A FRIEND OF mine was a guest at the White House for a weekend during the administration of Calvin Coolidge. Drifting into the President’s private office, he heard Coolidge say to one of his secretaries, ‘That’s a very pretty dress you are wearing this morning, and you are a very attractive young woman.’
That was probably the most effusive praise Silent Cal had ever bestowed upon a secretary in his life. It was so unusual, so unexpected, that the secretary blushed in confusion. Then Coolidge said, ‘Now, don’t get stuck up. I just said that to make you feel good. From now on, I wish you would be a little more careful with your punctuation.’
His method was probably a bit obvious, but the psychology was superb. It is always easier to listen to unpleasant things after we have heard some praise of our good points.
A barber lathers a man before he shaves him; and that is precisely what McKinley did back in 1896, when he was running for President. One of the prominent Republicans of that day had written a campaign speech that he felt was just a trifle better than Cicero and Patrick Henry and Daniel Webster all rolled into one. With great glee, this chap read his immortal speech aloud to McKinley. The speech had its fine points, but it just wouldn’t do. McKinley didn’t want to hurt the man’s feelings. He must not kill the man’s splendid enthusiasm, and yet he had to say ‘no.’ Note how adroitly he did it.
‘My friend, that is a splendid speech, a magnificent speech,’ McKinley said. ‘No one could have prepared a better one. There are many occasions on which it would be precisely the right thing to say, but is it quite suitable to this particular occasion? Sound and sober as it is from your standpoint, I must consider its effect from the party’s standpoint. Now go home and write a speech along the lines I indicate, and send me a copy of it.’
He did just that. McKinley blue-penciled and helped him rewrite his second speech, and he became one of the effective speakers of the campaign.
Here is the second most famous letter that Abraham Lincoln ever wrote. (His most famous one was written to Mrs. Bixby, expressing his sorrow for the death of the five sons she had lost in battle.) Lincoln probably dashed this letter off in five minutes; yet it sold at public auction in 1926 for twelve thousand dollars, and that, by the way, was more money than Lincoln was able to save during half a century of hard work. The letter was written to General Joseph Hooker on April 26, 1863, during the darkest period of the Civil War. For eighteen months, Lincoln’s generals had been leading the Union Army from one tragic defeat to another. Nothing but futile, stupid human butchery. The nation was appalled. Thousands of soldiers had deserted from the army, and even the Republican members of the Senate had revolted and wanted to force Lincoln out of the White House. ‘We are now on the brink of destruction,’ Lincoln said. ‘It appears to me that even the Almighty is against us. I can hardly see a ray of hope.’ Such was the period of black sorrow and chaos out of which this letter came.
I am printing the letter here because it shows how Lincoln tried to change an obstreperous general when the very fate of the nation could have depended upon the general’s action.
This is perhaps the sharpest letter Abe Lincoln wrote after he became President; yet you will note that he praised General Hooker before he spoke of his grave faults.
Yes, they were grave faults, but Lincoln didn’t call them that. Lincoln was more conservative, more diplomatic. Lincoln wrote: ‘There are some things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you.’ Talk about tact! And diplomacy!
Here is the letter addressed to General Hooker:
I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac. Of course, I have done this upon what appears to me to be sufficient reasons, and yet I think it best for you to know that there are some things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you.
I believe you to be a brave and skillful soldier, which, of course, I like. I also believe you do not mix politics with your profession, in which you are right. You have confidence in yourself, which is a valuable if not an indispensable quality.
You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm. But I think that during General Burnside’s command of the army you have taken counsel of your ambition and thwarted him as much as you could, in which you did a great wrong to the country and to a most meritorious and honourable brother officer.
I have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the army and the Government needed a dictator. Of course, it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you command.
Only those generals who gain successes can set up as dictators. Mhat I now ask of you is military success and I will risk the dictatorship.
The Government will support you to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more nor less than it has done and will do for all commanders. I much fear that the spirit which you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticizing their commander and withholding confidence from him, will now turn upon you. I shall assist you, as far as I can, to put it down.
Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any good out of an army while such spirit prevails in it, and now beware of rashness. Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance, go forward and give us victories.
You are not a Coolidge, a McKinley or a Lincoln. You want to know whether this philosophy will operate for you in everyday business contacts. Will it? Let’s see. Let’s take the case of W.P. Gaw, of the Wark Company, Philadelphia.
The Wark Company had contracted to build and complete a large office building in Philadelphia by a certain specified date. Everything was going along well; the building was almost finished, when suddenly the subcontractor making the ornamental bronze work to go on the exterior of
this building declared that he couldn’t make delivery on schedule. What! An entire building held up! Heavy penalties! Distressing losses! All because of one man!
Long-distance telephone calls. Arguments! Heated conversations! All in vain. Then Mr. Gaw was sent to New York to beard the bronze lion in his den.
‘Do you know you are the only person in Brooklyn with your name?’ Mr. Gaw asked the president of the subcontracting firm shortly after they were introduced. The president was surprised. ‘No, I didn’t know that.’
‘Well,’ said Mr. Gaw, ‘when I got off the train this morning, I looked in the telephone book to get your address, and you’re the only person in the Brooklyn phone book with your name.’
‘I never knew that,’ the subcontractor said. He checked the phone book with interest. ‘Well, it’s an unusual name,’ he said proudly. ‘My family came from Holland and settled in New York almost two hundred years ago.’ He continued to talk about his family and his ancestors for several minutes. When he finished that, Mr. Gaw complimented him on how large a plant he had and compared it favourably with a number of similar plants he had visited. ‘It is one of the cleanest and neatest bronze factories I ever saw.’ said Gaw.
‘I’ve spent a lifetime building up this business,’ the subcontractor said, ‘and I am rather proud of it. Would you like to take a look around the factory?’
During this tour of inspection, Mr. Gaw complimented the other man on his system of fabrication and told him how and why it seemed superior to those of some of his competitors. Gaw commented on some unusual machines, and the subcontractor announced that he himself had invented those machines. He spent considerable time showing Gaw how they operated and the superior work they turned out. He insisted on taking his visitor to lunch. So far, mind you, not a word had been said about the real purpose of Gaw’s visit.
After lunch, the subcontractor said, ‘Now, to get down to business. Naturally, I know why you’re here. I didn’t expect that our meeting would be so enjoyable. You can go back to Philadelphia with my promise that your material will be fabricated and shipped, even if other orders have to be delayed.’
Mr. Gaw got everything that he wanted without even asking for it. The material arrived on time, and the building was completed on the day the completion contract specified.
Would this have happened had Mr. Gaw used the hammer-and-dynamite method generally employed on such occasions?
Dorothy Wrublewski, a branch manager of the Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, Federal Credit Union, reported to one of our classes how she was able to help one of her employees become more productive.
‘We recently hired a young lady as a teller trainee. Her contact with our customers was very good. She was accurate and efficient in handling individual transactions. The problem developed at the end of the day when it was time to balance out.
‘The head teller came to me and strongly suggested that I fire this woman. “She is holding up everyone else because she is so slow in balancing out. I’ve shown her over and over, but she can’t get it. She’s got to go.”
‘The next day I observed her working quickly and accurately when handling the normal everyday transactions, and she was very pleasant with our customers.
‘It didn’t take long to discover why she had trouble balancing out. After the office closed, I went over to talk with her. She was obviously nervous and upset. I praised her for being so friendly and outgoing with the customers and complimented her for the accuracy and speed used in that work. I then suggested we review the procedure we use in balancing the cash drawer. Once she realised I had confidence in her, she easily followed my suggestions and soon mastered this function. We have had no problems with her since then.’
Beginning with praise is like the dentist who begins his work with Novocain. The patient still gets a drilling, but the Novocain is pain-killing. A leader will use . . .
PRINCIPLE 1
Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
CHARLES SCHMAB MAS passing through one of his steel mills one day at noon when he came across some of his employees smoking. Immediately above their heads was a sign that said ‘No Smoking.’ Did Schwab point to the sign and say, ‘Can’t you read?’ Oh no, not Schwab. He walked over to the men, handed each one a cigar, and said, ‘I’ll appreciate it, boys, if you will smoke these on the outside.’ They knew that he knew that they had broken a rule – and they admired him because he said nothing about it and gave them a little present and made them feel important. Couldn’t keep from loving a man like that, could you?
John Wanamaker used the same technique. Wanamaker used to make a tour of his great store in Philadelphia every day. Once he saw a customer waiting at a counter. No one was paying the slightest attention to her. The salespeople? Oh, they were in a huddle at the far end of the counter laughing and talking among themselves. Wanamaker didn’t say a word. Quietly slipping behind the counter, he waited on the woman himself and then handed the purchase to the salespeople to be wrapped as he went on his way.
Public officials are often criticised for not being accessible to their constituents. They are busy people, and the fault sometimes lies in overprotective assistants who don’t want to overburden their bosses with too many visitors. Carl Langford, who has been mayor of Orlando, Florida, the home of Disney World, for many years, frequently admonished his staff to allow people to see him. He claimed he had an ‘open-door’ policy; yet the citizens of his community were blocked by secretaries and administrators when they called.
Finally the mayor found the solution. He removed the door from his office! His aides got the message, and the mayor has had a truly open
administration since the day his door was symbolically thrown away.
Simply changing one three-letter word can often spell the difference between failure and success in changing people without giving offence or arousing resentment.
Many people begin their criticism with sincere praise followed by the word ‘but’ and ending with a critical statement. For example, in trying to change a child’s careless attitude toward studies, we might say, ‘We’re really proud of you, Johnnie, for raising your grades this term. But if you had worked harder on your algebra, the results would have been better.’
In this case, Johnnie might feel encouraged until he heard the word ‘but.’ He might then question the sincerity of the original praise. To him, the praise seemed only to be a contrived lead-in to a critical inference of failure. Credibility would be strained, and we probably would not achieve our objectives of changing Johnnie’s attitude toward his studies.
This could be easily overcome by changing the word ‘but’ to ‘and.’ ‘We’re really proud of you, Johnnie, for raising your grades this term, and by continuing the same conscientious efforts next term, your algebra grade can be up with all the others.’
Now, Johnnie would accept the praise because there was no follow-up of an inference of failure. We have called his attention to the behaviour we wished to change indirectly, and the chances are he will try to live up to our expectations.
Calling attention to one’s mistakes indirectly works wonders with sensitive people who may resent bitterly any direct criticism. Marge Jacob of Woonsocket, Rhode Island, told one of our classes how she convinced some sloppy construction workers to clean up after themselves when they were building additions to her house.
For the first few days of the work, when Mrs. Jacob returned from her job, she noticed that the yard was strewn with the cut ends of lumber. She didn’t want to antagonise the builders, because they did excellent work. So after the workers had gone home, she and her children picked up and neatly piled all the lumber debris in a corner. The following morning she called the foreman to one side and said, ‘I’m really pleased with the way the front lawn was left last night; it is nice and clean and does not offend the neighbours.’ From that day forward the workers picked up and piled the
debris to one side, and the foreman came in each day seeking approval of the condition the lawn was left in after a day’s work.
One of the major areas of controversy between members of the army reserves and their regular army trainers is haircuts. The reservists consider themselves civilians (which they are most of the time) and resent having to cut their hair short.
Master Sergeant Harley Kaiser of the 542nd USAR School addressed himself to this problem when he was working with a group of reserve noncommissioned officers. As an old-time regular-army master sergeant, he might have been expected to yell at his troops and threaten them. Instead he chose to make his point indirectly.
‘Gentlemen,’ he started, ‘you are leaders. You will be most effective when you lead by example. You must be the example for your men to follow. You know what the army regulations say about haircuts. I am going to get my hair cut today, although it is still much shorter than some of yours. You look at yourself in the mirror, and if you feel you need a haircut to be a good example, we’ll arrange time for you to visit the post barbership.’
The result was predictable. Several of the candidates did look in the mirror and went to the barbershop that afternoon and received ‘regulation’ haircuts. Sergeant Kaiser commented the next morning that he already could see the development of leadership qualities in some of the members of the squad.
On March 8, 1887, the eloquent Henry Ward Beecher died. The following Sunday, Lyman Abbott was invited to speak in the pulpit left silent by Beecher’s passing. Eager to do his best, he wrote, rewrote and polished his sermon with the meticulous care of a Flaubert. Then he read it to his wife. It was poor – as most written speeches are. She might have said, if she had had less judgement, ‘Lyman, that is terrible. That’ll never do. You’ll put people to sleep. It reads like an encyclopedia. You ought to know better than that after all the years you have been preaching. For heaven’s sake, why don’t you talk like a human being? Why don’t you act natural? You’ll disgrace yourself if you ever read that stuff.’
That’s what she might have said. And, if she had, you know what would have happened. And she knew too. So, she merely remarked that it would make an excellent article for the North American Review. In other words,
she praised it and at the same time subtly suggested that it wouldn’t do as a speech. Lyman Abbott saw the point, tore up his carefully prepared manuscript and preached without even using notes.
An effective way to correct others’ mistakes is . . .
PRINCIPLE 2
Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.
MY NIECE, JOSEPHINE Carnegie, had come to New York to be my secretary. She was nineteen, had graduated from high school three years previously, and her business experience was a trifle more than zero. She became one of the most proficient secretaries west of Suez, but in the beginning, she was – well, susceptible to improvement. One day when I started to criticise her, I said to myself: ‘Just a minute, Dale Carnegie; just a minute. You are twice as old as Josephine. You have had ten thousand times as much business experience. How can you possibly expect her to have your viewpoint, your judgement, your initiative – mediocre though they may be? And just a minute, Dale, what were you doing at nineteen? Remember the asinine mistakes and blunders you made? Remember the time you did this . . . and that . . . ?’
After thinking the matter over, honestly and impartially, I concluded that Josephine’s batting average at nineteen was better than mine had been – and that, I’m sorry to confess, isn’t paying Josephine much of a compliment.
So after that, when I wanted to call Josephine’s attention to a mistake, I used to begin by saying, ‘You have made a mistake, Josephine, but the Lord knows, it’s no worse than many I have made. You were not born with judgement. That comes only with experience, and you are better than I was at your age. I have been guilty of so many stupid, silly things myself, I have very little inclination to criticise you or anyone. But don’t you think it would have been wiser if you had done so and so?’
It isn’t nearly so difficult to listen to a recital of your faults if the person criticising begins by humbly admitting that he, too, is far from impeccable.
E.G. Dillistone, an engineer in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada, was having problems with his new secretary. Letters he dictated were coming to his
desk for signature with two or three spelling mistakes per page. Mr. Dillistone reported how he handled this:
‘Like many engineers, I have not been noted for my excellent English or spelling. For years I have kept a little black thumb-index book for words I had trouble spelling. When it became apparent that merely pointing out the errors was not going to cause my secretary to do more proofreading and dictionary work, I resolved to take another approach. When the next letter came to my attention that had errors in it, I sat down with the typist and said:
‘“Somehow this word doesn’t look right. It’s one of the words I always have had trouble with. That’s the reason I started this spelling book of mine. [I opened the book to the appropriate page.] Yes, here it is. I’m very conscious of my spelling now because people do judge us by our letters and misspellings make us look less professional.”
‘I don’t know whether she copied my system or not, but since that conversation, her frequency of spelling errors has been significantly reduced.’
The polished Prince Bernhard von Bülow learned the sharp necessity of doing this back in 1909. Von Bülow was then the Imperial Chancellor of Germany, and on the throne sat Wilhelm II – Wilhelm, the haughty; Wilhelm, the arrogant; Wilhelm, the last of the German Kaisers, building an army and navy that he boasted could whip their weight in wildcats.
Then an astonishing thing happened. The Kaiser said things, incredible things, things that rocked the continent and started a series of explosions heard around the world. To make matters infinitely worse, the Kaiser made silly, egotistical, absurd announcements in public, he made them while he was a guest in England, and he gave his royal permission to have them printed in the Daily Telegraph. For example, he declared that he was the only German who felt friendly toward the English; that he was constructing a navy against the menace of Japan; that he, and he alone, had saved England from being humbled in the dust by Russia and France; that it had been his campaign plan that enabled England’s Lord Roberts to defeat the Boers in South Africa; and so on and on.
No other such amazing words had ever fallen from the lips of a European king in peacetime within a hundred years. The entire continent buzzed with the fury of a hornet’s nest. England was incensed. German
statesmen were aghast. And in the midst of all this consternation, the Kaiser became panicky and suggested to Prince von Bülow, the Imperial Chancellor, that he take the blame. Yes, he wanted von Bülow to announce that it was all his responsibility, that he had advised his monarch to say these incredible things.
‘But Your Majesty,’ von Bülow protested, ‘it seems to me utterly impossible that anybody either in Germany or England could suppose me capable of having advised Your Majesty to say any such thing.’
The moment those words were out of von Bülow’s mouth, he realised he had made a grave mistake. The Kaiser blew up.
‘You consider me a donkey,’ he shouted, ‘capable of blunders you yourself could never have committed!’
Von Bülow knew that he ought to have praised before he condemned; but since that was too late, he did the next best thing. He praised after he had criticised. And it worked a miracle.
‘I’m far from suggesting that,’ he answered respectfully. ‘Your Majesty surpasses me in many respects; not only, of course, in naval and military knowledge, but above all, in natural science. I have often listened in admiration when Your Majesty explained the barometer, or wireless telegraphy, or the Roentgen rays. I am shamefully ignorant of all branches of natural science, have no notion of chemistry or physics, and am quite incapable of explaining the simplest of natural phenomena. But,’ von Bülow continued, ‘in compensation, I possess some historical knowledge and perhaps certain qualities useful in politics, especially in diplomacy.’
The Kaiser beamed. Von Bülow had praised him. Von Bülow had exalted him and humbled himself. The Kaiser could forgive anything after that. ‘Haven’t I always told you,’ he exclaimed with enthusiasm, ‘that we complete one another famously? We should stick together, and we will!’
He shook hands with von Bülow, not once, but several times. And later in the day he waxed so enthusiastic that he exclaimed with doubled fists, ‘If anyone says anything to me against Prince von Bülow, I shall punch him in the nose.’
Von Bülow saved himself in time – but, canny diplomat that he was, he nevertheless had made one error: he should have begun by talking about his own shortcomings and Wilhelm’s superiority – not by intimating that the Kaiser was a half-wit in need of a guardian.
If a few sentences humbling oneself and praising the other party can turn a haughty, insulted Kaiser into a staunch friend, imagine what humility and praise can do for you and me in our daily contacts. Rightfully used, they will work veritable miracles in human relations.
Admitting one’s own mistakes – even when one hasn’t corrected them – can help convince somebody to change his behaviour. This was illustrated more recently by Clarence Zerhusen of Timonium, Maryland, when he discovered his fifteen-year-old son was experimenting with cigarettes.
‘Naturally, I didn’t want David to smoke,’ Mr. Zerhusen told us, ‘but his mother and I smoked cigarettes; we were giving him a bad example all the time. I explained to Dave how I started smoking at about his age and how the nicotine had gotten the best of me and now it was nearly impossible for me to stop. I reminded him how irritating my cough was and how he had been after me to give up cigarettes not many years before.
‘I didn’t exhort him to stop or make threats or warn him about their dangers. All I did was point out how I was hooked on cigarettes and what it had meant to me.
‘He thought about it for a while and decided he wouldn’t smoke until he had graduated from high school. As the years went by David never did start smoking and has no intention of ever doing so.
‘As a result of that conversation I made the decision to stop smoking cigarettes myself, and with the support of my family, I have succeeded.’
A good leader follows this principle:
PRINCIPLE 3
Talk about your own mistakes before criticising the other person.
I ONCE HAD the pleasure of dining with Miss Ida Tarbell, the dean of American biographers. When I told her I was writing this book, we began discussing this all-important subject of getting along with people, and she told me that while she was writing her biography of Owen D. Young, she interviewed a man who had sat for three years in the same office with Mr. Young. This man declared that during all that time he had never heard Owen D. Young give a direct order to anyone. He always gave suggestions, not orders. Owen D. Young never said, for example, ‘Do this or do that,’ or ‘Don’t do this or don’t do that.’ He would say, ‘You might consider this,’ or ‘Do you think that would work?’ Frequently he would say, after he had dictated a letter, ‘What do you think of this?’ In looking over a letter of one of his assistants, he would say, ‘Maybe if we were to phrase it this way it would be better.’ He always gave people the opportunity to do things themselves; he never told his assistants to do things; he let them do them, let them learn from their mistakes.
A technique like that makes it easy for a person to correct errors. A technique like that saves a person’s pride and gives him or her a feeling of importance. It encourages cooperation instead of rebellion.
Resentment caused by a brash order may last a long time – even if the order was given to correct an obviously bad situation. Dan Santarelli, a teacher at a vocational school in Wyoming, Pennsylvania, told one of our classes how one of his students had blocked the entrance way to one of the school’s shops by illegally parking his car in it. One of the other instructors stormed into the classroom and asked in an arrogant tone, ‘Whose car is blocking the driveway?’ When the student who owned the car responded, the instructor screamed: ‘Move that car and move it right now, or I’ll wrap a chain around it and drag it out of there.’
Now that student was wrong. The car should not have been parked there. But from that day on, not only did that student resent the instructor’s action, but all the students in the class did everything they could to give the instructor a hard time and make his job unpleasant.
How could he have handled it differently? If he had asked in a friendly way, ‘Whose car is in the driveway?’ and then suggested that if it were moved, other cars could get in and out, the student would have gladly moved it and neither he nor his classmates would have been upset and resentful.
Asking questions not only makes an order more palatable; it often stimulates the creativity of the persons whom you ask. People are more likely to accept an order if they have had a part in the decision that caused the order to be issued.
When Ian Macdonald of Johannesburg, South Africa, the general manager of a small manufacturing plant specialising in precision machine parts, had the opportunity to accept a very large order, he was convinced that he would not meet the promised delivery date. The work already scheduled in the shop and the short completion time needed for this order made it seem impossible for him to accept the order.
Instead of pushing his people to accelerate their work and rush the order through, he called everybody together, explained the situation to them, and told them how much it would mean to the company and to them if they could make it possible to produce the order on time. Then he started asking questions:
‘Is there anything we can do to handle this order?’
‘Can anyone think of different ways to process it through the shop that will make it possible to take the order?’
‘Is there any way to adjust our hours or personnel assignments that would help?’
The employees came up with many ideas and insisted that he take the order. They approached it with a ‘We can do it’ attitude, and the order was accepted, produced and delivered on time.
An effective leader will use . . .
PRINCIPLE 4
Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
YEARS AGO THE General Electric Company was faced with the delicate task of removing Charles Steinmetz from the head of a department. Steinmetz, a genius of the first magnitude when it came to electricity, was a failure as the head of the calculating department. Yet the company didn’t dare offend the man. He was indispensable – and highly sensitive. So they gave him a new title. They made him Consulting Engineer of the General Electric Company – a new title for work he was already doing – and let someone else head up the department.
Steinmetz was happy.
So were the officers of G.E. They had gently manoeuvred their most temperamental star, and they had done it without a storm – by letting him save face.
Letting one save face! How important, how vitally important that is! And how few of us ever stop to think of it! We ride roughshod over the feelings of others, getting our own way, finding fault, issuing threats, criticising a child or an employee in front of others, without even considering the hurt to the other person’s pride. Whereas a few minutes’ thought, a considerate word or two, a genuine understanding of the other person’s attitude, would go so far toward alleviating the sting!
Let’s remember that the next time we are faced with the distasteful necessity of discharging or reprimanding an employee.
‘Firing employees is not much fun. Getting fired is even less fun.’ (I’m quoting now from a letter written me by Marshall A. Granger, a certified public accountant.) ‘Our business is mostly seasonal. Therefore we have to let a lot of people go after the income tax rush is over.
‘It’s a byword in our profession that no one enjoys wielding the axe. Consequently, the custom has developed of getting it over as soon as possible, and usually in the following way: “Sit down, Mr. Smith. The
season’s over, and we don’t seem to see any more assignments for you. Of course, you understood you were only employed for the busy season anyhow, etc., etc.”
‘The effect on these people is one of disappointment and a feeling of being “let down.” Most of them are in the accounting field for life, and they retain no particular love for the firm that drops them so casually.
‘I recently decided to let our seasonal personnel go with a little more tact and consideration. So I call each one in only after carefully thinking over his or her work during the winter. And I’ve said something like this: “Mr. Smith, you’ve done a fine job (if he has). That time we sent you to Newark, you had a tough assignment. You were on the spot, but you came through with flying colours, and we want you to know the firm is proud of you. You’ve got the stuff – you’re going a long way, wherever you’re working. This firm believes in you, and is rooting for you, and we don’t want you to forget it.”
‘Effect? The people go away feeling a lot better about being fired. They don’t feel “let down.” They know if we had work for them, we’d keep them on. And when we need them again, they come to us with a keen personal affection.’
At one session of our course, two class members discussed the negative effects of faultfinding versus the positive effects of letting the other person save face.
Fred Clark of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, told of an incident that occurred in his company: ‘At one of our production meetings, a vice president was asking very pointed questions of one of our production supervisors regarding a production process. His tone of voice was aggressive and aimed at pointing out faulty performance on the part of the supervisor. Not wanting to be embarrassed in front of his peers, the supervisor was evasive in his responses. This caused the vice president to lose his temper, berate the supervisor and accuse him of lying.
‘Any working relationship that might have existed prior to this encounter was destroyed in a few brief moments. This supervisor, who was basically a good worker, was useless to our company from that time on. A few months later he left our firm and went to work for a competitor, where I understand he is doing a fine job.’
Another class member, Anna Mazzone, related how a similar incident had occurred at her job – but what a difference in approach and results! Ms. Mazzone, a marketing specialist for a food packer, was given her first major assignment – the testmarketing of a new product. She told the class: ‘When the results of the test came in, I was devastated. I had made a serious error in my planning, and the entire test had to be done all over again. To make this worse, I had no time to discuss it with my boss before the meeting in which I was to make my report on the project.
