Carnegie’s thesis is that people are not creatures of logic but of emotion, pride, and vanity, so the way to move them is never force or argument but genuine appreciation, an honest interest in their wants, and a refusal to bruise their self-esteem. Every principle below is a way of making the other person feel important while getting what you need.
Part One: Fundamental Techniques in Handling People
Don’t criticize, condemn or complain. Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and wounds their pride, and even hardened criminals like “Two Gun” Crowley and Al Capone saw themselves as misunderstood benefactors, never as wrongdoers. Lincoln nearly fought a duel after anonymously mocking a man in print, and from then on stopped condemning people; as he put it, “Don’t criticize them; they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.”
Give honest and sincere appreciation. The deepest human craving is to feel important, so the way to get anyone to do anything is to make them want to do it, which you do through sincere appreciation rather than flattery. Charles Schwab said he was paid a million dollars a year largely for his ability to arouse enthusiasm through praise, being “hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise.”
Arouse in the other person an eager want. The only way to influence anyone is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it, because we are all interested first in our own desires. Emerson and his son strained to push a stubborn calf into the barn until the Irish maid simply put her finger in its mouth and let it suck as she led it in, thinking of what the calf wanted.
Part Two: Six Ways to Make People Like You
Become genuinely interested in other people. You make more friends in two months by becoming interested in others than in two years trying to get others interested in you, which is exactly why a dog, who does nothing but show delight at your presence, is everyone’s friend. Theodore Roosevelt won the devotion of every servant by greeting each one by name and asking after their lives.
Smile. Actions speak louder than words, and a smile says “I like you, you make me happy, I am glad to see you,” costing nothing but creating much. Carnegie tells of a stockbroker ordered to smile for a week who found it transformed his marriage and his business within days.
Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language. A person’s name sets them apart and makes them feel unique, so remembering and using it is a subtle, effective compliment. Political organizer Jim Farley could recall thousands of first names and it helped put Franklin Roosevelt in the White House, while Andrew Carnegie won deals by naming his steelworks after the customers he wanted to sell to.
Be a good listener. Encourage other people to talk about themselves. Exclusive attention to the person speaking is the highest compliment you can pay, and most people prefer a good listener to a good talker. At a dinner party Carnegie let a botanist talk for hours while he mostly listened, and was afterward praised as a “most interesting conversationalist” though he had said almost nothing.
Talk in terms of the other person’s interests. The royal road to a person’s heart is to talk about the things they treasure most. Roosevelt would sit up late the night before a visitor arrived, reading up on whatever subject that guest was known to care about.
Make the other person feel important - and do it sincerely. Obey the Golden Rule and give others the feeling of importance they crave, honestly recognizing that every person you meet is superior to you in some way. Small courtesies to a bored clerk or a tired waiter, said with sincerity, light people up because almost no one ever bothers.
Part Three: How to Win People to Your Way of Thinking
The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it. You cannot win an argument, because if you lose you lose, and if you win you also lose by wounding the other person’s pride and hardening their conviction. At a banquet a man loudly misattributed a Shakespeare quotation, and rather than embarrass him Carnegie’s friend, an expert, deliberately confirmed the man’s error under the table, keeping the peace.
Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say, “You’re wrong.” Telling people they are wrong only makes them want to strike back, so open with “I may be wrong, let’s examine the facts.” Benjamin Franklin banished dogmatic words like “certainly” from his speech, saying “you can’t win an argument” and that people are more easily persuaded by humility than by triumph.
If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically. Beat the other person to their own criticism of you, because condemning yourself first disarms them and usually turns them generous. Caught walking his dog Rex without a muzzle by the same policeman who had warned him, Carnegie confessed his guilt so thoroughly and abjectly that the officer ended up defending him and let him go.
Begin in a friendly way. A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall, and gentleness and friendliness will always beat bluster. A tenant set on breaking his lease was met not with legal threats but with thanks and friendliness, and the softened man decided to stay and honor his contract.
Get the other person saying “yes, yes” immediately. Start with questions the other person must agree to, because a string of yeses builds momentum toward agreement, whereas an early “no” is almost impossible to reverse. A bank clerk kept a reluctant customer answering “yes” to a series of reasonable questions until he happily completed the form he had refused, in the Socratic tradition of never telling anyone they are wrong.
Let the other person do a great deal of the talking. Let others talk themselves out, because they know more about their own affairs than you do, and interrupting to press your own ideas gets you nowhere. A man negotiating salary stayed largely silent and let the employer make the running, and came away with far more than he would have won by arguing.
Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers. People trust their own ideas far more than yours handed to them, so plant the seed and let them believe they thought of it. A car salesman who had failed by pushing switched to asking customers what they wanted in a car and letting them sell themselves, and his sales climbed; as Lao-tze noted, the sea rules the rivers because it lies below them.
Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view. There is always a reason the other person thinks and acts as they do, and finding it gives you the key to their actions. Ask yourself “how would I feel and react if I were in their shoes,” and you will save time and irritation.
Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires. The phrase “I don’t blame you one iota for feeling as you do; if I were you I would undoubtedly feel just as you do” will stop three-quarters of quarrels, because everyone hungers for sympathy. Impresario Sol Hurok managed the temperamental basso Chaliapin, who would call hours before a performance claiming he could not sing, by rushing over dripping with sympathy and mourning with him until the great singer talked himself back onto the stage.
Appeal to the nobler motives. People do things for two reasons, the real one and one that sounds good, and if you appeal to their better self they usually rise to meet the flattering estimate. An outlaw like Jesse James thought himself an idealist, and a credit manager collected “uncollectible” bills by assuming every customer was honest and fair, telling each one he trusted them to adjust their own bill, whereupon five of six paid in full.
Dramatize your ideas. In an age of showmanship merely stating a truth is not enough; you must make it vivid and dramatic to win attention. A salesman failing to land a cold-cream account walked in and dumped thirty-two jars of competitors’ creams on the buyer’s desk, each tagged with test results, and the dramatized facts held the man for a full hour where dry figures had failed.
Throw down a challenge. The way to get things done is to stimulate competition, not in a money-getting way but in the desire to excel. Charles Schwab revived a lagging mill by chalking the number of the day shift’s completed heats on the floor for the night shift to see, sparking a rivalry that soon made it the plant’s top producer.
Part Four: Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment
Begin with praise and honest appreciation. It is always easier to hear unpleasant things after some praise for our good points, the way a dentist begins with Novocain before the drill. President Coolidge softened a criticism of a secretary’s punctuation by first praising her pretty dress, and McKinley spared a speechwriter’s feelings by praising his “magnificent” speech before explaining, tactfully, why it had to be rewritten.
Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly. Indirect correction spares the pride of sensitive people who would resent a direct rebuke, and one small change, swapping “but” for “and,” works wonders. Instead of “we’re proud of your grades, but you must work harder,” say “we’re proud of your grades, and by keeping it up you’ll do even better,” and Schwab, finding men smoking under a No Smoking sign, handed each a cigar and asked them as a favor to smoke outside.
Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person. Admitting your own faults first, even ones you have already conquered, makes it far easier for someone to hear about theirs. Before correcting his young secretary Josephine, Carnegie reminded himself he had made far worse blunders at nineteen, and Prince von Bülow saved himself from the Kaiser’s fury only because he first humbled himself and exalted the Kaiser before offering any praise.
Ask questions instead of giving direct orders. Questions like “you might consider this” or “do you think that would work” save pride, invite cooperation, and let people learn from their own decisions. Owen D. Young never gave a direct order in his life, and a plant manager facing an impossible rush order simply asked his people what could be done, and they invented the solutions and insisted on taking the job.
Let the other person save face. Even when we are right and the other person clearly wrong, we destroy only ego by making them lose face, whereas a moment’s thought for their dignity would spare the sting. When General Electric needed to remove Steinmetz as head of a department, they made him “Consulting Engineer,” a new title for work he already did, and let their sensitive genius keep his pride; as Saint-Exupery wrote, hurting a person in their dignity is a crime.
Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be “hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.” Praise makes abilities blossom the way criticism makes them wither, so reward the smallest step forward the way an animal trainer rewards a dog with meat rather than a whip. A word of praise from a teacher or editor changed the whole future of Caruso, Dickens, and H.G. Wells, and the praise must be specific and sincere, never empty flattery.
Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to. Give someone a good name and they will strain to deserve it, acting as though the virtue you attribute to them is already theirs. A service manager told a slipping mechanic named Bill that he was still one of the best around and had merely fallen off lately, and Bill became a fast, thorough worker again to live up to the reputation.
Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct. Tell someone they are hopeless and you kill their incentive, but make the fault seem easy to fix and tell them you have faith in their ability, and they will practice until they excel. A discouraged middle-aged man kept dancing only because a teacher assured him he had “a natural sense of rhythm,” and Clarence Jones turned a boy written off as brain-damaged into an honor student with flash cards, a stopwatch, and celebration of every small gain.
Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest. Frame your request so the other person sees the benefit to themselves and feels genuinely glad to do what you ask. Colonel House gently told William Jennings Bryan he was “too important” to be sent as a mere peace emissary and left him satisfied, and Napoleon, mocked for handing out 15,000 crosses of the Legion of Honor, replied that “men are ruled by toys.”
Sources
- Book: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie