How To Communicate Effectively with Anyone, Anywhere: Your Passport to Connecting Globally

It's no secret that making genuine connections with others is good for our own health as well as the health of our businesses and communities. Even when we're social distancing and not traveling for business or for pleasure, being able to communicate effectively with a wide audience and across cultures is a valuable skill—one that Raúl Sánchez and Dan Bullock know a little something about having worked on these issues at NYU for ten and eight years, respectively. 

 Many of us in the twenty-first century often encounter dozens of cultural contexts every day—often in a single day, at work, socially, or online. 

Authors Raúl Sánchez and Dan Bullock make navigating any communication situation—online and off—less stressful and more effective. For digital marketers like myself, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, and email might as well all be separate countries in the way that we communicate and interact so differently on those platforms. 

How to Communicate Effectively with Anyone, Anywhere uses engaging infographics and tables that reflect and expand on each concept, and provide helpful reiterations of its lessons. Each chapter builds into the next: from how to structure a speech to effective email subject line writing to reader communication styles to an appendix of "non-global English" phrases and abbreviations to avoid. 

This book makes it clear that "effective communication" and "inclusivity" are one-and-the-same. The more we understand those we communicate with, the easier it will be to treat them respectfully and with an open mind.

The authors' research backgrounds in intercultural communication and psycholinguistics make this book unique in the breadth of its approaches to communication. Sánchez and Bullock use behavioral psychology to draw up the blueprints to real-life business situations and how to navigate them confidently, whether you're communicating within a "high-context culture" (one implicit with messaging and the expression of intentions) or "low-context culture" (one "explicit with messaging and expression of intentions"). 

While it can be overwhelming to think about all the possible nuances between cultures and all the ways we can unintentionally embarrass ourselves, Sánchez and Bullock are very successful in reframing our approaches to even the simplest components of communication like sending an email or even breathing. Yes, breathing! 

The chapter on the mind-body connection was unexpected, but it quickly convinced me that being mindful of our breathing can pave the way to success. 

Instead of allowing work to dictate erratic adjustments in our breathing patterns, we can breathe consciously, which research has shown can lead to improved decision-making on the job and deeper connections. 

While non-verbal communication is the element most of us our missing out on—now that virtual meetings consist only of pixelated heads and shoulders and daily communication is often conducted through a stream of on-screen text—that doesn't make the book's advice moot. How to Communicate Effectively with Anyone, Anywhere helps you hone the questions you ask, the emails you send, and the informative and persuasive ways you write, and then connects that to how we all speak and listen. In the highly connected, globalized world we live in, it's a little astounding to think about how ignorant we remain about other cultures. This book reminds us that it’s essential to learn about and practice inclusivity in order to connect and communicate with others, and ultimately improve the well-being of ourselves, the success of our businesses, and the strength of our global communities.