Notes on Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People," Part II

The first half of the notes, on Parts One and Two

Part Three: Twelve Ways to Win People Over to Your Line of Thinking

Chapter One: You Can’t Win an Argument

• Story: Dale Carnegie corrects someone, only to discover that it made the man dislike him and dig in even harder. What’s more, the correction missed the point of the story the man was trying to tell.
• Avoid argument as you would rattlesnakes and earthwuakes. Most often, it just results in people ending up MORE convinced that they’re right.
• Ben Franklin quote: “If you argue and rankle and contradict, you may achieve a victory sometimes; but it will be an empty victory because you will never get your opponent’s good will.” Another quote “Here lies the body of William Jay, Who died maintaining his right of way–He was right, dead right, as he sped along, But he’s just as dead as if he were wrong.”
• Hatred is not ended by more hatred but by love. Don’t make your opponents dig in against you; make them sympathetic by showing that you are sympathetic.

Conclusion: the only way to win an argument is by avoiding it.

Chapter Two: A Sure Way of Making Enemies - And How to Avoid It

• Quit trying to teach people things. It comes from the inherent assumption that you’re smarter than them, which they’ll resent. Instead, all you can hope to do is let someone else discover a truth for themselves.
• Dealing with customers. A car mechanic who admitted mistakes found that customers trusted him more rather than if he had simply tried to demonstrate how he did everything right.
• People change their minds if they’re not invested heavily in their stance. But if you make them feel as if they need to defend themselves, they dig in.
• Ben Franklin lessons. Ben Frankllin wrote that he gave up words like “certainly” to avoid being of a fixed opinion, and instead said things like “It’s my understanding” or “I comprehend.”

Conclusion: Show respect for the other person’s opinions; never say “you’re wrong.”

Chapter Three: If You’re Wrong, Admit It

• Story: Dale Carnegie was supposed to keep his dog on a leesh, and was able to have a police officer treat him kindly by saying “you’ve got me, I’m in the wrong.” (Not sure if this is good legal advice, haha.)
• Don’t blame others. A story of someone who walked in to their boss and refused to blame others; in the end, NO one got in trouble and the boss respected the one who admitted failure.

Conclusion: If you’re wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.

Chapter Four: A Drop of Honey

• A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall. Many examples of companies dealing with strikes by not first looking for disagreements, but looking for ways to be kind.
• Countless examples of people with legitimate gripes who decided to be friendly from the outset rather than treat people in an entitled, spoiled way.

Conclusion: Begin a tough conversation in a friendly way.

Chapter Five: The Secret of Socrates

• Start off by getting them to say “yes.” Find areas of agreement, areas of commonality.
• Ask questions. Get people to realize the internal consistency that they can achieve by agreeing with you. Arguing with them only makes them want to maintain internal consistency through another means.

Conclusion: Get the other person saying “yes, yes” immediately.

Chapter Six: The Safety Valve in Handling Complaints

• Be willing to listen. Let people do the talking. If you disagree, or complain, or do anything like that, you’ll only set off their internal alarms. So let them do the talking. Let them find reason and peace that way.

Conclusion: Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.

Chapter Seven: How to Get Cooperation

• Don’t you have much more faith in ideas you discover yourself? Isn’t it then bad judgment to try and stuff something down someone else’s throat?
• People want to make their own decisions. You can’t force them to do something. They have to want it themselves.

Conclusion: Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.

Chapter Eight: A Formula That Will Work Wonders For You

• Honestly put yourself in someone else’s place. Stop a minute and ask yourself how you would feel if you were them. For example, a man had argued with his wife that she spent too much time in the evenings gardening. It would ruin their nights. Instead he thought about it and realized that she liked doing it, so he became more positive about it.
• Story: Dale saw some people with a fire and knew they could be arrested for it, so he condemned them. He got them to obey, but he knew they resented him for his harsh tone.

Conclusion: Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.

Chapter Nine: What Everybody Wants

• A magic phrase. “I don’t blame you one iota for feeling the way you do. If I were you I would undoubtedly feel just as you do.
• Three-fourths of the people you meet are hungering and thirsting for sympathy. Give it to them, and they will love you.

Conclusion: Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires.

Chapter Ten: An Appeal that Everybody Likes

• Rockefeller wanted photographers to stop snapping pictures of his kids. He could have just said “stop,” but instead he was like, “you know how it is, guys…you wouldn’t want someone snapping photographers of your kids.”
• A collector working on getting customers to pay their bills would try to find spots of agreement and then let the customers determine how much to pay themselves. Oddly, the majority of them, when he appealed to their nobler motives, decided to pay MORE than they had to.

Conclusion: Appeal to the nobler motives.

Chapter Eleven: The Movies Do It. TV does it. Why don’t you?

• Dramatize your need. A parent needed to get their kids to clean up, so instead of trying to logically argue it out, they came up with an idea to make a “train.” The kids would load up their carts with the toys that needed cleaning and, well you get the reest.
• When requests don’t work, try a formal letter. It works for one of the illustrations Dale gives; sometimes you need to show your actual need.

Conclusion: Dramatize your ideas.

Chapter Twelve: When Nothing Else Works, Try This

• Dealing with mill workers. Charles Schwab talked to a mill manager who couldn’t get his people to meet their quota. The manager said he’d tried everything. So Schwab stimulated competition. He found out how productive one shift was and then wrote it down for the next shift to see. Eventually, competition arose.

Conclusion: Throw down a challenge.