‘When I was called on to give the report, I was shaking with fright. I had all I could do to keep from breaking down, but I resolved I would not cry and have all those men make remarks about women not being able to handle a management job because they are too emotional. I made my report briefly and stated that due to an error I would repeat the study before the next meeting. I sat down, expecting my boss to blow up.
‘Instead, he thanked me for my work and remarked that it was not unusual for a person to make an error on a new project and that he had confidence that the repeat survey would be accurate and meaningful to the company. He assured me, in front of all my colleagues, that he had faith in me and knew I had done my best, and that my lack of experience, not my lack of ability, was the reason for the failure.
‘I left that meeting with my head up in the air and with the determination that I would never let that boss of mine down again.’
Even if we are right and the other person is definitely wrong, we only destroy ego by causing someone to lose face. The legendary French aviation pioneer and author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote: ‘I have no right to say or do anything that diminishes a man in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him, but what he thinks of himself. Hurting a man in his dignity is a crime.’
A real leader will always follow . . .
PRINCIPLE 5
Let the other person save face.
PETE BARLOM MAS an old friend of mine. He had a dog-and-pony act and spent his life travelling with circuses and vaudeville shows. I loved to watch Pete train new dogs for his act. I noticed that the moment a dog showed the slightest improvement, Pete patted and praised him and gave him meat and made a great to-do about it.
That’s nothing new. Animal trainers have been using that same technique for centuries.
Why, I wonder, don’t we use the same common sense when trying to change people that we use when trying to change dogs? Why don’t we use meat instead of a whip? Why don’t we use praise instead of condemnation? Let us praise even the slightest improvement. That inspires the other person to keep on improving.
In his book I Ain’t Much, Baby – But I’m All I Got, the psychologist Jess Lair comments: ‘Praise is like sunlight to the warm human spirit; we cannot flower and grow without it. And yet, while most of us are only too ready to apply to others the cold wind of criticism, we are somehow reluctant to give our fellow the warm sunshine of praise.’
I can look back at my own life and see where a few words of praise have sharply changed my entire future. Can’t you say the same thing about your life? History is replete with striking illustrations of the sheer witchery of praise.
For example, many years ago a boy of ten was working in a factory in Naples. He longed to be a singer, but his first teacher discouraged him. ‘You can’t sing,’ he said. ‘You haven’t any voice at all. It sounds like the wind in the shutters.’
But his mother, a poor peasant woman, put her arms about him and praised him and told him she knew he could sing, she could already see an improvement, and she went barefoot in order to save money to pay for his
music lessons. That peasant mother’s praise and encouragement changed that boy’s life. His name was Enrico Caruso, and he became the greatest and most famous opera singer of his age.
In the early nineteenth century, a young man in London aspired to be a writer. But everything seemed to be against him. He had never been able to attend school more than four years. His father had been flung in jail because he couldn’t pay his debts, and this young man often knew the pangs of hunger. Finally, he got a job pasting labels on bottles of blacking in a rat- infested warehouse, and he slept at night in a dismal attic room with two other boys – guttersnipes from the slums of London. He had so little confidence in his ability to write that he sneaked out and mailed his first manuscript in the dead of night so nobody would laugh at him. Story after story was refused. Finally the great day came when one was accepted. True, he wasn’t paid a shilling for it, but one editor had praised him. One editor had given him recognition. He was so thrilled that he wandered aimlessly around the streets with tears rolling down his cheeks.
The praise, the recognition, that he received through getting one story in print, changed his whole life, for if it hadn’t been for that encouragement, he might have spent his entire life working in rat-infested factories. You may have heard of that boy. His name was Charles Dickens.
Another boy in London made his living as a clerk in a dry-goods store. He had to get up at five o’clock, sweep out the store, and slave for fourteen hours a day. It was sheer drudgery and he despised it. After two years, he could stand it no longer, so he got up one morning and, without waiting for breakfast, tramped fifteen miles to talk to his mother, who was working as a housekeeper.
He was frantic. He pleaded with her. He wept. He swore he would kill himself if he had to remain in the shop any longer. Then he wrote a long, pathetic letter to his old schoolmaster, declaring that he was heartbroken, that he no longer wanted to live. His old schoolmaster gave him a little praise and assured him that he really was very intelligent and fitted for finer things and offered him a job as a teacher.
That praise changed the future of that boy and made a lasting impression on the history of English literature. For that boy went on to write innumerable best-selling books and made over a million dollars with his pen. You’ve probably heard of him. His name: H.G. Wells.
Use of praise instead of criticism is the basic concept of B.F. Skinner’s teachings. This great contemporary psychologist has shown by experiments with animals and with humans that when criticism is minimised and praise emphasised, the good things people do will be reinforced and the poorer things will atrophy for lack of attention.
John Ringelspaugh of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, used this in dealing with his children. It seemed that, as in so many families, mother and dad’s chief form of communication with the children was yelling at them. And, as in so many cases, the children became a little worse rather than better after each such session – and so did the parents. There seemed to be no end in sight for this problem.
Mr. Ringelspaugh determined to use some of the principles he was learning in our course to solve this situation. He reported: ‘We decided to try praise instead of harping on their faults. It wasn’t easy when all we could see were the negative things they were doing; it was really tough to find things to praise. We managed to find something, and within the first day or two some of the really upsetting things they were doing quit happening. Then some of their other faults began to disappear. They began capitalising on the praise we were giving them. They even began going out of their way to do things right. Neither of us could believe it. Of course, it didn’t last forever, but the norm reached after things levelled off was so much better. It was no longer necessary to react the way we used to. The children were doing far more right things than wrong ones.’ All of this was a result of praising the slightest improvement in the children rather than condemning everything they did wrong.
This works on the job too. Keith Roper of Woodland Hills, California, applied this principle to a situation in his company. Some material came to him in his print shop which was of exceptionally high quality. The printer who had done this job was a new employee who had been having difficulty adjusting to the job. His supervisor was upset about what he considered a negative attitude and was seriously thinking of terminating his services.
When Mr. Roper was informed of this situation, he personally went over to the print shop and had a talk with the young man. He told him how pleased he was with the work he had just received and pointed out it was the best work he had seen produced in that shop for some time. He pointed
out exactly why it was superior and how important the young man’s contribution was to the company.
Do you think this affected that young printer’s attitude toward the company? Within days there was a complete turn-about. He told several of his co-workers about the conversation and how someone in the company really appreciated good work. And from that day on, he was a loyal and dedicated worker.
What Mr. Roper did was not just flatter the young printer and say ‘You’re good.’ He specifically pointed out how his work was superior. Because he had singled out a specific accomplishment, rather than just making general flattering remarks, his praise became much more meaningful to the person to whom it was given. Everybody likes to be praised, but when praise is specific, it comes across as sincere – not something the other person may be saying just to make one feel good.
Remember, we all crave appreciation and recognition, and will do almost anything to get it. But nobody wants insincerity. Nobody wants flattery.
Let me repeat: The principles taught in this book will work only when they come from the heart. I am not advocating a bag of tricks. I am talking about a new way of life.
Talking about changing people. If you and I will inspire the people with whom we come in contact to a realisation of the hidden treasures they possess, we can do far more than change people. We can literally transform them.
Exaggeration? Then listen to these sage words from William James, one of the most distinguished psychologists and philosophers America has ever produced:
Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Me are making use of only a small part of our physical and mental resources. Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives far within his limits. He possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use.
Yes, you who are reading these lines possess powers of various sorts which you habitually fail to use; and one of these powers you are probably not
using to the fullest extent is your magic ability to praise people and inspire them with a realisation of their latent possibilities.
Abilities wither under criticism; they blossom under encouragement. To become a more effective leader of people, apply . . .
PRINCIPLE 6
Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be ‘hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.’
1. Jess Lair, I Ain’t Much, Baby – But I’m All I Got (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett, 1976), p. 248.
MHAT DO YOU do when a person who has been a good worker begins to turn in shoddy work? You can fire him or her, but that really doesn’t solve anything. You can berate the worker, but this usually causes resentment. Henry Henke, a service manager for a large truck dealership in Lowell, Indiana, had a mechanic whose work had become less than satisfactory. Instead of bawling him out or threatening him, Mr. Henke called him into his office and had a heart-to-heart talk with him.
‘Bill,’ he said, ‘you are a fine mechanic. You have been in this line of work for a good number of years. You have repaired many vehicles to the customers’ satisfaction. In fact, we’ve had a number of compliments about the good work you have done. Yet, of late, the time you take to complete each job has been increasing and your work has not been up to your own old standards. Because you have been such an outstanding mechanic in the past, I felt sure you would want to know that I am not happy with this situation, and perhaps jointly we could find some way to correct the problem.’
Bill responded that he hadn’t realised he had been falling down in his duties and assured his boss that the work he was getting was not out of his range of expertise and he would try to improve in the future.
