5 Voices Book Summary - 5 Voices Book explained in key points

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5 Voices summary

Name: 5 Voices
Rating: 4.2 (161 reviews)
Author: Jeremie Kubicek and Steve Cockram

Jeremie Kubicek Steve Cockram

How to Communicate Effectively with Everyone You Lead

4.2 (161 ratings)

21 mins

Brief summary

5 Voices by Jeremie Kubicek and Steve Cockram is a leadership book that highlights the importance of understanding communication styles in a team. It provides insights on how to leverage each voice to make better decisions, strengthen relationships and improve team dynamics.

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Table of Contents

5 Voices
Summary of 8 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 8

What’s in it for me? A crash course in communication.

The ancient Greek philosopher Plato developed his theories through conversations. Dialogue, he believed, reflects the way great ideas first emerge: through a kind of verbal sparring match, each contestant clarifies and improves on what the other has just said. At its best, communication can be open, receptive and constantly moving toward a shared understanding.

If you’ve had a row with your partner or been in a meeting recently, you’ll know that communication in the real world can fall significantly short of this ideal. It’s all too easy to get bogged down in your own way of seeing things, to stop listening to others and to start repeating yourself.

So what’s going wrong? Well, Jeremie Kubicek and Steve Cockram believe they’ve found the cause of all this unnecessary strife: if you don’t understand how to talk to others, it’s likely because you haven’t realized that everyone uses different “voices.” Individuals switch between multiple voices, but usually fall back on one dominant voice.

Getting to grips with the communicative advantages and disadvantages of each of these unique voices, makes us more mindful about when to use one and refrain from using another. And that makes both workplace and personal conversations much more productive and rewarding.

In these blinks, you’ll learn:

how to identify the five different voices;
when to give way and when to hold your ground in a verbal contest; and
how to encourage those who usually stay quiet to speak up.

Nurturers look out for others rather than themselves, and often go unheard.

When it comes to communication, the authors identify five different “voices” we all use. We switch between them depending on the situations we find ourselves in, but most of us fall back on a single dominant voice – our primary means of self-expression. So what are these voices? Well, say you’re someone who values the input of others and emphasizes group harmony: your predominant voice is that of a nurturer.

Nurturers go out of their way to look out for those around them. They often put others’ needs ahead of their own and are most comfortable in environments where kindness and shared values come first. Nurturers are firmly anchored in the present: they want to take action now to ensure that relationships and the companies they work for flourish in the future. Nurturers also tend to believe that people are more important than profits.

A nurturing manager, for example, will put in extra hours to talk to employees and make sure that they’re happy with their work, feel motivated and have everything they need to do their jobs well. Outside work, a nurturer is the kind of person who’ll cancel his own plans to help a friend move into a new apartment.

That all sounds positive, right? It is, but nurturing types often run into a problem: they struggle to make themselves heard. This can have a big knock-on effect in organizations – after all, nurturers will keep their eyes on the wellbeing of people when everyone else is scrambling to meet targets. Without them, companies risk embracing a dog-eat-dog ethos that’s bound to undermine morale in the long run.

But because they’re modest by nature, nurturers often undervalue their own contributions and end up keeping their heads down rather than speaking up. And here’s a crazy thing: according to the authors’ calculations, around 43 percent of the population is made up of nurturers. That’s a huge number of people who aren’t having their concerns taken seriously! We’ll explore what can be done about this later on. But before that, let’s take a closer look at the second voice.

Creatives are the voices of innovation, but people often struggle to understand their ideas.

What’s your dominant voice? Let’s find out. If you’re highly imaginative, always looking to the future and daydreaming about the next big invention or business idea, chances are you’re a creative. This is the voice of innovation and change.

You’ll find creatives in every walk of life. The mind behind the Post-it Note is a creative. So are artists, engineers and hobbyists tinkering in garages or coming up with new ways to insulate buildings. What they all have in common is that they’re interested in answering old questions in new ways, and set on redefining the questions being asked.

Guardians seek to protect traditional values and are highly pragmatic.

If you mapped different voices onto political beliefs, guardians would undoubtedly be conservatives. Whether you regard conservatism as a hidebound defense of old evils or a necessary bulwark against new ones, there’s no disputing that it’s an important voice in society.

So what exactly do guardians stand for? Well, as the name suggests, their primary aim is to protect the tried and tested ways of doing things. Like nurturers, guardians are focused on the present. Their motivation isn’t to protect the interests of people, however, but to prevent what they see as unnecessary change. That’s because they see more positives than negatives in the current system, and emphasize its successes rather than its shortcomings.

Connectors bring people together, forge new bonds and maintain existing relationships.

Imagine throwing a party and inviting people from the different areas of your life – your friends, family, colleagues and neighbors. It might be tricky to get everyone on the same page and feeling comfortable around each other, right? Well, it’s in such situations that connectors come into their own. These are the people who effortlessly bring individuals together, and who can get on with strangers as if they’ve known them for years.

