How to Win Friends and Influence People

But familiarity and changes in fashion can't overcome the appeal of this well-written, charming book. Carnegie is a skilled writer – he could teach many present-day business authors a thing or two about putting a sentence together or holding reader interest over the course of a book. And, despite its age, the book reads fresh, not musty. The most recent edition has been carefully edited to omit dated references, while at the same time preserving Carnegie's gentle story-telling voice.

Who, then, would be interested? Just those who are forced to make their way in a world dominated by people – that is to say, most anyone. But it will be especially interesting to people who often find themselves involved in personality clashes. This book delivers practical strategies for taking the edge off conflicts – while still getting what you want.

So listen up and find out what's in a name (a lot, apparently); learn why a little drama can help you get your way; and hear how to criticize – and not be hated for it.

Before we plunge into the details of this famous book, let's look at its author for a moment. He shares a surname with Andrew Carnegie, the Scots-born industrialist who made a vast fortune after founding the US Steel company in the early nineteen hundreds. Over the decades, many have assumed that Dale Carnegie is somehow related to Andrew, that the author owed at least some of his success to his association with, if not the benevolence of, the steel magnate.

In reality, the two men were wholly unrelated. Dale Carnegie was born a farmer's son in an impoverished area of the United States. He rose to fame by the sweat of his own brow, unaided by any significant family fortune. Early in his career he worked successfully as a salesman – and then less so as an actor. He found his calling as a teacher of public speaking in 1915. From there, he skillfully created a career for himself helping people gain confidence and build skills for career advancement. And this eventually led him to help create the publishing phenomenon that Mind Tools Book Insights are designed to help you digest: the self-help business book.

Ironically, Carnegie's first breakthrough as a public-speaking teacher involved using anger as a tool. When he told students to "speak about something that makes you angry," he found that even the shiest could harangue a crowd when lashed into a fury.

By the time he wrote "How to Win Friends," Carnegie was singing a different tune. He argued that we should communicate from a place of calm, always with the other person's perspective in mind.

As if to confirm the old maxim that you "draw more flies with honey than with vinegar," Carnegie rode that gentle message to massive success. The book became an instant sensation, and has never been out of print in seventy years. Altogether, it has sold some 15 million copies – more than any other self-help business book.

What, then, is all the fuss about? The book is structured very much like a modern-day business manual. It's broken into four parts, each consisting of several chapters. Part one concerns fundamental techniques for handling people. Part two looks at ways to make people like you. Part three deals with influence – winning people over to your way of thinking. The fourth and final part covers leadership – how to lead people without arousing resentment.

The first section sets the tone for the book. Carnegie opens with a devastating critique of unadorned criticism. In short, it simply doesn't work. He identifies what he sees as a key aspect of human nature: People resist taking responsibility for their failures. And when you confront them with evidence of their shortcomings, they only dig deeper into denial. Carnegie cites the example of infamous criminals of his day – men who clung to inflated images of themselves that they really believed, even after conviction and imprisonment.

Carnegie isn't arguing against punishing dangerous criminals. Rather, he merely wants to make the point that harsh criticism rarely inspires people to change their ways. When someone is performing horribly, merely telling them that they're performing horribly is unlikely to inspire them to improve. If you really want to influence their behavior, you'll have to try something else – and that's precisely the topic of the rest of the book.

Though brutally honest criticism is likely to backfire, honest praise is a different story. Carnegie discourages flattery, which he defines as insincere praise, on the grounds that it merely makes people doubt your motives. But a genuine compliment for a job well done goes a long way. Previewing the craze for "positive feedback" by decades, Carnegie saw honest compliments as a way to spread goodwill and improve employee loyalty. Citing psychological studies from his time, Carnegie claims that the need to feel important largely motivates human behavior – and compliments help people feel important.

In another move that would prove a durable feature of business books into the current century, Carnegie likes to quote major business leaders to back up his arguments. Here are some that he cites.

The author's namesake, the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, was evidently a great giver of compliments. He even dished out praise from the grave. His tombstone reads: "Here lies one who knew how to get around him men who were more clever than himself." The great oilman John D. Rockefeller, too, understood the value of a well-timed compliment. Once, a talented protégé lost a million dollars on a bad business investment. Rather than risk ruining the man's confidence with a blunt confrontation, Rockefeller found something to compliment. He praised him for managing to preserve sixty percent of the investment, and pointed out that profitability requires risk. The protégé eventually took over Rockefeller's company, Standard Oil.

In Part Two, the author turns his attention to "ways of making people like you" – the "how to win friends" part of the book. This section will be read intently by anyone who regularly comes into close social contact with strangers. Say you find yourself sitting next to someone you never met before at a business dinner. What can you possibly talk to him about? Dale Carnegie wouldn't hesitate: Talk to the stranger about himself – and take a genuine interest.

But when you're doing so, wipe that tense grimace off your face. It may sound trite, but Carnegie makes a point worth being reminded of: No one likes a sourpuss. A smile won't cost a thing, and can bring genuine dividends.

His third tip is also both commonplace and important to remember: pay attention to people's names. Carnegie tells us that a person's name is the sweetest and most important sound in any language. Many of us instantly forget people's names if we don't make a point of remembering them. In a bit of advice that must have been new in Carnegie's time, he urges us to concentrate on forming mental images to associate names with faces when we first meet people.