Did he do it? You can be sure he did. He once again became a fast and thorough mechanic. With that reputation Mr. Henke had given him to live up to, how could he do anything else but turn out work comparable to that which he had done in the past.
‘The average person,’ said Samuel Vauclain, then president of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, ‘can be led readily if you have his or her respect and if you show that you respect that person for some kind of ability.’
In short, if you want to improve a person in a certain respect, act as though that particular trait were already one of his or her outstanding characteristics. Shakespeare said ‘Assume a virtue, if you have it not.’ And
it might be well to assume and state openly that other people have the virtue you want them to develop. Give them a fine reputation to live up to, and they will make prodigious efforts rather than see you disillusioned.
Georgette Leblanc, in her book Souvenirs, My life with Maeterlinck, describes the startling transformation of a humble Belgian Cinderella.
‘A servant girl from a neighbouring hotel brought my meals,’ she wrote. ‘She was called “Marie the Dishwasher” because she had started her career as a scullery assistant. She was a kind of monster, cross-eyed, bandy- legged, poor in flesh and spirit.
‘One day, while she was holding my plate of macaroni in her red hand, I said to her point-blank, “Marie, you do not know what treasures are within you.”
‘Accustomed to holding back her emotion, Marie waited for a few moments, not daring to risk the slightest gesture for fear of a catastrophe. Then she put the dish on the table, sighed and said ingenuously, “Madame, I would never have believed it.” She did not doubt, she did not ask a question. She simply went back to the kitchen and repeated what I had said, and such is the force of faith that no one made fun of her. From that day on, she was even given a certain consideration. But the most curious change of all occurred in the humble Marie herself. Believing she was the tabernacle of unseen marvels, she began taking care of her face and body so carefully that her starved youth seemed to bloom and modestly hide her plainness.
‘Two months later, she announced her coming marriage with the nephew of the chef. “I’m going to be a lady,” she said, and thanked me. A small phrase had changed her entire life.’
Georgette Leblanc had given ‘Marie the Dishwasher’ a reputation to live up to – and that reputation had transformed her.
Bill Parker, a sales representative for a food company in Daytona Beach, Florida, was very excited about the new line of products his company was introducing and was upset when the manager of a large independent food market turned down the opportunity to carry it in his store. Bill brooded all day over this rejection and decided to return to the store before he went home that evening and try again.
‘Jack,’ he said, ‘since I left this morning I realised I hadn’t given you the entire picture of our new line, and I would appreciate some of your time to tell you about the points I omitted. I have respected the fact that you are
always willing to listen and are big enough to change your mind when the facts warrant a change.’
Could Jack refuse to give him another hearing? Not with that reputation to live up to.
One morning Dr. Martin Fitzhugh, a dentist in Dublin, Ireland, was shocked when one of his patients pointed out to him that the metal cup holder which she was using to rinse her mouth was not very clean. True, the patient drank from the paper cup, not the holder, but it certainly was not professional to use tarnished equipment.
When the patient left, Dr. Fitzhugh retreated to his private office to write a note to Bridgit, the charwoman, who came twice a week to clean his office. He wrote:
My dear Bridgit,
I see you so seldom, I thought I’d take the time to thank you for the fine job of cleaning you’ve been doing. By the way, I thought I’d mention that since two hours, twice a week, is a very limited amount of time, please feel free to work an extra half hour from time to time if you feel you need to do those ‘once-in-a-while’ things like polishing the cup holders and the like. I, of course, will pay you for the extra time.
‘The next day, when I walked into my office,’ Dr. Fitzhugh reported, ‘my desk had been polished to a mirror-like finish, as had my chair, which I nearly slid out of. When I went into the treatment room I found the shiniest, cleanest chrome-plated cup holder I had ever seen nestled in its receptacle. I had given my charwoman a fine reputation to live up to, and because of this small gesture she outperformed all her past efforts. How much additional time did she spend on this? That’s right – none at all.’
There is an old saying: ‘Give a dog a bad name and you may as well hang him.’ But give him a good name – and see what happens!
When Mrs. Ruth Hopkins, a fourth-grade teacher in Brooklyn, New York, looked at her class roster the first day of school, her excitement and joy of starting a new term was tinged with anxiety. In her class this year she would have Tommy T., the school’s most notorious ‘bad boy.’ His third- grade teacher had constantly complained about Tommy to colleagues, the
principal and anyone else who would listen. He was not just mischievous; he caused serious discipline problems in the class, picked fights with the boys, teased the girls, was fresh to the teacher, and seemed to get worse as he grew older. His only redeeming feature was his ability to learn rapidly and master the school work easily.
Mrs. Hopkins decided to face the ‘Tommy problem’ immediately. When she greeted her new students, she made little comments to each of them: ‘Rose, that’s a pretty dress you are wearing,’ ‘Alicia, I hear you draw beautifully.’ When she came to Tommy, she looked him straight in the eyes and said, ‘Tommy, I understand you are a natural leader. I’m going to depend on you to help me make this class the best class in the fourth grade this year.’ She reinforced this over the first few days by complimenting Tommy on everything he did and commenting on how this showed what a good student he was. With that reputation to live up to, even a nine-year-old couldn’t let her down – and he didn’t.
If you want to excel in that difficult leadership role of changing the attitude or behaviour of others, use . . .
PRINCIPLE 7
Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
A BACHELOR FRIEND of mine, about forty years old, became engaged, and his fiancée persuaded him to take some belated dancing lessons. ‘The Lord knows I needed dancing lessons,’ he confessed as he told me the story, ‘for I danced just as I did when I first started twenty years ago. The first teacher I engaged probably told me the truth. She said I was all wrong; I would just have to forget everything and begin all over again. But that took the heart out of me. I had no incentive to go on. So I quit her.
‘The next teacher may have been lying, but I liked it. She said nonchalantly that my dancing was a bit old-fashioned perhaps, but the fundamentals were all right, and she assured me I wouldn’t have any trouble learning a few new steps. The first teacher had discouraged me by emphasising my mistakes. This new teacher did the opposite. She kept praising the things I did right and minimising my errors. “You have a natural sense of rhythm,” she assured me. “You really are a natural-born dancer.” Now my common sense tells me that I always have been and always will be a fourth-rate dancer; yet, deep in my heart, I still like to think that maybe she meant it. To be sure, I was paying her to say it; but why bring that up?
‘At any rate, I know I am a better dancer than I would have been if she hadn’t told me I had a natural sense of rhythm. That encouraged me. That gave me hope. That made me want to improve.’
Tell your child, your spouse, or your employee that he or she is stupid or dumb at a certain thing, has no gift for it, and is doing it all wrong, and you have destroyed almost every incentive to try to improve. But use the opposite technique – be liberal with your encouragement, make the thing seem easy to do, let the other person know that you have faith in his ability to do it, that he has an undeveloped flair for it – and he will practise until the dawn comes in the window in order to excel.
Lowell Thomas, a superb artist in human relations, used this technique. He gave you confidence, inspired you with courage and faith. For example, I spent a weekend with Mr. and Mrs. Thomas; and on Saturday night, I was asked to sit in on a friendly bridge game before a roaring fire. Bridge? Oh, no! No! Not me. I knew nothing about it. The game had always been a black mystery to me. No! No! Impossible!
‘Why, Dale, it is no trick at all,’ Lowell replied. ‘There is nothing to bridge except memory and judgement. You’ve written articles on memory. Bridge will be a cinch for you. It’s right up your alley.’
And presto, almost before I realised what I was doing, I found myself for the first time at a bridge table. All because I was told I had a natural flair for it and the game was made to seem easy.
Speaking of bridge reminds me of Ely Culbertson, whose books on bridge have been translated into a dozen languages and have sold more than a million copies. Yet he told me he never would have made a profession out of the game if a certain young woman hadn’t assured him he had a flair for it.
When he came to America in 1922, he tried to get a job teaching in philosophy and sociology, but he couldn’t.
Then he tried selling coal, and he failed at that.
Then he tried selling coffee, and he failed at that, too.
He had played some bridge, but it had never occurred to him in those days that someday he would teach it. He was not only a poor card player, but he was also very stubborn. He asked so many questions and held so many post-mortem examinations that no one wanted to play with him.
Then he met a pretty bridge teacher, Josephine Dillon, fell in love and married her. She noticed how carefully he analysed his cards and persuaded him that he was a potential genius at the card table. It was that encouragement and that alone, Culbertson told me, that caused him to make a profession of bridge.
Clarence M. Jones, one of the instructors of our course in Cincinnati, Ohio, told how encouragement and making faults seem easy to correct completely changed the life of his son.