Part Four: Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment

Chapter One: If You Must Find Fault, This is the Way to Begin

• Coolidge example. Coolidge compliment a young secretary on her dress. Then he was like “now don’t get stuck up. I just wanted to tell you to work on your punctuation. Ever hear of a compiment sandwich?
• “A barber lathers a man before he shaves him.” Lather people first if you’re going to find fault.
• Even Lincoln’s most sharply-written letters often contained praise for the recipient to make them easier to swallow.

Conclusion: Begin with praise and honest appreciation.

Chapter Two: How to Criticize and Not be Hated For It

• Story: Schwab finding his employees smoking. Rather than pointing to a no smoking sign and saying “can you read?” he just gave them each a cigar and said “I’ll appreciate it if you could smoke these outside.”
• John Wanamaker found that his salespeople weren’t attending to the desk, and a customer was waiting. Rather than yelling at them, he attended to the customer himself.

Conclusion: Call attention to peoples’ mistakes indirectly.

Chapter Three: Talk About Your Own Mistakes First

• Carnegie’s niece as secretary started out horribly…but he put himself in her shoes and realized he could have made the same mistakes at that point in his life. So he started off talking about how he would ahve been worse at his age.
• Dealing with the Kaiser: A story about a man who had great cause to admonish the Kaiser for some remarks, but took the time to point out areas that he failed in which the Kaiser was good at. It made the Kaiser way more receptive to listening to criticism.

Conclusion: talk about your own mistakes before moving on to the other person.

Chapter Four: No One Likes to Take Orders

• Offer alternative options. Not direct orders. “Maybe we could try it this way…” is better than “Do it again.”
• Take indirect paths to orders. Don’t just state them outright. You’re not in the military. Ask questions. In business, ask “is there anything we can do to meet this deadline?” Don’t give direct orders because people won’t be motivated and they’ll just resent you for thinking you’re some army general.

Conclusion: Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.

Chapter Five: Let the Other Person Save Face

• Steinmetz: General Electric had to fire someone, but they wanted to keep him around. So rather than embarassing him, they created a new position for him (which was what he was already doing, just in a new title)–which moved him out of his old department. They let him save face, and he remained happy.
• Firing people: A story about firing people in a way that lets them feel better about themselves, for example, an accounting firm that needed to let people go after the busy season. They wouldn’t say “them’s the breaks,” but rather, “we believe in you and wish we could keep you on.”

Conclusion: Let the other person save face.

Chapter Six: How to Spur People On to Success

• Dog training: We encourage dogs when they do the right thing, reward them. Why don’t we praise people around us who are doing the right thing?
• Charles Dickens had once been rejected so much that when one editor praised him, he walked around the streets with tears rolling down his eyes. That’s how much your priase could mean to someone capable of a lot more if they just had the right encouragement.
• We all crave appreciation and recognition, and will do almost anything to get it. But no one wants insincerity or flattery. Genuine appreciation is the rule here.

Conclusion: Praise the slighest improvement and praise every improvement.

Chapter Seven: Give a Dog a Good Name

• When you criticize someone, give them a good name to live up to. Example: a boss telling a mechanic that his work wasn’t up to his usual standards. Give people something to live up to!
• People’s beliefs sometimes require external validation. Remember, everyone thinks they’re important. But external validation is sometimes required to spur them to action.
• A teacher’s story involved finding out that she had to teach the class “bad boy,” but she started out by saying that he was a natural leader and she needed his help to make class as good as it can be. She kept complimenting on the good things he did early on, and gave him a reputation as a good leader. He lived up to it.

Conclusion: Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.

Chapter Eight: Make the Fault Seem Easy to Correct

• A man taking dancing lessons was discouraged by a teacher who said that he had to re-learn everything. The guy quit rather than continue to take her lessons. The next teacher might have been lying, but he liked it; it made it seem like it could be accomplished. He stuck with it the second time around. Which was the better teacher?
• A man convinced Dale to learn bridge by saying “it’s right up your alley.” Rather than making it this big thing he was like, it’ll be a cinch.

Conclusion: Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.

Chapter Nine: Making People Glad to Do What You Want

• Woodrow Wilson example: He invited someone to the cabinet by acting like it would be a great favor to HIM rather than the fact that it was actually an honor to the recipient.
• Refusing: One man who would refuse a lot of opportunities to speak would do a favor to someone right away by recommending someone else, thus changing the subject and giving them no time to resent his rejection.
• Create empty titles. Napoleon made a “Grand Army” and made people “marshalls.” A grocery manager made someone in charge of tagging shelves because they sucked at doing it; after that, they were glad to do it.

Conclusion: Make the other person happy to do what you suggest.

Overall Conclusions

Part One

• Don’t criticize, condemn, or complain.
• Give people honest and sincere appreciation.
• Around in the other person an eager want.

Part Two

• Become genuinely interested in other people.
• Smile.
• Peoples’ favorite word in the English language is the sound of their own name.
• Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
• Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
• Make the other person feel important and do it sincerely.

Part Three

• The only way to win an argument is by avoiding it.
• Show respect for the other person’s opinions; never say “you’re wrong.”
• If you’re wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
• Begin a tough conversation in a friendly way.
• Get the other person saying “yes, yes” immediately.
• Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
• Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.
• Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.
• Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires.
• Appeal to the nobler motives.
• Dramatize your ideas
• Throw down a challenge.

Part Four

• Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
• Call attention to peoples’ mistakes indirectly.
• Talk about your own mistakes before moving on to the other person.
• Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
• Let the other person save face.
• Praise the slighest improvement and praise every improvement.
• Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
• Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
• Make the other person happy to do what you suggest.