Contents
Introduction Communication as a Noncontact Sport
1 Birth of a Communication Samurai
4 Taking Crap with Dignity . . . and Style
5 The Nice, the Difficult, and the Wimp
6 Eleven Things Never to Say to Anyone (And How to Respond If Some Idiot Says Them to You)
8 The Most Powerful Word in the English Language
9 The Greatest Speech You’ll Ever Live to Regret
10 The Only Way to Interrupt People and Still Have Them Love You
11 Verbal Judo Versus Verbal Karate
13 The First Great Communication Art: Representation
14 The Second Great Communication Art: Translation
15 The Third Great Communication Art: Mediation
16 What Makes This All So Difficult
17 Readin’, ’Ritin’, and Rhetoric
18 How to Diagnose a Verbal Encounter
19 The Language of Reassurance
22 Applying LEAPS to Your World
23 Persuasion for Fun and Profit
24 The Misunderstood Motivator
25 You Can Punish Without Drawing Blood
26 Dancing When You Might Have Stumbled
27 Verbal Judo as an Automatic Response
28 Final Chapter: The Five Truths That Fit All