‘In 1970 my son David, who was then fifteen years old, came to live with me in Cincinnati. He had led a rough life. In 1958 his head was cut open in a car accident, leaving a very bad scar on his forehead. In 1960 his
mother and I were divorced and he moved to Dallas, Texas, with his mother. Until he was fifteen he had spent most of his school years in special classes for slow learners in the Dallas school system. Possibly because of the scar, school administrators had decided he was brain-injured and could not function at a normal level. He was two years behind his age group, so he was only in the seventh grade. Yet he did not know his multiplication tables, added on his fingers and could barely read.
‘There was one positive point. He loved to work on radio and TV sets. He wanted to become a TV technician. I encouraged this and pointed out that he needed maths to qualify for the training. I decided to help him become proficient in this subject. We obtained four sets of flash cards: multiplication, division, addition and subtraction. As we went through the cards, we put the correct answers in a discard stack. When David missed one, I gave him the correct answer and then put the card in the repeat stack until there were no cards left. I made a big deal out of each card he got right, particularly if he had missed it previously. Each night we would go through the repeat stack until there were no cards left. Each night we timed the exercise with a stop watch. I promised him that when he could get all the cards correct in eight minutes with no incorrect answers, we would quit doing it every night. This seemed an impossible goal to David. The first night it took 52 minutes, the second night, 48, then 45, 44, 41, then under 40 minutes. We celebrated each reduction. I’d call in my wife, and we would both hug him and we’d all dance a jig. At the end of the month he was doing all the cards perfectly in less than eight minutes. When he made a small improvement he would ask to do it again. He had made the fantastic discovery that learning was easy and fun.
‘Naturally his grades in algebra took a jump. It is amazing how much easier algebra is when you can multiply. He astonished himself by bringing home a B in maths. That had never happened before. Other changes came with almost unbelievable rapidity. His reading improved rapidly, and he began to use his natural talents in drawing. Later in the school year his science teacher assigned him to develop an exhibit. He chose to develop a highly complex series of models to demonstrate the effect of levers. It required skill not only in drawing and model making but in applied mathematics. The exhibit took first prize in his school’s science fair and
was entered in the city competition and won third prize for the entire city of Cincinnati.
‘That did it. Here was a kid who had flunked two grades, who had been told he was “brain-damaged,” who had been called “Frankenstein” by his classmates and told his brains must have leaked out of the cut on his head. Suddenly he discovered he could really learn and accomplish things. The result? From the last quarter of the eighth grade all the way through high school, he never failed to make the honour roll; in high school he was elected to the national honour society. Once he found learning was easy, his whole life changed.’
If you want to help others to improve, remember . . .
PRINCIPLE 8
Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
BACK IN 1915, America was aghast. For more than a year, the nations of Europe had been slaughtering one another on a scale never before dreamed of in all the bloody annals of mankind. Could peace be brought about? No one knew. But Woodrow Wilson was determined to try. He would send a personal representative, a peace emissary, to counsel with the warlords of Europe.
William Jennings Bryan, secretary of state, Bryan, the peace advocate, longed to go. He saw a chance to perform a great service and make his name immortal. But Wilson appointed another man, his intimate friend and adviser Colonel Edward M. House; and it was House’s thorny task to break the unwelcome news to Bryan without giving him offence.
‘Bryan was distinctly disappointed when he heard I was to go to Europe as the peace emissary,’ Colonel House records in his diary. ‘He said he had planned to do this himself . . .
‘I replied that the President thought it would be unwise for anyone to do this officially, and that his going would attract a great deal of attention and people would wonder why he was there . . .’
You see the intimation? House practically told Bryan that he was too important for the job – and Bryan was satisfied.
Colonel House, adroit, experienced in the ways of the world, was following one of the important rules of human relations: Always make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.
Woodrow Wilson followed that policy even when inviting William Gibbs McAdoo to become a member of his cabinet. That was the highest honour he could confer upon anyone, and yet Wilson extended the invitation in such a way as to make McAdoo feel doubly important. Here is the story in McAdoo’s own words: ‘He [Wilson] said that he was making up his cabinet and that he would be very glad if I would accept a place in it
as Secretary of the Treasury. He had a delightful way of putting things; he created the impression that by accepting this great honour I would be doing him a favour.’
Unfortunately, Wilson didn’t always employ such tact. If he had, history might have been different. For example, Wilson didn’t make the Senate and the Republican Party happy by entering the United States in the League of Nations. Wilson refused to take such prominent Republican leaders as Elihu Root or Charles Evans Hughes or Henry Cabot Lodge to the peace conference with him. Instead, he took along unknown men from his own party. He snubbed the Republicans, refused to let them feel that the League was their idea as well as his, refused to let them have a finger in the pie; and, as a result of this crude handling of human relations, wrecked his own career, ruined his health, shortened his life, caused America to stay out of the League, and altered the history of the world.
Statesmen and diplomats aren’t the only ones who use this make-a- person-happy-to-do-things-you-want-them-to-do-approach. Dale O. Ferrier of Fort Wayne, Indiana, told how he encouraged one of his young children to willingly do the chore he was assigned.
‘One of Jeff’s chores was to pick up pears from under the pear tree so the person who was mowing underneath wouldn’t have to stop to pick them up. He didn’t like this chore, and frequently it was either not done at all or it was done so poorly that the mower had to stop and pick up several pears that he had missed. Rather than have an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation about it, one day I said to him: “Jeff, I’ll make a deal with you. For every bushel basket full of pears you pick up, I’ll pay you one dollar. But after you are finished, for every pear I find left in the yard, I’ll take away a dollar. How does that sound?” As you would expect, he not only picked up all of the pears, but I had to keep an eye on him to see that he didn’t pull a few off the trees to fill up some of the baskets.’
I knew a man who had to refuse many invitations to speak, invitations extended by friends, invitations coming from people to whom he was obligated; and yet he did it so adroitly that the other person was at least contented with his refusal. How did he do it? Not by merely talking about the fact that he was too busy and too-this and too-that. No, after expressing his appreciation of the invitation and regretting his inability to accept it, he suggested a substitute speaker. In other words, he didn’t give the other
person any time to feel unhappy about the refusal. He immediately changed the other person’s thoughts to some other speaker who could accept the invitation.
Gunter Schmidt, who took our course in West Germany, told of an employee in the food store he managed who was negligent about putting the proper price tags on the shelves where the items were displayed. This caused confusion and customer complaints. Reminders, admonitions, confrontations with her about this did not do much good. Finally, Mr. Schmidt called her into his office and told her he was appointing her Supervisor of Price Tag Posting for the entire store and she would be responsible for keeping all of the shelves properly tagged. This new responsibility and title changed her attitude completely, and she fulfilled her duties satisfactorily from then on.
Childish? Perhaps. But that is what they said to Napoleon when he created the Legion of Honour and distributed 15,000 crosses to his soldiers and made eighteen of his generals ‘Marshals of France’ and called his troops the ‘Grand Army.’ Napoleon was criticised for giving ‘toys’ to war- hardened veterans, and Napoleon replied, ‘Men are ruled by toys.’
This technique of giving titles and authority worked for Napoleon and it will work for you. For example, a friend of mine, Mrs. Ernest Gent of Scarsdale, New York, was troubled by boys running across and destroying her lawn. She tried coaxing. Neither worked. Then she tried giving the worst sinner in the gang a title and a feeling of authority. She made him her ‘detective’ and put him in charge of keeping all trespassers off her lawn. That solved her problem. Her ‘detective’ built a bonfire in the backyard, heated an iron red hot, and threatened to brand any boy who stepped on the lawn.
The effective leader should keep the following guidelines in mind when it is necessary to change attitudes or behaviour:
-
Be sincere. Do not promise anything that you cannot deliver. Forget about the benefits to yourself and concentrate on the benefits to the other person.
-
Know exactly what it is you want the other person to do.
3. Be empathetic. Ask yourself what is it the other person really wants.
-
Consider the benefits that person will receive from doing what you suggest.
-
Match those benefits to the other person’s wants.
6. When you make your request, put it in a form that will convey to the other person the idea that he personally will benefit. We could give a curt order like this: ’John, we have customers coming in tomorrow and I need the stockroom cleaned out. So sweep it out, put the stock in neat piles on the shelves and polish the counter.’ Or we could express the same idea by showing John the benefits he will get from doing the task: ’John, we have a job that should be completed right away. If it is done now, we won’t be faced with it later. I am bringing some customers in tomorrow to show our facilities. I would like to show them the stock- room, but it is in poor shape. If you could sweep it out, put the stock in neat piles on the shelves, and polish the counter, it would make us look efficient and you will have done your part to provide a good company image.’
Will John be happy about doing what you suggest? Probably not very happy, but happier than if you had not pointed out the benefits. Assuming you know that John has pride in the way his stockroom looks and is interested in contributing to the company image, he will be more likely to be cooperative. It also will have been pointed out to John that the job would have to be done eventually and by doing it now, he won’t be faced with it later.
