How to Win Friends and Influence People Summary

Part One: Fundamental Techniques in Handling People

1: If You Want to Gather Honey, Don’t Kick Over the Beehive. It is basic human nature to reject criticism and justify one’s actions. Al Ca

pone said, “I have spent the best years of my life giving people the lighter pleasures, helping them have a good time, and all I get is abuse, the existence of a hunted man.”

If even the most notorious gangster in U.S. history viewed himself in this light, it’s not likely that the average person is going to take criticism well. Take Benjamin Franklin’s advice: “I will speak ill of no man… and speak all the good I know of everybody.”

2: The Big Secret of Dealing with People. Of the basic human needs, Carnegie asserts, the desire to be important, or to be great, is the need that is most difficult to meet. “If you tell me how you get your feeling of importance, I’ll tell you what you are. That determines your character.”

If you can deliver that sense of importance to your fellow man, you will have found the key to dealing with people. As Charles Schwab said, “I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among the men the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a man is by appreciation and encouragement.”

Our natural response is to criticize what we don’t like, and remain silent about what we do. If you find it difficult to appreciate people (or certain people), take Ralph Waldo Emerson’s advice: “Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him.”

Every person on earth knows something you don’t; seek to learn that thing in every interaction, and you will make the other person feel important. This is not to suggest the practice of flattery; on the contrary, the author is advocating that you be alert for every opportunity to voice sincere appreciation when anything is done well.

3: He Who Can Do This Has the Whole World with Him. He Who Cannot Walks a Lonely Way. When you go fishing, you don’t bait the hook with the strawberries you’d like to snack on; you use what the fish prefer, worms. Yet in our interactions with people, we always barge in talking about what we want, which is a complete waste of time and effort. Instead, we should always be asking ourselves what the other person wants, and present our reasoning from their perspective. Tell them how it will get them what they want.

Henry Ford said, “If there is any one secret to success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from his angle as well as your own.” (More recently, there have been a number of great books devoted to the importance of understanding incentives, such as Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner’s Freakonomics.)

It may sound obvious, but most people nevertheless persist in approaching each interaction with the desire to explain their own needs and desires. “So,” as the author puts it, “The rare individual who unselfishly tries to serve others has an enormous advantage. He has little competition.”

Part 2 : will be posted later.....

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