How To Win Friends And Influence People

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The next time we are tempted to admonish somebody, /let's pull afficeffice" />

five-dollar bill out of our pocket, look at Lincoln's picture on the bill,

and ask. "How would Lincoln handle this problem if he had it?"

Mark Twain lost his temper occasionally and wrote letters that turned

the Paper brown. For example, he once wrote to a man who had

aroused his ire: "The thing for you is a burial permit. You have only

to speak and I will see that you get it." On another occasion he

wrote to an editor about a proofreader's attempts to "improve my

spelling and punctuation." He ordered: "Set the matter according to

my copy hereafter and see that the proofreader retains his

suggestions in the mush of his decayed brain."

The writing of these stinging letters made Mark Twain feel better.

They allowed him to blow off steam, and the letters didn't do any

real harm, because Mark's wife secretly lifted them out of the mail.

They were never sent.

Do you know someone you would like to change and regulate and

improve? Good! That is fine. I am all in favor of it, But why not begin

on yourself? From a purely selfish standpoint, that is a lot more

profitable than trying to improve others - yes, and a lot less

dangerous. "Don't complain about the snow on your neighbor's roof,"

said Confucius, "when your own doorstep is unclean."

When I was still young and trying hard to impress people, I wrote a

foolish letter to Richard Harding Davis, an author who once loomed

large on the literary horizon of America. I was preparing a magazine

article about authors, and I asked Davis to tell me about his method

of work. A few weeks earlier, I had received a letter from someone

with this notation at the bottom: "Dictated but not read." I was quite

impressed. I felt that the writer must be very big and busy and

important. I wasn't the slightest bit busy, but I was eager to make

an impression on Richard Harding Davis, so I ended my short note

with the words: "Dictated but not read."

He never troubled to answer the letter. He simply returned it to me

with this scribbled across the bottom: "Your bad manners are

exceeded only by your bad manners." True, I had blundered, and

perhaps I deserved this rebuke. But, being human, I resented it. I

resented it so sharply that when I read of the death of Richard

Harding Davis ten years later, the one thought that still persisted in

my mind - I am ashamed to admit - was the hurt he had given me.

If you and I want to stir up a resentment tomorrow that may rankle

across the decades and endure until death, just let us indulge in a

little stinging criticism-no matter how certain we are that it is

justified.

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When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing withfficeffice" />

creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion,

creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.

Bitter criticism caused the sensitive Thomas Hardy, one of the finest

novelists ever to enrich English literature, to give up forever the

writing of fiction. Criticism drove Thomas Chatterton, the English

poet, to suicide.

Benjamin Franklin, tactless in his youth, became so diplomatic, so

adroit at handling people, that he was made American Ambassador

to France. The secret of his success? "I will speak ill of no man," he

said, " . . and speak all the good I know of everybody."

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain - and most fools do.

But it takes character and self-control to be under-standing and

forgiving.

"A great man shows his greatness," said Carlyle, "by the way he

treats little men."

Bob Hoover, a famous test pilot and frequent per-former at air

shows, was returning to his home in Los Angeles from an air show in

San Diego. As described in the magazine Flight Operations, at three

hundred feet in the air, both engines suddenly stopped. By deft

maneuvering he managed to land the plane, but it was badly

damaged although nobody was hurt.

Hoover's first act after the emergency landing was to inspect the

airplane's fuel. Just as he suspected, the World War II propeller

plane he had been flying had been fueled with jet fuel rather than

gasoline.

Upon returning to the airport, he asked to see the mechanic who had

serviced his airplane. The young man was sick with the agony of his

mistake. Tears streamed down his face as Hoover approached. He

had just caused the loss of a very expensive plane and could have

caused the loss of three lives as well.

You can imagine Hoover's anger. One could anticipate the tonguelashing that this proud and precise pilot would unleash for that

carelessness. But Hoover didn't scold the mechanic; he didn't even

criticize him. Instead, he put his big arm around the man's shoulder

and said, "To show you I'm sure that you'll never do this again, I

want you to service my F-51 tomorrow."

