A review by buer
Listen Like You Mean It: Reclaiming the Lost Art of True Connection by Ximena Vengoechea

2.0

I’m not convinced that this book is a practical tool for ordinary conversations. Many of the techniques suggested by Vengoechea are impractical for casual conversations and, I think, will only make your friends and family ask you why you’re talking so weird. Additionally, the section about evaluating voice pitch and volume as well as fidgeting or eye contact as signs of confidence and discomfort came off as a little sexist and ableist. Vengoechea tried to mitigate that by explaining getting a baseline for a person before reading too deeply into them, seeing a chart where a low voice is “authoritative and dominant” and a high voice is “unserious and submissive” was very unsettling.

I did find value in some of the exercises, but overall I don’t recommend this book unless you’re prepared to take most of it with a huge grain of salt.