Summary of
“How to Win Friends and Influence People”
by Dale Carnegie
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Fundamentals:
1: Don’t Criticize, Condemn, or Complain
2: Sincerely Appreciate People
3: Appeal to the Other Person’s Interests
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Likability
1: Show a genuine interest in the other person.
2: Smile Likability
3: Say the Person’s Name
4: Listen Well – Encourage Others to Talk
5: Discuss the Other Person’s Interests
6: Make the Other Person Feel Comfortable
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Get Other People to Like You
How to Win People to Your Way of Thinking
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Arguments:
1: Avoid a Heated Argument
2: Have a Friendly Approach
3: Respect the Other’s Opinions
4: If You’re Wrong, Admit It
5: Let the Other Person Talk
6: See Things from the Other Point of View
7: Sympathize with the Other Person
8: Start With What You Agree On
9: Let Them Own Your Idea
10: Appeal to the Best Self
11: Make Your Ideas Vivid
12: Issue a Challenge
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Give Awesome Feedback
1: Start with Praise
2: Point Out Problems Indirectly
3: Point Out Your Own Mistakes
4: Ask Questions Instead of Giving Orders
5: Preserve the Person’s Pride
6: Create a Reputation to Live Up To
7: Make the Improvement Look Easy
8: Keep the Person’s Interests in Mind
9: Praise Every Improvement
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How to Win Friends and Influence People covers many ideas. The book covers general principles of influence. 1) Fundamentals, 2) Likability 3) How to approach arguments, and 4) How to give feedback.
Principles
- People crave the feeling of importance. Make someone feel important and they will think well of you. Diminish someone’s importance and they will resent you.
- Appeal to the other person’s interests. Virtually all people care more about what they want than what you want.
- You wouldn’t go fishing with cheesecake as a lure, since fish don’t like cheesecake. Go fishing with worms.
- Keep asking yourself – “what is it that this person wants?”
- Everyone has something they can teach you, and you benefit by figuring out what that is. This belief leads to genuine interest and appreciation for other people.
- Angry people are often angry because they feel unheard. Once you sympathize with them, they will soften their anger substantially.
- Approach people with a positive demeanor. Smile and be happy.
- A person’s name is the most important word in any language to them. Use it often and respect it.
- Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves. Ask questions that they’ll enjoy answering.
- To influence people to do things, praise and appreciation are more effective than orders.
- Don’t start by criticizing or complaining. This makes them defensive and rationalizes their actions. Instead, praising them lowers their defenses, and they’ll be more receptive to your feedback.
How to Approach Arguments
- Control your temper. You can measure a person by what makes her angry. Little people get angry over little things. Big people are undisturbed and keep cool.
- Instead, approach with an open-minded view: “I may be wrong. I often am. And if I’m wrong, I want to change and be right. Let’s discuss the facts.”
- Praise the other person for a trait that will help resolve the argument – like their patience, open-mindedness, fairness, and receptivity to new facts.
- Understand that the other person has a valid view of the situation. If you were born as them with their brain and undergoing their experiences, you would by definition feel the same way they do. Your job is to understand what led them to believe what they believe.
- Express sympathy for their situation. “You have the absolute right to be upset. If I were in your shoes, I would be too.”
- Listen first. Give your opponents a chance to talk through. Do NOT interrupt as they’re speaking.
- Ask people where they feel the problems are. Ask for their opinions on how best to proceed. Ask lots of questions instead of stating commands.
- Look for areas of agreement. Try to build bridges of understanding. Talk about common goals, and what you agree on.
- When ready, ask a series of questions that will lead them to your conclusion. Start with undeniable areas of agreement, then approach your ultimate point in terms they will agree with. This will make them feel they independently changed their mind.
- Emphasize how your position serves the other person’s interests and incentives.
- Volunteer the downsides of your approach, and ask how they feel about it. They will tend to moderate your position (“oh, I don’t think that’s as much a problem as you say”), and talk themselves out of it.
- Thank your opponents sincerely for their interest. Anyone who takes time to disagree with you is interested in the same things you are. Think of them as people who really want to help you.
How to Give Feedback
- Even before you need to give feedback, praise, and appreciate the other person constantly without asking for anything. This neutralizes the sting of future feedback.
- When introducing a point of feedback, start by praising other specific things that were done well.
- Introduce the point of improvement.
- Talk about your own related mistakes, suggesting you know how difficult the task can be.
- “When I was in your position, I did the same thing.”
- Ask questions instead of giving orders. What do you think about this? Do you think that would work? Ask for suggestions on how to improve things, to get them to have a personal stake in their own ideas.
- Give the person a fine reputation to live up to. Act as though the trait were already one of her outstanding characteristics.
- “You’ve always been a hard worker and I believe you’ll continue showing this in the next month.”
- Make the fault seem easy to correct. Make clear it is not a matter of ability or talent.
- “You already have the underlying skills, you just need a bit of practice.”
- Connect the improvement to something else she has already done. “If you can do this task, then you’re more than equipped to do this next one.”
- Message the improvement in terms of the person’s own interests. Target what they care about (doing better work; getting off of work earlier; ascending in her career).
