How to Win Friends and Influence People

Notes from the classic book: How to Win Friends and Influence People

Fundamental Techniques And Handling People.

1. Don't criticize, condemn, or complain.
   • You cannot win an argument.
   • Instead of condemning people, try to understand them.
2. Give honest and sincere appreciation.
   • Things most people want include:
     • Health and the preservation of life
     • Food
     • Sleep
     • Money and the things money will buy
     • Life in the hereafter
     • Sexual gratification
     • The well-being of our children
     • A feeling of importance
3. Arouse in the other person an eager want.
   • Work to develop an increased tendency to think always in terms of other people's point of view and to see things from their angle.

6 Ways To Make People Like You.

1. Become genuinely interested in other people
   • "It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring." - Alfred Adler
2. Smile
   • "A man without a smiling face must not open a shop." - Chinese proverb
3. Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
   • The name will work magic as we deal with others.
4. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
   • To be a good conversationalist, be an attentive listener.
   • To be interesting, be interested.
   • "Remember that the people you are talking to are a hundred times more interested in themselves and their wants and problems than they are in you and your problems."
5. Talk in terms of the other person's interests.
   • See things from the other person's point of view
6. Make the other person feel important and do it sincerely.

How To Win People To Your Way Of Thinking.

1. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
   • How to Keep a Disagreement from Becoming an Argument:
     • Welcome the disagreement
     • Distrust your first instinctive impression
       • Our first natural reaction in a disagreeable situation is to be defensive
     • Control your temper
       • You can measure the size of a person by what makes him or her angry
     • Listen first
       • Give your opponents a chance to talk. Let them finish, do not resist, defend or debate
     • Look for areas of agreement
     • Be honest
       • Look for areas where you can admit error and say so
     • Promise to think over your opponent's ideas and study them carefully
     • Thank your opponents sincerely for their interest.
       • Anyone who takes the time to disagree with you is interested in the same things you are.
     • Post phone action to give both sides time to think through the problem.
2. Show respect for the other person's opinions. Never say, "you're wrong."
   • Don't argue with your customer or your spouse or your adversary. Don't tell them they are wrong. Don't get them stirred up. Use a little diplomacy.
3. If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
   • When we are right, let's try to win people gently and tactfully to our way of thinking. And when we are wrong, let's admit our mistakes quickly and with enthusiasm.
4. Begin in a friendly way.
   • "The sun can make you take off your coat more quickly than the wind. And kindliness, the friendly approach and appreciation can make people change their minds more readily than all the bluster and storming in the world." - Aesop
   • "A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall." - Abraham Lincoln
5. Get the other person saying, "yes, yes," immediately.
   • The Socratic Method is based on getting a "yes, yes" response. Socrates asked questions in which his opponent would have to agree. He kept on winning one admission after another until he had an arm full of yeses. He kept asking questions until finally almost without realizing his opponents found themselves embracing a conclusion that they would have denied a few minutes previously.
   • "He who tread softly goes far." - Chinese proverb
6. Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
   • "If you want enemies, excel (one-up) your friends. But if you want friends, let your friends excel you." - La Rochefoucauld
     • When our friends one-up us, they feel important. But when we one-up them, they, or at least some of them, will feel inferior and envious.
7. Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.
   • "No one likes to feel that he or she is being sold something or told to do something. We much prefer to feel that we are buying of our own accord or acting on our own ideas. We like to be consulted about our wishes, our wants, our thoughts."
8. Try honestly to see things from the other person's point of view.
9. Be sympathetic with the other person's ideas and desires.
   • The human species universally craves sympathy. If you want to win people to your way of thinking, put this into practice.
10. Appeal to the nobler motives.
    • All of us being idealists at heart like to think of motives that sound good. So in order to change people, appeal to the nobler motives.
    • Assume the best in people - that people are honest, upright, and fair.
11. Dramatize your ideas.
    • Use objects lessons; dramatize for effects
12. Throw down a challenge.
    • This is what every successful person loves: the game.
      • The chance for self-expression, the chance to prove his or her worth, to excel to win. The desire for a feeling of importance.

Be A Leader - How To Change People Without Giving Offense Or Arousing Resentment

1. Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
2. Call attention to people's mistakes indirectly.
   • An effective way to correct other's mistakes
3. Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.
4. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
5. Let the other person save face.
6. Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be "hearty in an approbation and lavish in your praise."
   • "We all crave appreciation and recognition, and we'll do almost anything to get it, but nobody wants insincerity. Nobody wants flattery."
   • Abilities whither under criticism; they blossom under encouragement.
7. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
   • Give a dog a bad name and you may as well hang him, but give him a good name and see what happens!
8. Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
9. Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest. When necessary to change attitudes or behavior:
   1. Be sincere.
      • Do not promise anything that you cannot deliver. Forget about the benefits to yourself and concentrate on the benefits to the other person.
   2. Know exactly what it is you want the other person to do.
   3. Be empathetic. Ask yourself what it is the other person really wants.
   4. Consider the benefits that person will receive from doing what you suggest.
   5. Match those benefits to the other person's wants.
   6. When you make your request, put it in a form that will convey to the other person the idea that he personally will benefit.

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