Maxwell’s latest leadership book offers readers five principles and five practices to help them connect with the people they’re speaking with. At the end of each chapter, he takes time to apply the principle/practice to a one-on-one, small group, and public speaking setting.

The most interesting idea behind book was his crowd-sourcing technique. He took a page out of the wiki world and posted each chapter online to grab blog comment data which he worked into the final manuscript. The people on the cover all contributed to the book. There’s also a comprehensive 4 page small-font list at the end.

That’s where the interesting ends.

If you’ve read a Maxwell book before, you know what to expect. Each page contains one or two pithy headings followed by a string of quotes that was sourced by his ghostwriter. Maxwell is proud of these quotes: “I love quotations. I believe, as British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli said, ‘The wisdom of the wise and the experiences of the ages may be preserved by quotations.'” Now I love a good quote (thus my series of Weekend Wisdom posts) but when your entire book based on strings of quotes, the knockout power of a good saying degenerates into a flurry of uneventful jabs.

If you’ve never read a Maxwell book, give him a try. This is as good as any of them. If you’ve read him before, there’s nothing new here.

“No one can connect with everybody. It doesn’t matter how hard you work at it. Though I strive to be an effective communicator, I know there are people I leave cold when I talk.” Too true.

Disclaimer: I received this book for free as a member of Thomas Nelson’s Booksneeze program.

Maxwell, John. Everyone Communicates, Few Connect: What the Most Effective People Do Differently. Thomas Nelson, 2010.