How to Win Friends and Influence People (10 page)

To think rightly is to create. All things come through desire

and every sincere prayer is answered. We become like that

on which our hearts are fixed. Carry your chin in and the

crown of your head high. We are gods in the chrysalis.

The ancient Chinese were a wise lot - wise in the

ways of the world; and they had a proverb that you and

I ought to cut out and paste inside our hats. It goes like

this: “A man without a smiling face must not open a

shop.”

Your smile is a messenger of your good will. Your

smile brightens the lives of all who see it. To someone

who has seen a dozen people frown, scowl or turn their

faces away, your smile is like the sun breaking through

the clouds. Especially when that someone is under pressure

from his bosses, his customers, his teachers or parents

or children, a smile can help him realize that all is

not hopeless - that there is joy in the world.

Some years ago, a department store in New York City,

in recognition of the pressures its sales clerks were

under during the Christmas rush, presented the readers

of its advertisements with the following homely philosophy:

THE VALUE OF A SMILE AT CHRISTMAS

It costs nothing, but creates much.

It enriches those who receive, without impoverishing those

     who give.

It happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes lasts

     forever,

None are so rich they can get along without it, and none so

     poor but are richer for its benefits.

It creates happiness in the home, fosters good will in a

     business, and is the countersign of friends.

It is rest to the weary, daylight to the discouraged, sunshine

     to the sad, and Nature’s best antidote fee trouble.

Yet it cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen, for it

     is something that is no earthly good to anybody till it is

     given away.

And if in the last-minute rush of Christmas buying some of

     our salespeople should be too tired to give you a smile,

     may we ask you to leave one of yours?

For nobody needs a smile so much as those who have none

     left to give!

PRINCIPLE 2

Smile.

IF YOU DON’T DO THIS, YOU ARE

HEADED FOR TROUBLE

Back in 1898, a tragic thing happened in Rockland

County, New York. A child had died, and on this particular

day the neighbors were preparing to go to the funeral.

Jim Farley went out to the barn to hitch up his

horse. The ground was covered with snow, the air was

cold and snappy; the horse hadn’t been exercised for

days; and as he was led out to the watering trough, he

wheeled playfully, kicked both his heels high in the air,

and killed Jim Farley. So the little village of Stony Point

had two funerals that week instead of one.

Jim Farley left behind him a widow and three boys,

and a few hundred dollars in insurance.

His oldest boy, Jim, was ten, and he went to work in a

brickyard, wheeling sand and pouring it into the molds

and turning the brick on edge to be dried by the sun.

This boy Jim never had a chance to get much education.

But with his natural geniality, he had a flair for making

people like him, so he went into politics, and as the

years went by, he developed an uncanny ability for remembering

people’s names.

He never saw the inside of a high school; but before

he was forty-six years of age, four colleges had honored

him with degrees and he had become chairman of the

Democratic National Committee and Postmaster General

of the United States.

I once interviewed Jim Farley and asked him the secret

of his success. He said, “Hard work,” and I said,

“Don’t be funny.”

He then asked me what I thought was the reason for

his success. I replied: "I understand you can call ten

thousand people by their first names.”

“No. You are wrong, " he said. “I can call fifty thousand

people by their first names.”

Make no mistake about it. That ability helped Mr. Farley

put Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House when

he managed Roosevelt’s campaign in 1932.

During the years that Jim Farley traveled as a salesman

for a gypsum concern, and during the years that he

held office as town clerk in Stony Point, he built up a

system for remembering names.

In the beginning, it was a very simple one. Whenever

he met a new acquaintance, he found out his or her complete

name and some facts about his or her family, business

and political opinions. He fixed all these facts well

in mind as part of the picture, and the next time he met

that person, even if it was a year later, he was able to

shake hands, inquire after the family, and ask about the

hollyhocks in the backyard. No wonder he developed a

following!

For months before Roosevelt’s campaign for President

began, Jim Farley wrote hundreds of letters a day to

people all over the western and northwestern states.

Then he hopped onto a train and in nineteen days covered

twenty states and twelve thousand miles, traveling

by buggy, train, automobile and boat. He would drop

into town, meet his people at lunch or breakfast, tea or

dinner, and give them a “heart-to-heart talk.” Then he’d

dash off again on another leg of his journey.

