How to Win Friends and Influence People (15 page)

PRINCIPLE 1

The only way to get the best of an argument

is to avoid it.

A SURE WAY OF MAKING ENEMIES

-AND HOW TO AVOID IT

When Theodore Roosevelt was in the White House, he

confessed that if he could be right 75 percent of the time,

he would reach the highest measure of his expectation.

If that was the highest rating that one of the most distinguished

men of the twentieth century could hope to

obtain, what about you and me?

If you can be sure of being right only 55 percent of the

time, you can go down to Wall Street and make a million

dollars a day. If you can’t be sure of being right even 55

percent of the time, why should you tell other people

they are wrong?

You can tell people they are wrong by a look or an

intonation or a gesture just as eloquently as you can in

words - and if you tell them they are wrong, do you

make them want to agree with you? Never! For you have

struck a direct blow at their intelligence, judgment,

pride and self-respect. That will make them want to

strike back. But it will never make them want to change

their minds. You may then hurl at them all the logic of a

Plato or an Immanuel Kant, but you will not alter their

opinions, for you have hurt their feelings.

Never begin by announcing "I am going to prove so-and-

so to you.” That’s bad. That’s tantamount to saying:

“I’m smarter than you are, I’m going to tell you a thing

or two and make you change your mind.”

That is a challenge. It arouses opposition and makes

the listener want to battle with you before you even

start.

It is difficult, under even the most benign conditions,

to change people’s minds. So why make it harder? Why

handicap yourself?

If you are going to prove anything, don’t let anybody

know it. Do it so subtly, so adroitly, that no one will feel

that you are doing it. This was expressed succinctly by

Alexander Pope:

Men must be taught as if you taught them not

And things unknown proposed as things forgot.

Over three hundred years ago Galileo said:

You cannot teach a man anything; you can only

help him to find it within himself.

As Lord Chesterfield said to his son:

Be wiser than other people if you can;

but do not tell them so.

Socrates said repeatedly to his followers in Athens:

One thing only I know, and that

is that I know nothing.

Well, I can’t hope to be any smarter than Socrates, so

I have quit telling people they are wrong. And I find that

it pays.

If a person makes a statement that you think is wrong

- yes, even that you know is wrong - isn’t it better to

begin by saying: “Well, now, look, I thought otherwise,

but I may be wrong. I frequently am. And if I am wrong,

I want to be put right. Let’s examine the facts.”

There’s magic, positive magic, in such phrases as: "I

may be wrong. I frequently am. Let’s examine the facts.”

Nobody in the heavens above or on earth beneath

or in the waters under the earth will ever object to your

saying: "I may be wrong. Let’s examine the facts.”

One of our class members who used this approach in

dealing with customers was Harold Reinke, a Dodge

dealer in Billings, Montana. He reported that because of

the pressures of the automobile business, he was often

hard-boiled and callous when dealing with customers’

complaints. This caused flared tempers, loss of business

and general unpleasantness.

He told his class: “Recognizing that this was getting

me nowhere fast, I tried a new tack. I would say something

like this: ‘Our dealership has made so many mistakes

that I am frequently ashamed. We may have erred

in your case. Tell me about it.’

“This approach becomes quite disarming, and by the

time the customer releases his feelings, he is usually

much more reasonable when it comes to settling the

matter. In fact, several customers have thanked me for

having such an understanding attitude. And two of them

have even brought in friends to buy new cars. In this

highly competitive market, we need more of this type of

customer, and I believe that showing respect for all customers’

opinions and treating them diplomatically and

courteously will help beat the competition.”

You will never get into trouble by admitting that you

may be wrong. That will stop all argument and inspire

your opponent to be just as fair and open and broad-minded

as you are. It will make him want to admit that

he, too, may be wrong.

If you know positively that a person is wrong, and you

bluntly tell him or her so, what happens? Let me illustrate.

Mr. S---- a young New York attorney, once argued

a rather important case before the United States

Supreme Court
(Lustgarten v. Fleet Corporation 280

U.S. 320)
. The case involved a considerable sum of

money and an important question of law. During the

argument, one of the Supreme Court justices said to him:

“The statute of limitations in admiralty law is six years,

is it not?”

Mr. S---- stopped, stared at the Justice for a moment,

and then said bluntly: “Your Honor, there is no statute

of limitations in admiralty.”

"A hush fell on the court,” said Mr. S---- as he related

 his experience to one of the author’s classes, “and the

temperature in the room seemed to drop to zero. I was

right. Justice - was wrong. And I had told him so. But

did that make him friendly? No. I still believe that I had

the law on my side. And I know that I spoke better than

I ever spoke before. But I didn’t persuade. I made the

enormous blunder of telling a very learned and famous

man that he was wrong.”

Few people are logical. Most of us are prejudiced and

biased. Most of us are blighted with preconceived notions,

with jealousy, suspicion, fear, envy and pride. And

most citizens don’t want to change their minds about

their religion or their haircut or communism or their favorite

movie star. So, if you are inclined to tell people

they are wrong, please read the following paragraph

every morning before breakfast. It is from James Harvey

Robinson’s enlightening book
The Mind in the Making.

We sometimes find ourselves changing our minds without

any resistance or heavy emotion, but if we are told we

are wrong, we resent the imputation and harden our hearts.

