How to Win Friends and Influence People (25 page)

PRINCIPLE 6

Praise the slightest improvement and praise

every improvement. Be “hearty in your

approbation and lavish in your praise.”

GIVE A DOG A GOOD NAME

What 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 realized 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

spect, 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 neighboring hotel brought my

meals,” she wrote. “She was called ‘Marie the Dish

washer’ because she had started her career as a scullery

assistant. She was a kind of monster, cross-eyed, bandylegged,

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 a few moments, not daring to risk the slightest

gesture for fear of a castastrophe. 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 realized 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 char-woman

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 behavior of others, use . . .

PRINCIPLE 7

Give the other person a fine reputation to live

up to.

MAKE THE FAULT SEEM

EASY TO CORRECT

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 emphasizing my mistakes. This new teacher did the

opposite. She kept praising the things I did right and

minimizing 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 practice

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! 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 judgment.

You’ve written articles on memory. Bridge will be

a cinch for you. It’s right up your alley.”

And presto, almost before I realized 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 analyzed 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

math 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

math. 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 honor roll; in high school he

was elected to the national honor society. Once he found

learning was easy, his whole life changed.”

If you want to help others to improve, remember . . .