According to Wikipedia: “How to Win Friends and Influence People is a self-help book written by Dale Carnegie, published in 1936. Over 30 million copies have been sold worldwide, making it one of the best-selling books of all time. In 2011, it was number 19 on Time Magazine‘s list of the 100 most influential books”. So in the upcoming articles I will cover the content of this book.

💡1 – If you want to gather honey, don’t kick over the beehive

✔️Principle 1 – Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.

When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.

Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do. That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness. “To know all is to forgive”

“God himself, sir, does not propose to judge man until the end of his days.” Why should I ?

💡2 – The big secret of dealing with people

✔️Principle 2 – Give honest and sincere appreciation.

There is only one way under high heaven to get anybody to do anything. Did you ever stop to think of that ? Yes, just one way. And that is by making the other person want to do it. Remember there is no other way.

Sigmund Freud said that everything you and I do springs from two motives: the sex urge and the desire to be great. John Dewey, one of America’s most profound philosophers, phrased it a bit differently. Dr. Dewey said that the deepest urge in human nature is “the desire to be important”. Remember the phrase: “the desire to be important”. It is significant.

“The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.” If you tell me how you get your feeling of importance, I’ll tell you what you are. That determines your character. That is the most significant thing about you. Some authorities declare that people may actually go insane in order to find, in the dreamland of insanity, the feeling of importance that has been denied them in the harsh world of reality.

If some people are so hungry for a feeling of importance that they actually go insane to get it, imagine what miracle you and I can achieve by giving people honest appreciation this side of insanity. One of the first people in American business to be paid a salary over a million dollars a year (when there was no income tax and a person earning fifty dollars a week was considered well off) was Charles Schwab. He had been picked by Andrew Carnegie to become the first president of the newly formed United States Steel Company in 1921, when Schwab was only thirty-eight years old. Why did Andrew Carnegie pay a million dollars a year, or more than three thousand dollars a day, to Charles Schwab? Why? Because Schwab was a genius? No. Because he know more about the manufacture of steel than other people? Nonsense. Charles Schwab says that he was paid this salary largely because of his ability to deal with people.

“I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people, the greatest asset I posses, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. There is nothing else that kills the ambitions of a person as criticism from superiors. I never criticize any-one. I believe in giving a person incentive to work. So I am anxious to praise but loath to find fault. If I like anything, I am hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise.”

That is what Schwab did. But what do average people do? The exact opposite. If they don’t like a thing, they bawl out their subordinates; if they do like it, they say nothing. As the old couplet says: “Once I did bad and that I heard ever / Twice I did good, but that I heard never.”

Flattery! It doesn’t work – not with intelligent people. Of course flattery seldom works with discerning people. It is shallow, selfish and insincere. It ought to fail and it usually does. True, some people are so hungry, so thirsty, for appreciation that they will swallow anything, just as a starving man will eat grass and fishworms.

In the long run, flattery will do more harm than good. Flattery is counterfeit, and like counterfeit money, it will eventually get you into trouble if you pass it to someone else. The difference between appreciation and flattery? That is simple. One is sincere and the other insincere. One comes from the heart out; the other from the teeth out. One is unselfish; the other selfish. One is universally admired; the other universally condemned.

“Flattery is telling the other person precisely what he thinks about himself.”

💡3 – He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way

✔️Principle 3 – Arouse in the other person an eager want.

Think about fishing, and you will find that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms. So when someone is going fishing, don’t think about what you want. Think about what they want. Why not use the same common sense when fishing for people ?

Lloyd George, Great Britain’s Prime Minister during World War I, when someone asked him how he managed to stay in power after other wartime leaders – Wilson, Orlando and Clemenceau – had been forgotten, he replied that if his staying on top might be attributed to any one thing, it would be to his having learned that it was necessary to bait the hook to suit the fish.

Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something. “Action springs out of what we fundamentally desire … and the best piece of advice which can be given to would-be persuaders, whether in business, in the home, in the school, in politics, is: first arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.”

Tomorrow you may want to persuade somebody to do something. Before you speak, pause and ask yourself: “How can I make this person want to do it?”

“If there is any one secret for success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle was well as from your own.” – Henry Ford. The world is full of people who are grabbing and self-seeking. So the rare individual who unselfishly tries to serve others has an enormous advantage. He has little competition.

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🎓Summary

Fundamental techniques in handling people:

✔️Principle 1 – Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.
✔️Principle 2 – Give honest and sincere appreciation.
✔️Principle 3 – Arouse in the other person an eager want.