The Clare Spark Blog

Here is how Wikipedia summarized the main points in Dale Carnegie’s famous and hugely successful book How To Win Friends and Influence People (1936). My first impression upon reading the summary was: this is how I was raised as a woman, to be above all a good listener, empathic, a flatterer, and non-combative. At the end of the summary, I will guess to whom the book was directed, and how Carnegie envisioned leadership and success in America.

[Wiki summary:]

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 him or her, the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
4. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
5. Talk in the terms of the other person’s interest.
6. Make the other person feel important and do it sincerely.

Twelve Ways to Win People to Your Way of Thinking

1. Avoid arguments.
2. Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never tell someone that he or she is wrong.
3. If you’re wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
4. Begin in a friendly way.
5. Start with questions to which the other person will answer yes.
6. Let the other person do the talking.
7. Let the other person feel the idea is his/hers.
8. Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.
9. Sympathize with the other person.
10. Appeal to noble motives.
11. Dramatize your ideas.
12. Throw down a challenge; don’t talk negatively when a person is absent; talk only about the positive.

 Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment

1. Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
2. Call attention to other people’s mistakes indirectly.
3. Talk about your own mistakes first.
4. Ask questions instead of directly giving orders.
5. Let the other person save face.
6. Praise every improvement.
7. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
8. Encourage them by making their faults seem easy to correct.
9. Make the other person happy about doing what you suggest.

 Seven Rules For Making your Home Life Happier

1. Don’t nag.
2. Don’t try to make your partner over.
3. Don’t criticize.
4. Give honest appreciation.
5. Pay little attentions.
6. Be courteous.
7. Read a good book on the sexual side of marriage. [End, Wikipedia summary]

[Clare:] I have not researched the reception of Carnegie’s advice book, but offhand it seems to be directed to pushy and/or feisty recent immigrants, whose aspirations did not reach above middle-management. It is sort of an Emily Post for the former denizens of the Lower East Side, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and parts West of Manhattan. It is also a handbook for women, including the route to successful motherhood. It also evokes the “other-directed” type that was described by David Reisman in The Lonely Crowd (1950), in which (I thought) he noticed the drastic departure from the 19^th century “inner-directed” type person, who was indeed able to rely on individual conscience and research while putting out into the world opinions that might arouse opposition, rancor and even violence.  (See my blog on Riesman and Hayek for what Riesman really thought: I was thinking of myself, not Riesman’s copycat good son. https://clarespark.com/2010/10/09/david-riesman-v-friedrich-hayek/) Which suggests the question: what is a leader? Are “the people” the leaders? If not, is the leader primarily a teacher? Or, are we talking about demagogues, i.e., the person who can sense the mood of the masses, and then embody those mass feelings in program proposals that make the masses feel good (whether or not they are realizable or sincerely held by the “leader”)? Or is it someone or a group that takes risks, attempts to see problems in all their facets and nuances, formulates programs to relieve the malaise and other forms of needless suffering, and then forthrightly puts out into the world suggestions and policies that would advance the cause of humanity, taking into account failed experiments/policies in the past?

  There was nothing original in Carnegie’s handbook for success in America. It was a highly simplified recipe that reiterated “politeness” as it was exemplified in an imagined aristocracy, one that was learned, tactful, and skillful in avoiding destructive and costly wars. That the European aristocracy was anything but that when its interests were threatened, was perhaps beyond the ken of the masochistic man from Missouri who wrote the perennial best seller.