How to Win Friends & Influence People

Upping to 5 stars.

I re-read this every couple of years and continue to get a lot of value.

I still dislike the name of the book... and some of the examples are a bit cringe... but the lessons on empathy and understanding the perspectives of others are invaluable.

Read the chapter titles, that's all you need

There is good advice in this book but I felt that the endless anecdotes illustrating each point were long and not terribly useful. I would've liked more concise examples. In any case the points are valid and worth considering for anyone. Carnegie seems to espouse an ego-driven view of people that people are rules by their sense of self-importance and worth. It seems shallow, but I think he's pretty much right.

valid points but I found it quite boring and couldn't finish. I think the points are really good but gets a bit repetitive and I understand the whole message quite quickly.

Well, I thought a lot of things while reading this. I admit I wasn't too gung-ho about the book in the first place, and read it because it was assigned reading at work. I've heard about Carnegie plenty of times in the past and was pretty sure he wasn't the sort of author whose philosophies I'd give five stars to.

However, I did try to read it objectively. Yes, he is a proponent of the “social gospel” of his time, but it also wasn't as bad as I thought it might be (I didn't end by throwing the book across the room. So far, Descartes remains alone in the dubious distinction of being lobbed at the further wall). I'll write my review in sections according to the structure of the book.

Part one: Fundamental Techniques in Handling People
1. Don't criticize, condemn, or complain.
Point given: no one wants to be around a whiner. Sure, I agree with that.
Application made: Lawbreakers, such as Al Capone and Two Gun Crowley, believed themselves to be good people at heart, even helpers of the community: “people don't criticize themselves for anything, no matter how wrong it may be....Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself. Criticism is dangerous because it wounds a person's precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment.”

All right, wait a moment here. If my friends never voice any criticism, how would I know I'm wandering around with mud on my cheek? with a stain on my blouse? How am I to know that something is wrong? The last thing I wish to do is wander through life with the rest of the world afraid to let me know what I'm doing wrong.

Constructive criticism is a good thing. As a music teacher, it is imperative that sometimes I get to say, “No. Don't do it that way.” Why? Because certain positions can be harmful to the student's muscles and a hindrance to their progress. I compliment them on progress made and tell them how to make it better. It requires much less time and intellectual fishing than trying to influence them to deduct that the position may not be to their greatest advantage.

2. Give honest and sincere appreciation.
Point given: Everyone is glad to know they are valuable.
Application: If you want people to do something for you, your best bet is to make them want to do it. Using an application of Sigmund Freud's and Dewey's theories that every man has “the desire to be great” or “the desire to be important,” Carnegie mentions the successes who have made themselves great–Lincoln and Dickens–and moves on to criminals. “The average young criminal...is filled with ego...If you tell me how you get your feeling of importance, I'll tell you what you are. That determines your character,” he finishes.

Mr. Carnegie, I beg to differ. What puffs your chest out is not the sum total of who you are. That is only one symptom of the man as a whole. Are you trustworthy? Are you a friend to others? If you are either of those, or of any other things, and yet lack a real feeling of importance, it does not make you a nobody, as Carnegie more than implies. Finding your self-worth is not the only goal in life for a successful person.

He continues the chapter by giving examples of people who have gone insane because of having unfulfilled dreams in life...well, nobody can quite say it for sure, of course, but this is his argument: “...the other half of people who go insane apparently have nothing wrong with their brain cells...Why do these people go insane? [the doctor he spoke with said] Nobody knows for sure. But he did say that many people who go insane find in insanity a feeling of importance that they were unable to achieve in the world of reality.” His implication is clear that some people prefer to lose touch with reality than to lose touch with their dreams and their exalted view of themselves.

What about flattery? We do get warned against flattery. “Flattery is counterfeit, and like counterfeit money, it will eventually get you into trouble if you pass it to someone else...Flattery is telling the other person precisely what he thinks about himself.”

But to give a person compliments in the hope of gaining one's own ends reeks of insincerity. The examples given show that a sloppy person will suddenly do a great job when given praise instead of critique. I'm sorry, but I've tried this. Contrary to Carnegie's opinion, people are not all going to do what you want if you convince them they are good people and they do a good job. All too many react with pleasure at the status quo and see absolutely no need to do better.

So I will add that, yes, it's wonderful to appreciate others. But it is wrong and often cruel to them to make them think they are perfect when they are doing a sloppy job that may cause danger to others (such as breaking health laws or leaving messes in walkways.) Carnegie denies the implication that making someone want what you want by telling them how good they are is manipulation, but in most of the examples it slides dangerously close to that line.