Often parents are tempted to criticize their children. You would

expect me to say "don't." But I will not, I am merely going to say,

"Before you criticize them, read one of the classics of American

journalism, 'Father Forgets.' " It originally appeared as an editorial in

the People's Home Journnl. We are reprinting it here with the

author's permission, as condensed in the Reader's Digest:

"Father Forgets" is one of those little pieces which-dashed of in a

moment of sincere feeling - strikes an echoing chord in so many

readers as to become a perenial reprint favorite. Since its first

appearance, "Father Forgets" has been reproduced, writes the

author, W, Livingston Larned, "in hundreds of magazines and house

organs, and in newspapers the country over. It has been reprinted

almost as extensively in many foreign languages. I have given

personal permission to thousands who wished to read it from school,

church, and lecture platforms. It has been 'on the air' on countless

occasions and programs. Oddly enough, college periodicals have

used it, and high-school magazines. Sometimes a little piece seems

mysteriously to 'click.' This one certainly did."

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FATHER FORGETS W. Livingston Larnedfficeffice" />

Listen, son: I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little paw

crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily wet on your

damp forehead. I have stolen into your room alone. Just a few

minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a stifling wave

of remorse swept over me. Guiltily I came to your bedside.

There are the things I was thinking, son: I had been cross to you. I

scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your

face merely a dab with a towel. I took you to task for not cleaning

your shoes. I called out angrily when you threw some of your things

on the floor.

At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You gulped down

your food. You put your elbows on the table. You spread butter too

thick on your bread. And as you started off to play and I made for

my train, you turned and waved a hand and called, "Goodbye,

Daddy!" and I frowned, and said in reply, "Hold your shoulders

back!"

Then it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I came up the

road I spied you, down on your knees, playing marbles. There were

holes in your stockings. I humiliated you before your boyfriends by

marching you ahead of me to the house. Stockings were expensive -

and if you had to

buy them you would be more careful! Imagine that, son, from a

father!

Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library, how you

came in timidly, with a sort of hurt look in your eyes? When I

glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption, you

hesitated at the door. "What is it you want?" I snapped.

You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous plunge, and

threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, and your small

arms tightened with an affection that God had set blooming in your

heart and which even neglect could not wither. And then you were

gone, pattering up the stairs.

Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from my

hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What has habit

been doing to me? The habit of finding fault, of reprimanding - this

was my reward to you for being a boy. It was not that I did not love

you; it was that I expected too much of youth. I was measuring you

by the yardstick of my own years.

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And there was so much that was good and fine and true in yourfficeffice" />

character. The little heart of you was as big as the dawn itself over

the wide hills. This was shown by your spontaneous impulse to rush

in and kiss me good night. Nothing else matters tonight, son. I have

come to your bed-side in the darkness, and I have knelt there,

ashamed!

It is a feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these

things if I told them to you during your waking hours. But tomorrow

I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, and suffer when you

suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when

impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: "He is

nothing but a boy - a little boy!"

I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see you now,

son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are still a baby.

Yesterday you were in your mother's arms, your head on her

shoulder. I have asked too much, too much.

Instead of condemning people, let's try to understand them. Let's try

to figure out why they do what they do. That's a lot more profitable

and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and

kindness. "To know all is to forgive all."

As Dr. Johnson said: "God himself, sir, does not propose to judge

man until the end of his days."

Why should you and I?

• Principle 1 - Don't criticize, condemn or complain.

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2 - The Big Secret Of Dealing With People

There is only one way under high heaven to get anybody to do

anything. Did you ever stop to think of that? Yes, just one way. And

that is by making the other person want to do it.

Remember, there is no other way.

Of course, you can make someone want to give you his watch by

sticking a revolver in his ribs. YOU can make your employees give

you cooperation - until your back is turned - by threatening to fire

them. You can make a child do what you want it to do by a whip or a

threat. But these crude methods have sharply undesirable

repercussions.

The only way I can get you to do anything is by giving you what you

want.