It is naïve to believe you will always get a favourable reaction from other persons when you use these approaches, but the experience of most people shows that you are more likely to change attitudes this way than by not using these principles – and if you increase your successes by even a mere 10 percent, you have become 10 percent more effective as a leader than you were before – and that is your benefit.
People are more likely to do what you would like them to do when you use …
PRINCIPLE 9
Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.
IN A NUTSHELL BE A LEADER
A leader’s job often includes changing your people’s attitudes and behaviour. Some suggestions to accomplish this:
PRINCIPLE 1
Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
PRINCIPLE 2
Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.
PRINCIPLE 3
Talk about your own mistakes before criticising the other person.
PRINCIPLE 4
Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
PRINCIPLE 5
Let the other person save face.
PRINCIPLE 6
Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be ‘hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.’
PRINCIPLE 7
Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
PRINCIPLE 8
Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
PRINCIPLE 9
Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.
This biographical information about Dale Carnegie was written as an introduction to the original edition of How to Win Friends and Influence People. It is reprinted in this edition to give the readers additional background on Dale Carnegie.
It was a cold January night in 1935, but the weather couldn’t keep them away. Two thousand five hundred men and women thronged into the grand ballroom of the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York. Every available seat was filled by half-past seven. At eight o’clock, the eager crowd was still pouring in. The spacious balcony was soon jammed. Presently even standing space was at a premium, and hundreds of people, tired after navigating a day in business, stood up for an hour and a half that night to witness – what?
A fashion show?
A six-day bicycle race or a personal appearance by Clark Gable?
No. These people had been lured there by a newspaper ad. Two evenings previously, they had seen this full-page announcement in the New York Sun staring them in the face:
Learn to Speak Effectively Prepare for Leadership
Old stuff? Yes, but believe it or not, in the most sophisticated town on earth, during a depression with 20 percent of the population on relief, twenty-five hundred people had left their homes and hustled to the hotel in response to that ad. The people who responded were of the upper economic strata – executives, employers and professionals.
These men and women had come to hear the opening gun of an ultramodern, ultrapractical course in ‘Effective Speaking and Influencing Men in Business’ – a course given by the Dale Carnegie Institute of Effective Speaking and Human Relations.
Why were they there, these twenty-five hundred business men and women?
Because of a sudden hunger for more education because of the depression?
Apparently not, for this same course had been playing to packed houses in New York City every season for the preceding twenty-four years. During that time, more than fifteen thousand business and professional people had been trained by Dale Carnegie. Even large, sceptical, conservative organisations such as the Westinghouse Electric Company, the McGraw- Hill Publishing Company, the Brooklyn Union Gas Company, the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and the New York Telephone Company have had this training conducted in their own offices for the benefit of their members and executives.
The fact that these people, ten or twenty years after leaving grade school, high school or college, come and take this training is a glaring commentary on the shocking deficiencies of our educational system.
What do adults really want to study? That is an important question; and, in order to answer it, the University of Chicago, the American Association for Adult Education, and the United Y.M.C.A. Schools made a survey over a two-year period.
That survey revealed that the prime interest of adults is health. It also revealed that their second interest is in developing skill in human relationships – they want to learn the technique of getting along with and influencing other people. They don’t want to listen to a lot of high-sounding talk about psychology; they want suggestions they can use immediately in business, in social contacts and in the home.
So that was what adults wanted to study, was it?
‘All right,’ said the people making the survey. ‘Fine. If that is what they want, we’ll give it to them.’
Looking round for a textbook, they discovered that no working manual had ever been written to help people solve their daily problems in human relationships.
Here was a fine kettle of fish! For hundreds of years, learned volumes had been written on Greek and Latin and higher mathematics – topics about which the average adult doesn’t give two hoots. But on the one subject on
which he has a thirst for knowledge, a veritable passion for guidance and help – nothing!
This explained the presence of twenty-five hundred eager adults crowding into the grand ballroom of the Hotel Pennsylvania in response to a newspaper advertisement. Here, apparently, at last was the thing for which they had long been seeking.
Back in high school and college, they had pored over books, believing that knowledge alone was the open sesame to financial and professional rewards.
But a few years in the rough-and-tumble of business and professional life had brought sharp disillusionment. They had seen some of the most important business successes won by men who possessed, in addition to their knowledge, the ability to talk well, to win people to their way of thinking, and to ‘sell’ themselves and their ideas.
They soon discovered that if one aspired to wear the captain’s cap and navigate the ship of business, personality and the ability to talk are more important than a knowledge of Latin verbs or a sheepskin from Harvard.
The advertisement in the New York Sun promised that the meeting would be highly entertaining. It was.
Eighteen people who had taken the course were marshalled in front of the loudspeaker – and fifteen of them were given precisely seventy-five seconds each to tell his or her story. Only seventy-five seconds of talk, then ‘bang’ went the gavel, and the chairman shouted, ‘Time! Next speaker!’
The affair moved with the speed of a herd of buffalo thundering across the plains. Spectators stood for an hour and a half to watch the performance. The speakers were a cross section of life: several sales representatives, a chain store executive, a baker, the president of a trade association, two bankers, an insurance agent, an accountant, a dentist, an architect, a druggist who had come from Indianapolis to New York to take the course, a lawyer who had come from Havana in order to prepare himself to give one
important three-minute speech.
The first speaker bore the Gaelic name Patrick J. O’Haire. Born in Ireland, he attended school for only four years, drifted to America, worked as a mechanic, then as a chauffeur.
Now, however, he was forty, he had a growing family and needed more money, so he tried selling trucks. Suffering from an inferiority complex
that, as he put it, was eating his heart out, he had to walk up and down in front of an office half a dozen times before he could summon up enough courage to open the door. He was so discouraged as a salesman that he was thinking of going back to working with his hands in a machine shop, when one day he received a letter inviting him to an organisation meeting of the Dale Carnegie Course in Effective Speaking.
He didn’t want to attend. He feared he would have to associate with a lot of college graduates, that he would be out of place.
His despairing wife insisted that he go, saying, ‘It may do you some good, Pat. God knows you need it.’ He went down to the place where the meeting was to be held and stood on the sidewalk for five minutes before he could generate enough self-confidence to enter the room.
The first few times he tried to speak in front of the others, he was dizzy with fear. But as the weeks drifted by, he lost all fear of audiences and soon found that he loved to talk – the bigger the crowd, the better. And he also lost his fear of individuals and of his superiors. He presented his ideas to them, and soon he had been advanced into the sales department. He had become a valued and much liked member of his company. This night, in the Hotel Pennsylvania, Patrick O’Haire stood in front of twenty-five hundred people and told a gay, rollicking story of his achievements. Wave after wave of laughter swept over the audience. Few professional speakers could have equalled his performance.
The next speaker, Godfrey Meyer, was a grey-headed banker, the father of eleven children. The first time he had attempted to speak in class, he was literally struck dumb. His mind refused to function. His story is a vivid illustration of how leadership gravitates to the person who can talk.
He worked on Wall Street, and for twenty-five years he had been living in Clifton, New Jersey. During that time, he had taken no active part in community affairs and knew perhaps five hundred people.
Shortly after he had enrolled in the Carnegie course, he received his tax bill and was infuriated by what he considered unjust charges. Ordinarily, he would have sat at home and fumed, or he would have taken it out in grousing to his neighbours. But instead, he put on his hat that night, walked into the town meeting, and blew off steam in public.
As a result of that talk of indignation, the citizens of Clifton, New Jersey, urged him to run for the town council. So for weeks he went from
one meeting to another, denouncing waste and municipal extravagance.
There were ninety-six candidates in the field. When the ballots were counted, lo, Godfrey Meyer’s name led all the rest. Almost overnight, he had become a public figure among the forty thousand people in his community. As a result of his talks, he made eighty times more friends in six weeks than he had been able to previously in twenty-five years.
And his salary as councilman meant that he got a return of 1,000 percent a year on his investment in the Carnegie course.
The third speaker, the head of a large national association of food manufacturers, told how he had been unable to stand up and express his ideas at meetings of a board of directors.
As a result of learning to think on his feet, two astonishing things happened. He was soon made president of his association, and in that capacity, he was obliged to address meetings all over the United States. Excerpts from his talks were put on the Associated Press wires and printed in newspapers and trade magazines throughout the country.
In two years, after learning to speak more effectively, he received more free publicity for his company and its products than he had been able to get previously with a quarter of a million dollars spent in direct advertising. This speaker admitted that he had formerly hesitated to telephone some of the more important business executives in Manhattan and invite them to lunch with him. But as a result of the prestige he had acquired by his talks, these same people telephoned him and invited him to lunch and apologised to him for encroaching on his time.
The ability to speak is a shortcut to distinction. It puts a person in the limelight, raises one head and shoulders above the crowd. And the person who can speak acceptably is usually given credit for an ability out of all proportion to what he or she really possesses.