3. Arouse in the other person an eager want.
Point given: People's acts are entirely driven by their wants.
Application: To impose what we want, we have to convince others that they want what we want more than they want what they want...that, in fact, what we want is even better than what they wanted in the first place. While I'm all for positive inspiration, this message has a sordid underbelly.

Carnegie believes that all actions have one root: desire. The only way to change a person's actions is to change their desires. He does not believe that people will gladly follow rules unless there is something in it for them. In the previous chapter, he posited that those appreciated will do a great job merely because someone's compliment makes them wish to do well. Yes, I do agree that continual criticism will sap a person's motivations, but praise all the time is not necessarily a motivator. According to Carnegie's philosophy, there are no people who are lazy for the joy of being lazy. Or, if there are such people, all they need is someone to come along and affirm them and present to them a good reason to get up and do a good job.

One of the examples given is of a child who refused to eat his vegetables despite being scolded by his parents. He had an issue with a neighborhood bully, and the father decided to use the bully as the force behind his argument. “When his father explained that the boy would be able to wallop the daylights out of the bigger kid someday if he would only eat the things his mother wanted him to eat–when his father promised him that–there was no longer any problem of dietetics.” I'm sorry, but no parent can ever make a promise like that, because there is no guarantee of its being fulfilled. The boy may have grown to 5'6” and the bully to 6'5” and no vegetables in the world could reverse the sizes. Then where would the father's promise be? He has broken a promise to his child that he had no right to make in the first place. The father's persuasion becomes a lie. The two pages of the child's story show that they gained mastery over the child by “making him feel important.” Another child eats her cereal because by preparing it she “achieved a feeling of importance; she had found in making the cereal an avenue of self-expression.”

The danger of Carnegie's philosophy in this point is that one's self-esteem becomes the generator of their actions. If their self-esteem fails, apparently they do a horrible job and are uninterested in good ideas. Well, that doesn't bear out in real life. Some people who have damaged self-worth are hard workers, and some with excellent self-worth are sloppy and lazy. But Carnegie's chapter ends with a quote: “William Winter once remarked that ‘self-expression is the dominant necessity of human nature.'” Well, if we are so busy fueling the self-expression of all those around us, where are we? We see a goal and coax others to want that goal, but ourselves are left behind in the dust of their ascent.

Part Two. Six Ways to Make People Like You
(well, I feel quarrelsome just reading that. If everyone likes you there's something wrong with your self-expression, because in being all things to all people there is no room left to be yourself.)

1. Become genuinely interested in other people.
All well and good, except he makes the cynical point “People are not interested in you. They are not interested in me. They are interested in themselves–morning, noon, and after dinner.” So we are to figure out some way to become genuinely interested in others, to be silent when they talk, to encourage them always to express themselves around us.

2. Smile
Please do!

3. Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
Helpful, but not the “sweetest sound” he claims. It's nice to remember names, but that honestly doesn't influence me much. I wonder if other people are more influenced by this, and I'm just some sort of anomaly? When I'm at work and someone comes through my checkout line, if it's a stranger I don't know, I'm not at all tempted to give them a bigger drink than they paid for because they say my name. Really, that's creepy...being nice to me doesn't entitle them to more of the company's food than they paid for, anyway. It isn't my food to give away.

4. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
This one's easy...Other people's lives are just interesting. A side effect of being a hopeful novelist.

5. Talk in terms of other people's interests.
This creeps back towards flattery and worse. “You want me to be your friend because I can do thus and so for you.” Isn't that just asking others to exploit your talents? I don't want friends who want me only on the basis of what I can do for them. When seeking a job, yes. But not when seeking friends.

6. Make the other person feel important–and do it sincerely.
This reminded me of an Andy Griffith show I saw recently on Netflix. Aunt Bee makes horrible pickles, but Andy and Barney are determined to not make her feel bad. After going to great and hilarious lengths of deception, they are left doomed to eat a double batch of bad pickles. They were sincere in their desire to please Aunt Bee because they could recognize she'd worked hard on those pickles. But it didn't rebound in their favor. They were insincere and deceptive in their effort to reward her for her work.
Making others feel important isn't going to automatically result in a handout of exactly what you wanted. This action, done in order to gain a goal (as shown in the examples), is risky indeed, and oftentimes even deceptive.

....out of time....more tomorrow and later on my blog...including “Carnegie's book in light of Scripture.”