As soon as he arrived back East, he wrote to one person

in each town he had visited, asking for a list of all

the guests to whom he had talked. The final list contained

thousands and thousands of names; yet each person

on that list was paid the subtle flattery of getting a

personal letter from James Farley. These letters began

“Dear Bill” or “Dear Jane,” and they were always

signed "Jim."

Jim Farley discovered early in life that the average

person is more interested in his or her own name than

in all the other names on earth put together. Remember

that name and call it easily, and you have paid a subtle

and very effective compliment. But forget it or misspell

it - and you have placed yourself at a sharp disadvantage.

For example, I once organized a public-speaking

course in Paris and sent form letters to all the American

residents in the city. French typists with apparently little

knowledge of English filled in the names and naturally

they made blunders. One man, the manager of a

large American bank in Paris, wrote me a scathing rebuke

because his name had been misspelled.

Sometimes it is difficult to remember a name, particularly

if it is hard to pronounce. Rather than even try to

learn it, many people ignore it or call the person by an

easy nickname. Sid Levy called on a customer for some

time whose name was Nicodemus Papadoulos. Most

people just called him “Nick.” Levy told us: “I made a

special effort to say his name over several times to myself

before I made my call. When I greeted him by his

full name: 'Good afternoon, Mr. Nicodemus Papadoulos,’

he was shocked. For what seemed like several minutes

there was no reply from him at all. Finally, he said

with tears rolling down his cheeks, ‘Mr. Levy, in all the

fifteen years I have been in this country, nobody has

ever made the effort to call me by my right name.’ "

What was the reason for Andrew Carnegie’s success?

He was called the Steel King; yet he himself knew

little about the manufacture of steel. He had hundreds

of people working for him who knew far more about

steel than he did.

But he knew how to handle people, and that is what

made him rich. Early in life, he showed a flair for organization,

a genius for leadership. By the time he was ten,

he too had discovered the astounding importance people

place on their own name. And he used that discovery to

win cooperation. To illustrate: When he was a boy back

in Scotland, he got hold of a rabbit, a mother rabbit.

Presto! He soon had a whole nest of little rabbits - and

nothing to feed them. But he had a brilliant idea. He told

the boys and girls in the neighborhood that if they would

go out and pull enough clover and dandelions to feed

the rabbits, he would name the bunnies in their honor.

The plan worked like magic, and Carnegie never forgot

it.

Years later, he made millions by using the same psychology

in business. For example, he wanted to sell

steel rails to the Pennsylvania Railroad. J. Edgar Thomson

was the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad then.

So Andrew Carnegie built a huge steel mill in Pittsburgh

and called it the “Edgar Thomson Steel Works.”

Here is a riddle. See if you can guess it. When the

Pennsylvania Railroad needed steel rails, where do you

suppose J. Edgar Thomson bought them?. . , From

Sears, Roebuck? No. No. You’re wrong. Guess again.

When Carnegie and George Pullman were battling

each other for supremacy in the railroad sleeping-car

business, the Steel King again remembered the lesson

of the rabbits.

The Central Transportation Company, which Andrew

Carnegie controlled, was fighting with the company that

Pullman owned. Both were struggling to get the sleeping-

car business of the Union Pacific Railroad, bucking

each other, slashing prices, and destroving all chance of

profit. Both Carnegie and Pullman had gone to New

York to see the board of directors of the Union Pacific.

Meeting one evening in the St. Nicholas Hotel, Carnegie

said: “Good evening, Mr. Pullman, aren’t we making

a couple of fools of ourselves?”

“What do you mean.?" Pullman demanded.

Then Carnegie expressed what he had on his mind - a

merger of their two interests. He pictured in glowing

terms the mutual advantages of working with, instead of

against, each other. Pullman listened attentively, but he

was not wholly convinced. Finally he asked, “What

would you call the new company?” and Carnegie replied

promptly: “Why, the Pullman Palace Car Company,

of course.”

Pullman’s face brightened. “Come into my room,” he

said. “Let’s talk it over.” That talk made industrial history.