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What do you want?fficeffice" />

Sigmund Freud said that everything you and I do springs from two

motives: the sex urge and the desire to be great.

John Dewey, one of America's most profound philosophers, phrased

it a bit differently. Dr. Dewey said that the deepest urge in human

nature is "the desire to be important." Remember that phrase: "the

desire to be important." It is significant. You are going to hear a lot

about it in this book.

What do you want? Not many things, but the few that you do wish,

you crave with an insistence that will not be denied. Some of the

things most people want include:

1. Health and the preservation of life. 2. Food. 3. Sleep. 4. Money

and the things money will buy. 5. Life in the hereafter. 6. Sexual

gratification. 7. The well-being of our children. 8. A feeling of

importance.

Almost all these wants are usually gratified-all except one. But there

is one longing - almost as deep, almost as imperious, as the desire

for food or sleep - which is seldom gratified. It is what Freud calls

"the desire to be great." It is what Dewey calls the "desire to be

important."

Lincoln once began a letter saying: "Everybody likes a compliment."

William James said: "The deepest principle in human nature is the

craving to be appreciated." He didn't speak, mind you, of the "wish"

or the "desire" or the "longing" to be appreciated. He said the

"craving" to be appreciated.

Here is a gnawing and unfaltering human hunger, and the rare

individual who honestly satisfies this heart hunger will hold people in

the palm of his or her hand and "even the undertaker will be sorry

when he dies."

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The desire for a feeling of importance is one of the chieffficeffice" />

distinguishing differences between mankind and the animals. To

illustrate: When I was a farm boy out in Missouri, my father bred fine

Duroc-Jersey hogs and . pedigreed white - faced cattle. We used to

exhibit our hogs and white-faced cattle at the country fairs and livestock shows throughout the Middle West. We won first prizes by the

score. My father pinned his blue ribbons on a sheet of white muslin,

and when friends or visitors came to the house, he would get out the

long sheet of muslin. He would hold one end and I would hold the

other while he exhibited the blue ribbons.

The hogs didn't care about the ribbons they had won. But Father did.

These prizes gave him a feeling of importance.

If our ancestors hadn't had this flaming urge for a feeling of

importance, civilization would have been impossible. Without it, we

should have been just about like animals.

It was this desire for a feeling of importance that led an uneducated,

poverty-stricken grocery clerk to study some law books he found in

the bottom of a barrel of household plunder that he had bought for

fifty cents. You have probably heard of this grocery clerk. His name

was Lincoln.

It was this desire for a feeling of importance that inspired Dickens to

write his immortal novels. This desire inspired Sir Christoper Wren to

design his symphonies in stone. This desire made Rockefeller amass

millions that he never spent! And this same desire made the richest

family in your town build a house far too large for its requirements.

This desire makes you want to wear the latest styles, drive the latest

cars, and talk about your brilliant children.

It is this desire that lures many boys and girls into joining gangs and

engaging in criminal activities. The average young criminal,

according to E. P. Mulrooney, onetime police commissioner of New

York, is filled with ego, and his first request after arrest is for those

lurid newspapers that make him out a hero. The disagreeable

prospect of serving time seems remote so long as he can gloat over

his likeness sharing space with pictures of sports figures, movie and

TV stars and politicians.

If you tell me how you get your feeling of importance, I'll tell you

what you are. That determines your character. That is the most

significant thing about you. For example, John D. Rockefeller got his

feeling of importance by giving money to erect a modern hospital in

Peking, China, to care for millions of poor people whom he had never

seen and never would see. Dillinger, on the other hand, got his

feeling of importance by being a bandit, a bank robber and killer.

When the FBI agents were hunting him, he dashed into a farmhouse

up in Minnesota and said, "I'm Dillinger!" He was proud of the fact

that he was Public Enemy Number One. "I'm not going to hurt you,

but I'm Dillinger!" he said.

Yes, the one significant difference between Dillinger and Rockefeller

is how they got their feeling of importance.

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History sparkles with amusing examples of famous people strugglingfficeffice" />

for a feeling of importance. Even George Washington wanted to be

called "His Mightiness, the President of the United States"; and

Columbus pleaded for the title "Admiral of the Ocean and Viceroy of

India." Catherine the Great refused to open letters that were not

addressed to "Her Imperial Majesty"; and Mrs. Lincoln, in the White

House, turned upon Mrs. Grant like a tigress and shouted, "How dare

you be seated in my presence until I invite you!"

Our millionaires helped finance Admiral Byrd's expedition to the

Antarctic in 1928 with the understanding that ranges of icy

mountains would be named after them; and Victor Hugo aspired to

have nothing less than the city of Paris renamed in his honor. Even

Shakespeare, mightiest of the mighty, tried to add luster to his name

by procuring a coat of arms for his family.

People sometimes became invalids in order to win sympathy and

attention, and get a feeling of importance. For example, take Mrs.

McKinley. She got a feeling of importance by forcing her husband,

the President of the United States, to neglect important affairs of

state while he reclined on the bed beside her for hours at a time, his

arm about her, soothing her to sleep. She fed her gnawing desire for

attention by insisting that he remain with her while she was having

her teeth fixed, and once created a stormy scene when he had to

leave her alone with the dentist while he kept an appointment with

John Hay, his secretary of state.

The writer Mary Roberts Rinehart once told me of a bright, vigorous

young woman who became an invalid in order to get a feeling of

importance. "One day," said Mrs. Rinehart, "this woman had been

obliged to face something, her age perhaps. The lonely years were

stretching ahead and there was little left for her to anticipate.

"She took to her bed; and for ten years her old mother traveled to

the third floor and back, carrying trays, nursing her. Then one day

the old mother, weary with service, lay down and died. For some

weeks, the invalid languished; then she got up, put on her clothing,

and resumed living again."

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Some authorities declare that people may actually go insane in orderfficeffice" />

to find, in the dreamland of insanity, the feeling of importance that

has been denied them in the harsh world of reality. There are more

patients suffering from mental diseases in the United States than

from all other diseases combined.

What is the cause of insanity?

Nobody can answer such a sweeping question, but we know that

certain diseases, such as syphilis, break down and destroy the brain

cells and result in insanity. In fact, about one-half of all mental

diseases can be attributed to such physical causes as brain lesions,

alcohol, toxins and injuries. But the other half - and this is the

appalling part of the story - the other half of the people who go

insane apparently have nothing organically wrong with their brain

cells. In post-mortem examinations, when their brain tissues are

studied under the highest-powered microscopes, these tissues are

found to be apparently just as healthy as yours and mine.

Why do these people go insane?

I put that question to the head physician of one of our most

important psychiatric hospitals. This doctor, who has received the

highest honors and the most coveted awards for his knowledge of

this subject, told me frankly that he didn't know why people went

insane. 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. Then he told me this story:

"I have a patient right now whose marriage proved to be a tragedy.

She wanted love, sexual gratification, children and social prestige,

but life blasted all her hopes. Her husband didn't love her. He

refused even to eat with her and forced her to serve his meals in his

room upstairs. She had no children, no social standing. She went

insane; and, in her imagination, she divorced her husband and

resumed her maiden name. She now believes she has married into

English aristocracy, and she insists on being called Lady Smith.

"And as for children, she imagines now that she has had a new child

every night. Each time I call on her she says: 'Doctor, I had a baby

last night.' "

Life once wrecked all her dream ships on the sharp rocks of reality;

but in the sunny, fantasy isles of insanity, all her barkentines race

into port with canvas billowing and winds singing through the masts.

" Tragic? Oh, I don't know. Her physician said to me: If I could

stretch out my hand and restore her sanity, I wouldn't do it. She's

much happier as she is."

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If some people are so hungry for a feeling of importance that theyfficeffice" />

actually go insane to get it, imagine what miracle you and I can

achieve by giving people honest appreciation this side of insanity.

One of the first people in American business to be paid a salary of

over a million dollars a year (when there was no income tax and a

person earning fifty dollars a week was considered well off) was

Charles Schwab, He had been picked by Andrew Carnegie to become

the first president of the newly formed United States Steel Company

in 1921, when Schwab was only thirty-eight years old. (Schwab later

left U.S. Steel to take over the then-troubled Bethlehem Steel

Company, and he rebuilt it into one of the most profitable companies

in America.)

Why did Andrew Carnegie pay a million dollars a year, or more than

three thousand dollars a day, to Charles Schwab? Why? Because

Schwab was a genius? No. Because he knew more about the

manufacture of steel than other people? Nonsense. Charles Schwab

told me himself that he had many men working for him who knew

more about the manufacture of steel than he did.

Schwab says that he was paid this salary largely because of his

ability to deal with people. I asked him how he did it. Here is his

secret set down in his own words - words that ought to be cast in

eternal bronze and hung in every home and school, every shop and

office in the land - words that children ought to memorize instead of

wasting their time memorizing the conjugation of Latin verbs or the

amount of the annual rainfall in Brazil - words that will all but

transform your life and mine if we will only live them:

"I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people," said

Schwab, "the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the

best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement.

"There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a person as

criticisms from superiors. I never criticize any-one. I believe in giving

a person incentive to work. So I am anxious to praise but loath to

find fault. If I like anything, I am hearty in my approbation and lavish

in my praise. "

That is what Schwab did. But what do average people do? The exact

opposite. If they don't like a thing, they bawl out their subordinates;

if they do like it, they say nothing. As the old couplet says: "Once I

did bad and that I heard ever/Twice I did good, but that I heard

never."

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"In my wide association in life, meeting with many and great peoplefficeffice" />

in various parts of the world," Schwab declared, "I have yet to find

the person, however great or exalted his station, who did not do

better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval

than he would ever do under a spirit of criticism."

That he said, frankly, was one of the outstanding reasons for the

phenomenal success of Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie praised his

associates publicly as well as pr-vately.

Carnegie wanted to praise his assistants even on his tombstone. He

wrote an epitaph for himself which read: "Here lies one who knew

how to get around him men who were cleverer than himself:"

Sincere appreciation was one of the secrets of the first John D.

Rockefeller's success in handling men. For example, when one of his

partners, Edward T. Bedford, lost a million dollars for the firm by a

bad buy in South America, John D. might have criticized; but he

knew Bedford had done his best - and the incident was closed. So

Rockefeller found something to praise; he congratulated Bedford

because he had been able to save 60 percent of the money he had

invested. "That's splendid," said Rockefeller. "We don't always do as

well as that upstairs."

I have among my clippings a story that I know never happened, but

it illustrates a truth, so I'll repeat it:

According to this silly story, a farm woman, at the end of a heavy

day's work, set before her menfolks a heaping pile of hay. And when

they indignantly demanded whether she had gone crazy, she replied:

"Why, how did I know you'd notice? I've been cooking for you men

for the last twenty years and in all that time I ain't heard no word to

let me know you wasn't just eating hay."

When a study was made a few years ago on runaway wives, what do

you think was discovered to be the main reason wives ran away? It

was "lack of appreciation." And I'd bet that a similar study made of

runaway husbands would come out the same way. We often take our

spouses so much for granted that we never let them know we

appreciate them.

A member of one of our classes told of a request made by his wife.

She and a group of other women in her church were involved in a

self-improvement program. She asked her husband to help her by

listing six things he believed she could do to help her become a

better wife. He reported to the class: "I was surprised by such a

request. Frankly, it would have been easy for me to list six things I

would like to change about her - my heavens, she could have listed a

thousand things she would like to change about me - but I didn't. I

said to her, 'Let me think about it and give you an answer in the

morning.'

"The next morning I got up very early and called the florist and had

them send six red roses to my wife with a note saying: 'I can't think

of six things I would like to change about you. I love you the way

you are.'

"When I arrived at home that evening, who do you think greeted me

at the door: That's right. My wife! She was almost in tears. Needless

to say, I was extremely glad I had not criticized her as she had

requested.