Books by Carmine Gallo
Five Stars is the Carmine Gallo book in our library. Its claim is uncomfortable and useful: the difference between people doing comparable work is often not the work but how well they communicate about it.
Gallo's argument is that this is a skill rather than a personality trait, and that it is therefore practiseable. Being right and being understood are two separate jobs, and most people only ever train for the first one.
How to read it. Read it if your work is good and your progress is not. Pick one thing you have been failing to explain and rewrite it using what the book suggests.
It sits in the Communication Skills bundle as the one book about making an idea land with an audience rather than with one person. The others are about conversations; this one is about a room.
The book
Five Stars: The Communication Secrets to Get from Good to Great
Carmine GalloCommunication treated as the multiplier on everything else you do. The practical argument is that clarity is a skill you practise, and that being understood is a separate job from being right, which is why competent people are routinely overlooked by less competent ones who explain themselves better.
What it argues- Your work is only as valuable as your ability to explain it.
- Clarity beats cleverness, because an idea that needs decoding usually does not travel.
- Analogy is the fastest route into unfamiliar territory.
- Attention is short, so the important thing belongs at the start.
- Being right and being understood are separate jobs, and the second one is optional unless you do it.
- Practice the explanation, not just the work.
Suited to someone whose work is good and whose progress is not, and to anyone who has watched a weaker idea win because it was better pitched. Less useful if you already present well and your problem lies elsewhere.
Where to start
Take one thing you have been failing to explain, a project, a role, or an idea, and rewrite it using the book as you go. The value here is applied rather than absorbed, and reading it without a specific case in front of you wastes it. The test is not whether you understood the structure but whether the person you next explain it to can repeat it back.
Where this fits
This is the persuasion half of the shelf. Carnegie covers the personal side of getting agreement, Headlee covers listening, and this one covers the specific job of making what you already do land with someone who was not paying attention. Read it after the other two, because it assumes you have something worth saying and a reason to be believed. It is the only book here about an audience rather than an individual, which makes it worth reading even if your one-to-one conversations are going well.
The rest of this shelf
The Communication Skills shelf holds 5 books in total. These are the others, each condensed into a guide you can finish in about 15 minutes:
- We Need to Talk: How to Have Conversations That Matter by Celeste Headlee
- The Art of Public Speaking by Dale Carnegie and Joseph Berg Esenwein
- Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone by Mark Goulston
- The Art of Communicating by Thich Nhat Hanh
Make the work count, with these five
Five Stars is in the Communication Skills bundle with We Need to Talk, The Art of Public Speaking, Just Listen and The Art of Communicating.
Five complete guides, about 15 minutes each.
Explore Communication SkillsBeing understood is a separate job from being right.