How to Win Friends and Influence People (24 page)

PRINCIPLE 3

Talk about your own mistakes before

criticizing the other person.

NO ONE LIKES TO

TAKE ORDERS

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 specializing

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.

LET THE OTHER PERSON SAVE FACE

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 maneuvered

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, criticizing 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 ax. 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

colors, 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 test-marketing 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 I 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 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.

HOW TO SPUR PEOPLE ON

TO SUCCESS

Pete Barlow was an old friend of mine. He had a dog-and-

pony act and spent his life traveling 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.” *

*
Jess Lair,
I Ain’t Much, Baby -
But I’m All I
Got
(Greenwich, Conn.:

Fawcett, 1976), p . 248.

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

raise.

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 minimized and

praise emphasized, 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 capitalizing 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 leveled

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

turnabout. 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.

Talk about changing people. If you and I will inspire

the people with whom we come in contact to a realization

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. We 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 realization of their latent possibilities.

Abilities wither under criticism; they blossom under

encouragement. To become a more effective leader of

people, apply . . .