Review — How to Win Friends & Influence People

*Please note, I had to speed read this for a class.

Dale Carnegie’s book ‘How to Win Friends & Influence People’ still holds up even though it was originally published nearly 90 years ago. The reason for that is that a good portion of the principles are timeless. While some of the principles may not be the best idea to implement in this day and age, overall the book provides a great high level set of principles that can help you in work and in life.

While Carnegie’s principles hold up overall, there are some pretty big caveats. A big one I can point to is under the ‘Nine Ways to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment,’ is Principle 4, ‘Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.’ If you look at the state of politics in America, it’s clear to me that this isn’t working. People will just ask leading questions to get the answer they want or box in the interviewee to prove the interviewer’s point. I have seen this way before during my days in the media and working with journalists. It’s gotten worse in my opinion and it isn’t something you can just default to and expect it to work. People are so stuck in their own echo chambers that they cannot see their own reflection much less hear their own voice so leaning on this is at best a coin flip.

Another I see is trust which isn’t a direct principle but it’s clear that you need this at some level to change people. If they don’t want to listen to you or immediately dismiss you then it’s difficult to get them to see the error of their ways and darn near impossible to change their mind via praise and honest appreciation. Right now people go from 0–60 about as fast as a Tesla with their emotions and once they get there, you’re just trying to manage the hellfire coming in.

I would argue — even though Carnegie says not to — that if more people, no matter where they are in their life, implemented a few of these principles then we might be on a better, more positive road than we are today.

I’ve personally practiced some of his principles over the years but I’ve also done just about everything Carnegie recommends NOT doing. I will say that I have seen some small parts of what Carnegie recommends from coworkers and bosses throughout my professional career. One in particular that I try to remind myself to use and have seen a previous boss use is that when you get on the phone, smile. It’s so hard to say no to someone or be upset when you are smiling and have that level of positive energy. It at a minimum lowers the temperature when dealing with an upset client or trying to convince someone to do something they may not want to do.

In ‘Fundamental Techniques in Handling People’, I have worked with several bosses who practiced the principle of ‘Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.’ They would make their point in other ways, even if it was in the form of an always effective facepalm. But they didn’t scream and shout and the message of disappointment resonated even deeper.

Externally I have seen, particularly in sports, some of Carnegie’s principles in action. In particular how the Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr manages his team. In an interview he did, he talked about being around the Seattle Seahawks before he started as the head coach of the Warriors. Seattle head coach Pete Carroll asked him how he’s going to coach and specifically how he wants his players to feel when they walk through the door everyday. When you observe Kerr, read or hear stories, you can see how he leverages principles like ‘talk in terms of the other person’s interests’ and ‘throw down a challenge.’ To do this with players making tens of millions of dollars a year and getting them to perform not just as individuals but as a team for 7 months out of the year is no small feat.

You can use or implement a lot of Carnegie’s principles in your everyday life. I mentioned earlier about smiling. I have seen this work in practice. I would also say that showing sympathy to the other person’s ideas and desires can go a long way as well. Bottom line, actually listen and have empathy. If you can do those two things you should be better off in a lot of aspects of your life.

There are of course several principles of Carnegie’s that I don’t believe you can implement or leverage today. I mentioned some of them earlier but I want to reiterate the issue of trust. Trust between people and institutions and trust between people. It was difficult before to call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly because you don’t have their trust or their attention. Even if you are sincere, in this day and age, people don’t seem to want to accept it or believe it. They see the worst in people. If they are wrong and it gets shown to them, they’ll still blame someone else for it. So in the end, this whole book reminded me of a Proverbs 25:22:

“If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. For in so doing, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the LORD will reward you.”