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How To Win Friends and Influence People

I just finished reading “How To Win Friends and Influence People” by dale Carnegie. It’s an excellent book and showed me several places where I need to improve in interacting with others.

The book is written in chunks, with each chunk (chapters really) elaborating on a principle. I listed these principle (and their corresponding sections) below for your enjoyment. If anyone has read it, I’d be interested in your thoughts as well.

Fundamental Techniques in Handling People

  1. Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.
  2. Give honest and sincere appreciation.
  3. Arouse in the other person an eager want.

Six ways to make people like you

  1. Become genuinely interested in other people.
  2. Smile.
  3. Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
  4. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
  5. Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
  6. Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.

Win people to your way of thinking

  1. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
  2. Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say, “You’re wrong.”
  3. If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
  4. Begin in a friendly way.
  5. Get the other person saying “yes, yes” immediately.
  6. Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
  7. Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.
  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.
  10. Appeal to the nobler motives.
  11. Dramatize your ideas.
  12. Throw down a challenge.

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.
  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 your approbation and lavish in your praise.”
  7. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
  8. Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
  9. Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.

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Kim Siever

Queer Mormon poet with radical political views. I have been married 27 years, and we have 6 children. Sunday school president. Served in the Utah Provo Mission.

4 thoughts on “How To Win Friends and Influence People”

  1. I read HTWFAIP a while back.

    There’s just something in the approach that comes off as less than genuine with the whole book.

    ‘Smarmy’ was the first word that comes to mind, thinking back.

    Maybe if the book didn’t approach every situation like a used car salesman, I’d have appreciated it more.

  2. There are a few of the stories I didn’t like, thinking they seemed insincere, but I think the book still has some value in its overall message.

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