visual aids; managing time; preserving interest; handling the Q and A session and impromptu speeches

• Appendices: How to improve the quality of your relationships; how to step up your self-esteem; how to express your grievances; how to overcome the fear of public speaking; How to develop an ‘I am Okay-you are okay attitude; the kinds of speeches; how to arrange the contents of your presentation and how to choose colours for your visuals on the basis of their psychological meaning

 Salient Features:

• Exhaustive, well structured, systematic, practical, comprehensive and holistic in approach.
• Cross references among all the chapters to provide the reader with a wholesome understanding of the subject.
• Deft handling of the subject through relevant anecdotes, research-based scientific theories and statistics, stories, examples, analogies, step-by-step easy and practical exercises (e.g., to relax mind and body and to stay focused), check-lists, metaphors and jokes keeps the reader engrossed
• ‘Boxes’ at appropriate places throughout the book containing related relevant information and important tips
• Each chapter begins with a pictorial road-map of the journey to be covered in it
• Well-illustrated with over 25 illustrations
• Every chapter begins with inspiring introduction providing the reader with reasons to maximise learning, and concludes with points for action and Do’s & Don’ts.
• Detailed (10 pages) Index

MORE ABOUT THE BOOK

1. Mahatma Gandhi talked about the famous three monkeys who respectively see, hear and speak no evil; this book talks about all the five.  

2. Five members of a chimp family simultaneously live in three parallel universes. In one of the universes (i.e., the sensory world of ours), the parents (Byno and Nee Ma), their daughter Liz, and twin sons (Myke and Pointur) live in our physical bodies as our five senses.

3. Each of these chimps is also an expert in one of the five different interpersonal skills. The five skills Byno, Liz, Nee Ma, Myke and Pointur teach are understanding fundamentals and non-verbal components of interpersonal communication, listening, remembering, speaking and presenting, respectively. Therefore, each one of them takes turns to introduce and teach us one of the five chapters of the book pertaining to his/her skill.
  
4. These monkeys introduce the chapters with their own life stories and memory drones (innovative pictorial overviews of the chapters). (The memory drone is my invention to remember the contents of any book with ease and this book introduces this powerful tool to the world).

5. You will find how each of these monkeys while teaching us, share some amazingly innovative discoveries. For example, whereas Byno introduces us to a new six-stepped model that helps us understand how communication takes place, his wife Nee Ma introduces us to her invention of memory drones. Everything these monkeys tell us has something refreshingly new about it; they are mindful sages in another parallel world and see our world from their own celestial windows. Sometimes, when they consider such an intervention necessary, they time-travel from our future to prevent us from making a costly communication mistake.

 6. The book is sprinkled throughout with icons that indicate related research, inspiring quotes, boxes carrying related supporting information, and the monkeys’ counterintuitive tips on how to practice what you read here. Each chapter concludes with a list of points for action, dos and don'ts.

 7. At the end of the book, there are some very useful appendices on crucial issues that confront almost all of us on a day-to-day basis but leave us without a clue about how to respond to them. For instance, through these appendices, you learn: How to Develop Rapport with the Boss; How to Manage an Unethical Directive from Your Boss; How to Express Grievances Effectively; and How to Overcome the Fear of Public Speaking; and How to Say ‘No’ and so on.

8. Most books are read and forgotten; this one provides us big enough reasons to motivate, powerful memory drones to remember and out-of-the-box tips to practice, and hence is almost readily downloadable into our behaviour.

9. I am an artist too and have painstakingly drawn all the memory drones, the sketches of these monkeys and all the rest of the illustrations

10. Dianna Booher , the author of 47 books on communication, has written the foreword for this book and about two dozen communication and creativity experts, CEOs and authors have shown their support by sending their words of appreciation for the book

FAQs

Who is it for?

The subtitle of the book is Essential Interpersonal Skills for Thriving at Work and in Life. So, it is a book for managers, P.R. practitioners, students and teachers of business administration and all those who need to interact with others for achieving success and happiness in their lives.

What genre is it in?

Interpersonal communication.

(A few other books in this genre are 

• The Communication Skills Book, by Matthew McKay, Martha Davis, and Patrick Fanning
• Effective Listening by Chris Battell
• Confident speaking by Christian H. Godefroy
• The Ultimate Business Presentation Book by Andrew Leigh)

What's the purpose?

To provide the reader with the motivation and essential skills to practice precise, emotionally intelligent and non-violent interpersonal communication.

What is the end result?

• At work: shared collective leadership, improved atmosphere, and performance
• In life: peace, harmony, and mutually rewarding relationships

What is the format?

A combination of many things: research, anecdotes, practical tips, supporting useful information in boxes, points for action, dos and don'ts at the end of each chapter and self-discovery exercises and strategies to respond to day-to-day difficult situations such as how to respond to an unethical directive from the boss, how to overcome fear of public speaking, and how to express grievances effectively, and so on.

The five monkeys have been introduced as a family living simultaneously in three parallel universes in the preface, but their individual life stories unfold one by one through the opening paragraphs in successive chapters.  Apart from this, it is essentially a non-fiction.

The five monkeys represent our five senses and a corresponding communication skill. For example, the monkey Byno who is a great observer represents our sense of sight and introduces us to the chapter on non-verbal communication or the body language--the communication skill that involves the sense of sight. He also shares some fundamentals of interpersonal communication he has derived from his observations.

Similarly, his daughter Liz, who is a highly attentive and empathetic listener represents our sense of hearing and shares her own story of how she herself became an active listener before introducing the reader to the chapter on listening with a centre spread that shows the pictorial road map of the upcoming chapter. (The same format has been followed in all the five chapters: one of the five monkeys appears to tell his story, shares what to expect in the upcoming chapter, and provides a pictorial road map before beginning the chapter).