His next piece of advice is honored by too many of us only in the breach: Learn to listen. According to Carnegie, listening intently with genuine interest is a sure-fire way of getting yourself labeled a "good conversationalist." He tells the story of the time he sat next to a famed botanist at a dinner party. Carnegie indulged his interest in botany by peppering the man with questions and listening to his extended answers. Carnegie said not one word about himself. Later, he was surprised to hear that the man had labeled him "most stimulating," and a "fascinating fellow."

The next tip follows along the same line of thinking: Choose topics based on other people's interests. Figure out what people are passionate about – what makes them "tick" – and turn the conversation in that direction. When people talk about things that excite them, they become more animated and interesting – and you learn more about them.

The final tip of this section sums up the others: Make people feel important and appreciated. Whether you're dealing with a taxi driver, a direct report, or even your boss, you can let the person know that you think they matter. And by doing so, you'll earn their good will.

In the third section, the book shifts from friendship to influence. Here, Carnegie rolls out a kind of martial arts-style theory of human relations: Winning through skillful non-aggression. His first principle sets the tone: You can't win an argument. If someone takes a position that you find ridiculous, don't say you find it ridiculous. Rather than reconsider their position, they'll defend it. And the more you counter them, the deeper in they'll dig. When an argument erupts, everyone loses. The only way to win an argument, Carnegie concludes, is to avoid it.

And while Carnegie advises against calling other people out on their mistakes, he wants you to be open about your own. In short, if you blunder, admit it. When someone confronts you, nothing disarms them quicker than the words: I was wrong.

But if you avoid conflict by biting your tongue and admitting your own mistakes, how can you get your way? To quote the old song, try a little tenderness. Say a direct report gets an idea you know to be horrible. Rather than saying, what a horrible idea, open with something nice. Find something in the idea you found workable, and praise him for it. Your praise will prepare him for the next bit: The ways you think his idea could be even better. If you had opened with a harsh criticism, you'd risk having a resentful employee on your hands. If you start gently, you might just get an employee who's energized to improve.

Carnegie refines this point by suggesting that we start tense interactions by looking for a "yes" – any "yes." In other words, start conversations by pointing to common ground – no matter how slender it might be. Once you get them saying "yes" on the small stuff, you stand a much better chance of gaining agreement on bigger issues.

And when things do get tense, Carnegie offers a safety valve: silence. Let the other person say his piece, air his grievance. If they feel they've been heard out and listened to respectfully, they'll be more ready to come round willingly to your view.

His next suggestion will be particularly useful when you find yourself more interested in winning a point than in gaining credit for being right. In such situations, once you've heard your opponent out and gently nudged them to take your viewpoint, let them think the idea was theirs in the first place. If you don't care about taking credit, what's to lose? When people claim an idea, they're more inclined to execute it and defend it.

In his next tip, Carnegie urges us to step back during an argument and really consider the other person's point of view. Not only does this require that we hear the other person out, but it also gives us insight into their motivations. Are they clashing with us because they're stupid or greedy – or do they have a legitimate complaint? You won't know until you hear them out. And when you do, you'll be in a better position to respond persuasively.

Finally, when making your own case, dramatize your own ideas. Don't just tell – show as well, Carnegie asserts. While this idea has since been well-established, the examples Carnegie brings to bear seem a little dated. He cites the story of a cash-register salesman who had trouble selling new machines to a shop owner. His sales pitch: You're losing pennies on every transaction. To dramatize his point, he threw a fist full of pennies onto the floor. In Carnegie's day, the stunt caused the shop owner to relent and buy the new machines. In our own time, he might be more likely to call for security and have the man taken away.

Carnegies devotes his final section to leadership – "how to change people without giving offense or arousing suspicion." By the time we reach this bit, we've pretty much figured out what Carnegie has to say – he's going to advise us to pursue our interests gently but diligently, to respect other people, to consider their feelings and take care not to arouse them against us.

If we must find fault, Carnegie tells us, do so not with a hammer but rather with a velvet glove. Start with praise, and then move gently into criticism. For example, say your secretary consistently makes errors in punctuation when you dictate emails. You might tell her, "You've taken my words down very accurately, and I appreciate it. But we need to work a bit on punctuation. Do you see this comma here?"

Carnegie reminds us of the old saying: A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.

Another way to effectively get across criticism without causing harsh feelings is to start with self-criticism. This method helps the people around you understand that you're not attacking them or insulting them. Quite the contrary, you simply want the job done well, and are confident they can do it – just as you learned to.

To go back to the punctuation example, you might say, "I myself am dreadful at punctuation – and I've lost some large accounts over the gaffes I've made! To improve, I've been studying this book. Here – see what it says about commas?"

All in all, the lessons of this book are almost always well-taken, but not without a grain of salt. Sure, it's best to avoid conflict when possible – but it's not always possible.

There are times when it's best to win friends and influence people by gentle persuasion, and Dale Carnegie literally wrote the book to guide us through those times. Other times, we may need to be more aggressive. Here, our best guide may not be gentle old Carnegie, but rather, the modern-day business celebrity Donald Trump. He's fond of a useful phrase that might make Carnegie blanche: "You're fired." It won't win any friends, but it's been proven to influence people.

"How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie is published in hardback by Pocket Books.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights.