We will be far more effective as communicators when we acknowledge our mistakes, and then we try to make them up.

I don't understand why people whose entire lives or their corporate success depends on communication, and yet they are led on occasion by CEOs who cannot talk their way out of a paper bag and don't care to.

It applies even more to politicians because they are living, breathing embodiments of the language that they use. And it's why how you start the conversation, and how you end it, matters so much.

There are people still in the Republican Party that I believe practice the communication of anger, of disappointment, of regret, of pain, of sorrow, of suffering. That's not what the American people want to hear.

I wrote "Win" for people on both sides, legitimately on both sides. If you're a Democrat listening to this right now, you - the whole playbook is in this book. If you're a Republican, and you're frustrated because Barack Obama is a great communicator, the playbook is in this book. And if you're a corporation who wants to satisfy his - their employees, how to do it is in this book. And finally, if you're an employee and you want to get a raise, whether at NPR or anyplace else, it's in this book.

Nobody wants to hear about process. They want to hear about results. They want to be inspired. They want to aspire to something. And so often in our communication, we will explain why - sorry, we will explain how but not why.

Richard Nixon will always go down as a failure because of one stupid, moral - and that goes back to that last chapter, on principles.