Blessedly, this is not an overly long book and an easy read. With the chapter formatting clearly labeled, I felt I could easily skip around and not feel out of place for not reading this chronologically (Read Chapters 1 & 2, then jumped to 7 because of a Recognition Program I was working on, then back to read 3-6) -- not an easy thing for some of the business-based research-like books out there.

No groundbreaking insights, however, or any real tools that help you "Master the Most Important Skill for Success." Just examples and info to back-up the age-old wisdom on the importance of asking.

This book has examples of ways many successful people have dared to ask and were rewarded. There are many games that can be used to connect different size audience, provide psychological net so that they can share freely and grow.

With these self-help or learn to do thing better books it is my belief there is always something to learn. With the first twenty percent of this book it felt like an infomercial or one of those buy buy buy commercials the way it kept saying that there would be things touted later in the book. I would have rated this book at 3.5 stars . The premise of the book is you have to get away from being afraid to ask for help, nobdy wants to look like they are incompetent but in the end it could be devastating to your group company or project if you or members of your group do not reach out. This book covers the benefits of asking for help and the main reasons we do not we are to self-reliant. It gives you examples that other groups and businesses use such as using Social capital, Reciprocity rings and Ask Circles. At the end of the chapters it will give you questions that will help you.

Written in classic business how-to still. Each chapter opens with an anecdote about the topic of the chapter, then moves into a discussion of the theme. Baker provides concrete examples and exercises for implementing the new strategy. While this is a helpful refresher on the topic of how to ask for what you need and how to approach people and network, the ideas in this book are not original. However, it is a useful tool if this the area of communications that you need to work on.

Good information and nicely organized. But, could have imparted everything in a long article or TED talk, didn’t need a full length book.