A movement for adult education has been sweeping over the nation; and the most spectacular force in that movement was Dale Carnegie, a man who listened to and critiqued more talks by adults than has any other man in captivity. According to a cartoon by ‘Believe-It-or-Not’ Ripley, he had criticised 150,000 speeches. If that grand total doesn’t impress you, remember that it meant one talk for almost every day that has passed since Columbus discovered America. Or, to put it in other words, if all the people who had spoken before him had used only three minutes and had appeared
before him in succession, it would have taken ten months, listening day and night, to hear them all.
Dale Carnegie’s own career, filled with sharp contrasts, was a striking example of what a person can accomplish when obsessed with an original idea and afire with enthusiasm.
Born on a Missouri farm ten miles from a railway, he never saw a streetcar until he was twelve years old; yet by the time he was forty-six, he was familiar with the far-flung corners of the earth, everywhere from Hong Kong to Hammerfest; and at one time, he approached closer to the North Pole than Admiral Byrd’s headquarters at Little America was to the South Pole.
This Missouri lad who had once picked strawberries and cut cockleburs for five cents an hour became the highly paid trainer of the executives of large corporations in the art of self-expression.
This erstwhile cowboy who had once punched cattle and branded calves and ridden fences out in western South Dakota later went to London to put on shows under the patronage of the royal family.
This chap who was a total failure the first half-dozen times he tried to speak in public later became my personal manager. Much of my success has been due to training under Dale Carnegie.
Young Carnegie had to struggle for an education, for hard luck was always battering away at the old farm in northwest Missouri with a flying tackle and a body slam. Year after year, the ‘102’ River rose and drowned the corn and swept away the hay. Season after season, the fat hogs sickened and died from cholera, the bottom fell out of the market for cattle and mules, and the bank threatened to foreclose the mortgage.
Sick with discouragement, the family sold out and bought another farm near the State Teachers’ College at Warrensburgh, Missouri. Board and room could be had in town for a dollar a day, but young Carnegie couldn’t afford it. So he stayed on the farm and commuted on horseback three miles to college each day. At home, he milked the cows, cut the wood, fed the hogs, and studied his Latin verbs by the light of a coal-oil lamp until his eyes blurred and he began to nod.
Even when he got to bed at midnight, he set the alarm for three o’clock. His father bred pedigreed Duroc-Jersey hogs – and there was danger, during the bitter cold nights, that the young pigs would freeze to death: so they
were put in a basket, covered with a gunny sack, and set behind the kitchen stove. True to their nature, the pigs demanded a hot meal at 3 A.M. So when the alarm went off, Dale Carnegie crawled out of the blankets, took the basket of pigs out to their mother, waited for them to nurse, and then brought them back to the warmth of the kitchen stove.
There were six hundred students in State Teachers’ College, and Dale Carnegie was one of the isolated half-dozen who couldn’t afford to board in town. He was ashamed of the poverty that made it necessary for him to ride back to the farm and milk the cows every night. He was ashamed of his coat, which was too tight, and his trousers, which were too short. Rapidly developing an inferiority complex, he looked about for some shortcut to distinction. He soon saw that there were certain groups in college that enjoyed influence and prestige – the football and baseball players and the chaps who won the debating and public-speaking contests.
Realising that he had no flair for athletics, he decided to win one of the speaking contests. He spent months preparing his talks. He practised as he sat in the saddle galloping to college and back; he practised his speeches as he milked the cows; and then he mounted a bale of hay in the barn and with great gusto and gestures harangued the frightened pigeons about the issues of the day.
But in spite of all his earnestness and preparation, he met with defeat after defeat. He was eighteen at the time – sensitive and proud. He became so discouraged, so depressed, that he even thought of suicide. And then suddenly he began to win, not one contest, but every speaking contest in college.
Other students pleaded with him to train them; and they won also.
After graduating from college, he started selling correspondence courses to the ranchers among the sand hills of western Nebraska and eastern Wyoming. In spite of all his boundless energy and enthusiasm, he couldn’t make the grade. He became so discouraged that he went to his hotel room in Alliance, Nebraska, in the middle of the day, threw himself across the bed, and wept in despair. He longed to go back to college, he longed to retreat from the harsh battle of life; but he couldn’t. So he resolved to go to Omaha and get another job. He didn’t have the money for a railroad ticket, so he travelled on a freight train, feeding and watering two carloads of wild horses in return for his passage. After landing in south Omaha, he got a job
selling bacon and soap and lard for Armour and Company. His territory was up among the Badlands and the cow and Indian country of western South Dakota. He covered his territory by freight train and stage coach and horseback and slept in pioneer hotels where the only partition between the rooms was a sheet of muslin. He studied books on salesmanship, rode bucking bronchos, played poker with the Indians, and learned how to collect money. And when, for example, an inland storekeeper couldn’t pay cash for the bacon and hams he had ordered, Dale Carnegie would take a dozen pairs of shoes off his shelf, sell the shoes to the railroad men, and forward the receipts to Armour and Company.
He would often ride a freight train a hundred miles a day. When the train stopped to unload freight, he would dash uptown, see three or four merchants, get his orders; and when the whistle blew, he would dash down the street again lickety-split and swing onto the train while it was moving.
Within two years, he had taken an unproductive territory that had stood in the twenty-fifth place and had boosted it to first place among all the twenty-nine car routes leading out of south Omaha. Armour and Company offered to promote him, saying: ‘You have achieved what seemed impossible.’ But he refused the promotion and resigned, went to New York, studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and toured the country, playing the role of Dr. Harley in Polly of the Circus.
He would never be a Booth or a Barrymore. He had the good sense to recognise that. So back he went to sales work, selling automobiles and trucks for the Packard Motor Car Company.
He knew nothing about machinery and cared nothing about it. Dreadfully unhappy, he had to scourge himself to his task each day. He longed to have time to study, to write the books he had dreamed about writing back in college. So he resigned. He was going to spend his days writing stories and novels and support himself by teaching in a night school. Teaching what? As he looked back and evaluated his college work, he saw that his training in public speaking had done more to give him confidence, courage, poise and the ability to meet and deal with people in business than had all the rest of his college courses put together. So he urged the Y.M.C.A. schools in New York to give him a chance to conduct
courses in public speaking for people in business.
What? Make orators out of business people? Absurd. The Y.M.C.A. people knew. They had tried such courses – and they had always failed. When they refused to pay him a salary of two dollars a night, he agreed to teach on a commission basis and take a percentage of the net profits – if there were any profits to take. And inside of three years they were paying him thirty dollars a night on that basis – instead of two.
The course grew. Other ‘Ys’ heard of it, then other critics. Dale Carnegie soon became a glorified circuit rider covering New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and later London and Paris. All the textbooks were too academic and impractical for the business people who flocked to his courses. Because of this he wrote his own book entitled Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business, It became the official text of all the
Y.M.C.A.s as well as of the American Bankers’ Association and the National Credit Men’s Association.
Dale Carnegie claimed that all people can talk when they get mad. He said that if you hit the most ignorant man in town on the jaw and knock him down, he would get on his feet and talk with an eloquence, heat and emphasis that would have rivalled that world famous orator William Jennings Bryan at the height of his career. He claimed that almost any person can speak acceptably in public if he or she has self-confidence and an idea that is boiling and stewing within.
The way to develop self-confidence, he said, is to do the thing you fear to do and get a record of successful experiences behind you. So he forced each class member to talk at every session of the course. The audience is sympathetic. They are all in the same boat; and, by constant practice, they develop a courage, confidence and enthusiasm that carry over into their private speaking.
Dale Carnegie would tell you that he made a living all these years, not by teaching public speaking – that was incidental. His main job was to help people conquer their fears and develop courage.
He started out at first to conduct merely a course in public speaking, but the students who came were business men and women. Many of them hadn’t seen the inside of a classroom in thirty years. Most of them were paying their tuition on the installment plan. They wanted results and they wanted them quick – results that they could use the next day in business interviews and in speaking before groups.
So he was forced to be swift and practical. Consequently, he developed a system of training that is unique – a striking combination of public speaking, salesmanship, human relations and applied psychology.
A slave to no hard-and-fast rules, he developed a course that is as real as the measles and twice as much fun.
When the classes terminated, the graduates formed clubs of their own and continued to meet fortnightly for years afterwards. One group of nineteen in Philadelphia met twice a month during the winter season for seventeen years. Class members frequently travel fifty or a hundred miles to attend classes. One student used to commute each week from Chicago to New York.
Professor William James of Harvard used to say that the average person develops only 10 percent of his latent mental ability. Dale Carnegie, by helping business men and women to develop their latent possibilities, created one of the most significant movements in adult education.
Lowell Thomas 1936
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Any reference to ‘writing in this book’ refer to the original printed version.
Readers should write on a separate piece of paper in these instances.
Version 1.0