You can spot a connector by a couple of telltale signs. If there’s a problem in the office, a connector will reach out to a peer who’s well placed to resolve the issue quickly and efficiently. Connecters also tend to be generous with their contacts. If you’re looking for a new job and a connector knows someone who’s hiring, she’ll almost certainly put the two of you in touch. The downside of having such brilliant people skills is that it’s easy to end up with lots of acquaintances but few true friends – the most common drawback of being a social butterfly.

Pioneers are fanatical about achieving their goals and don’t shy away from making tough calls.

Some people are simply impossible to argue with. It’s not necessarily that they have the loudest voices – though they often do – so much as the fact that there’s no budging them from their position. Whether they’re right or wrong, they’ll argue their case with such conviction that countering them is like trying to turn back the tide. If that rings a bell, there’s a good chance you know a pioneer!

If pioneers are stubborn, it’s because they’re strategic thinkers who have a very strong and clear vision of their personal and professional goals. Getting in the way of this is like stepping onto the tracks in front of a freight train: you’re going to get flattened. Their other defining trait is ambition. Pioneers don’t open a mere coffee shop or burger joint – they envisage their modest enterprise as the first step toward a globe-spanning commercial empire as ubiquitous and successful as Starbucks or McDonald’s!

Encourage nurturers to speak up and allow creatives to think outside the box.

By now you should have a good understanding of the five voices. But what happens when you bring them all together in one room? If you’ve been in a team meeting lately, you may already know the answer: the loudest people end up talking at cross purposes while the quiet types sit it out on the sidelines. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In the next couple of blinks, we’ll take a look at what you can do to improve each team member’s experience.

Let’s start with nurturers. As we’ve seen, nurturers often undervalue their own contributions and rarely speak up. The key here is to explicitly encourage them to make themselves heard, and to rein in more vocal members when nurturers are talking. That’s important because the more opinions a nurturer hears before his own turn comes around, the less confident he’ll be about presenting his ideas.

Letting guardians ask tough questions, encouraging connectors’ passions and asking pioneers to speak last will lead to more positive meetings.

So far we’ve looked at how to encourage the quieter voices in your team to share their ideas and insights. Now it’s time to explore how to manage the more boisterous types, starting with guardians.

As we know, guardians are skeptical about change. While others might view them as a nuisance, they see their tough questions as an essential part of a healthy company culture. And here’s the thing: they’re right. That means it’s your job to explain to other team members that guardians aren’t the enemy and that when they show up to meetings with reams of carefully structured notes and insist on going over every point in minuscule detail, it’s for the good of the organization.

The most effective team managers lead by example and control their own voices.

When a flight attendant runs through a plane’s safety features, he reminds you to secure your own oxygen mask before helping others, especially children. There’s a good reason for this: you’re not going to be of any use to anyone if you’re unconscious! Team leaders are in a similar position in the workplace – if they’re not in control of their own voices, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to help other team members control theirs.

That’s why it’s so important to lead by example and remember that your voice is responsible for the team. Of course, it’s hard to keep track of your main voice when you’re getting bogged down in discussions that aren’t really your priority. The key is to focus on the attributes of your authentic voice.

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What is 5 Voices about?

5 Voices (2016) is a handbook designed to help you communicate more effectively in your professional and personal life. To do this, leadership experts Jeremie Kubicek and Steve Cockram argue, you need to get a handle on what type of communicator you are. These blinks outline five communicative strategies and provide a wealth of tips and tricks that’ll help you get your point across without getting in peoples’ faces.

5 Voices Review

5 Voices (2016) is a thought-provoking book that unpacks the different voices we all possess and how they impact our communication and leadership styles. Here's why you should read it:

By providing a framework for understanding our own voice and the voices of others, the book offers practical insights to improve collaboration and relationships.
Through compelling stories and examples, it demonstrates how harnessing the power of the five voices can lead to greater influence and effective teamwork.
With its accessible and relatable approach, the book keeps readers engaged and motivated, ensuring that learning about communication dynamics is anything but boring.

Best quote from 5 Voices

Nurturers at their core are all about taking care of people.

—Jeremie Kubicek and Steve Cockram

Who should read 5 Voices?

CEOs and executives
Team members and leaders
People looking to fine-tune their communication skills

About the Author

Before becoming a bestselling author, Jeremie Kubicek was the CEO of Leadercast Conferences, a platform that helps leaders reach their full potential. His previous books include Making Your Leadership Come Alive (2011) and 5 Gears (2015).

Steve Cockram is the cofounder of GiANT Worldwide, a company specializing in leadership training for executives. He is also the coauthor of 5 Gears and a successful consultant.

Categories with 5 Voices

Communication Skills Management & Leadership

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