We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs,

but find ourselves filled with an illicit passion for them

when anyone proposes to rob us of their companionship. It

is obviously not the ideas themselves that are dear to us,

but our self-esteem which is threatened. . . . The little word

“my” is the most important one in human affairs, and properly

to reckon with it is the beginning of wisdom. It has the

same force whether it is “my” dinner, “my” dog, and "my"

house, or “my” father, “my” country, and “my” God. We

not only resent the imputation that our watch is wrong, or

our car shabby, but that our conception of the canals of

Mars, of the pronunciation of “Epictetus,” of the medicinal

value of salicin, or of the date of Sargon I is subject to revision.

We like to continue to believe what we have been

accustomed to accept as true, and the resentment aroused

when doubt is cast upon any of our assumptions leads us to

seek every manner of excuse for clinging to it. The result is

that most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments

for going on believing as we already do.

Carl Rogers, the eminent psychologist, wrote in his

book On
Becoming a Person:

I have found it of enormous value when I can permit

myself to understand the other person. The way in which I

have worded this statement may seem strange to you, Is it

necessary to permit oneself to understand another? I think

it is. Our first reaction to most of the statements (which we

hear from other people) is an evaluation or judgment, rather

than an understanding of it. When someone expresses some

feeling, attitude or belief, our tendency is almost immediately

to feel “that’s right,” or “that’s stupid,” “that’s abnormal,”

“that’s unreasonable,” “that’s incorrect,” “that’s not

nice ." Very rarely do we permit ourselves to
understand

precisely what the meaning of the statement is to the other

person.*

* Adapted from Carl R. Rogers, On
Becoming
a
Person
(Boston: Houghton

Mifflin, 1961), pp. 18ff.

I once employed an interior decorator to make some

draperies for my home. When the bill arrived, I was

dismayed.

A few days later, a friend dropped in and looked at the

draperies. The price was mentioned, and she exclaimed

with a note of triumph: “What? That’s awful. I am afraid

he put one over on you.”

True? Yes, she had told the truth, but few people like

to listen to truths that reflect on their judgment. So,

being human, I tried to defend myself. I pointed out that

the best is eventually the cheapest, that one can’t expect

to get quality and artistic taste at bargain-basement

prices, and so on and on.

The next day another friend dropped in, admired the

draperies, bubbled over with enthusiasm, and expressed

a wish that she could afford such exquisite creations for

her home. My reaction was totally different. “Well, to

tell the truth,” I said, "I can’t afford them myself. I paid

too much. I’m sorry I ordered them,”

When we are wrong, we may admit it to ourselves.

And if we are handled gently and tactfully, we may

admit it to others and even take pride in our frankness

and broad-mindedness. But not if someone else is trying

to ram the unpalatable fact down our esophagus.

Horace Greeley, the most famous editor in America

during the time of the Civil War, disagreed violently

with Lincoln’s policies. He believed that he could drive

Lincoln into agreeing with him by a campaign of argument,

ridicule and abuse. He waged this bitter campaign

month after month, year after year. In fact, he wrote a

brutal, bitter, sarcastic and personal attack on President

Lincoln the night Booth shot him.

But did all this bitterness make Lincoln agree with

Greeley? Not at all. Ridicule and abuse never do.

If you want some excellent suggestions about dealing

with people and managing yourself and improving your

personality, read Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography -

one of the most fascinating life stories ever written, one

of the classics of American literature. Ben Franklin tells

how he conquered the iniquitous habit of argument and

transformed himself into one of the most able, suave and

diplomatic men in American history.

One day, when Ben Franklin was a blundering youth,

an old Quaker friend took him aside and lashed him with

a few stinging truths, something like this:

Ben, you are impossible.
Your
opinions have a slap in

them for everyone who differs with you. They have become

so offensive that nobody cares for them.
Your
friends find

they enjoy themselves better when you are not around. You

know so much that no man can tell you anything. Indeed,

no man is going to try, for the effort would lead only to

discomfort and hard work. So you are not likely ever to

know any more than you do now, which is very little.

One of the finest things I know about Ben Franklin is

the way he accepted that smarting rebuke. He was big

enough and wise enough to realize that it was true, to

sense that he was headed for failure and social disaster.

So he made a right-about-face. He began immediately to

change his insolent, opinionated ways.

"I made it a rule,” said Franklin, “to forbear all direct

contradiction to the sentiment of others, and all positive

assertion of my own, I even forbade myself the use of

every word or expression in the language that imported

a fix’d opinion, such as ‘certainly,’ ‘undoubtedly,’ etc.,

and I adopted, instead of them, ‘I conceive,’ ‘I apprehend,

’ or ‘I imagine’ a thing to be so or so, or ‘it so

appears to me at present.’ When another asserted something

that I thought an error, I deny’d myself the pleasure

of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing

immediately some absurdity in his proposition: and in

answering I began by observing that in certain cases or

circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the

present case there appear’d or seem’d to me some difference,

etc. I soon found the advantage of this change in

my manner; the conversations I engag’d in went on more

pleasantly. The modest way in which I propos’d my

opinions procur'd them a readier reception and less contradiction;

I had less mortification when I was found to

be in the wrong, and I more easily prevaile'd with others