This policy of remembering and honoring the names

of his friends and business associates was one of the

secrets of Andrew Carnegie’s leadership. He was proud

of the fact that he could call many of his factory workers

by their first names, and he boasted that while he was

personally in charge, no strike ever disturbed his flaming

steel mills.

Benton Love, chairman of Texas Commerce Banc-

shares, believes that the bigger a corporation gets, the

colder it becomes. " One way to warm it up,” he said, “is

to remember people’s names. The executive who tells

me he can’t remember names is at the same time telling

me he can’t remember a significant part of his business

and is operating on quicksand.”

Karen Kirsech of Rancho Palos Verdes, California, a

flight attendant for TWA, made it a practice to learn the

names of as many passengers in her cabin as possible

and use the name when serving them. This resulted in

many compliments on her service expressed both to her

directly and to the airline. One passenger wrote: "I

haven’t flown TWA for some time, but I’m going to start

flying nothing but TWA from now on. You make me feel

that your airline has become a very personalized airline

and that is important to me.”

People are so proud of their names that they strive to

perpetuate them at any cost. Even blustering, hard-boiled

old P. T. Barnum, the greatest showman of his

time, disappointed because he had no sons to carry on

his name, offered his grandson, C. H. Seeley, $25,000

dollars if he would call himself “Barnum” Seeley.

For many centuries, nobles and magnates supported

artists, musicians and authors so that their creative works

would be dedicated to them.

Libraries and museums owe their richest collections

to people who cannot bear to think that their names

might perish from the memory of the race. The New

York Public Library has its Astor and Lenox collections.

The Metropolitan Museum perpetuates the names of

Benjamin Altman and J. P. Morgan. And nearly every

church is beautified by stained-glass windows commemorating

the names of their donors. Many of the buildings

on the campus of most universities bear the names of

donors who contributed large sums of money for this

honor.

Most people don’t remember names, for the simple

reason that they don’t take the time and energy necessary

to concentrate and repeat and fix names indelibly in

their minds. They make excuses for themselves; they are

too busy.

But they were probably no busier than Franklin D.

Roosevelt, and he took time to remember and recall

even the names of mechanics with whom he came into

contact.

To illustrate: The Chrysler organization built a special

car for Mr. Roosevelt, who could not use a standard car

because his legs were paralyzed. W. F. Chamberlain and

a mechanic delivered it to the White House. I have in

front of me a letter from Mr. Chamberlain relating his

experiences. "I taught President Roosevelt how to handle

a car with a lot of unusual gadgets, but he taught me

a lot about the fine art of handling people.

"When I called at the White House,” Mr. Chamberlain

writes, “the President was extremely pleasant and

cheerful. He called me by name, made me feel very

comfortable, and particularly impressed me with the fact

that he was vitally interested in things I had to show him

and tell him. The car was so designed that it could be

operated entirely by hand. A crowd gathered around to

look at the car; and he remarked: ‘I think it is marvelous.

All you have to do is to touch a button and it moves away

and you can drive it without effort. I think it is grand - I

don’t know what makes it go. I’d love to have the time to

tear it down and see how it works.’

“When Roosevelt’s friends and associates admired the

machine, he said in their presence: ‘Mr. Chamberlain, I

certainly appreciate all the time and effort you have

spent in developing this car. It is a mighty fine job.’ He

admired the radiator, the special rear-vision mirror and

clock, the special spotlight, the kind of upholstery, the

sitting position of the driver’s seat, the special suitcases

in the trunk with his monogram on each suitcase. In

other words, he took notice of every detail to which he

knew I had given considerable thought. He made a point

of bringing these various pieces of equipment to the attention

of Mrs. Roosevelt, Miss Perkins, the Secretary of

Labor, and his secretary. He even brought the old White

House porter into the picture by saying, ‘George, you

want to take particularly good care of the suitcases.’

“When the driving lesson was finished, the President

turned to me and said: ‘Well, Mr. Chamberlain, I have

been keeping the Federal Reserve Board waiting thirty

minutes. I guess I had better get back to work.’

"I took a mechanic with me to the White House. He

was introduced to Roosevelt when he arrived. He didn’t

talk to the President, and Roosevelt heard his name only