How To Win Friends & Influence People - Summary and review

These are the 3 basic principles of handling people - making them like you.

Critizing someone hard will often make you feel better in the short term. However, it will often lead to permanent damage to that person's relationship with you. And Carnegie concludes, it is seldom worth it.

Instead, meet people with positivity and kindness, and they will have your back.

The big secret of dealing with people: The only way that you can get someone to do anything is by giving them what they want.

What someone wants varies, but according to Sigmund Freud, people are driven by two motives:(1) the sex urge, and (2) the desire to be great.

Other common needs involve:

1. Food

2. Sleep

3. Money and the things money will buy

4. Belief in the hereafter

5. Sexual gratification

6. The well-being of their children

7. A feeling of importance

John Dewey summarizes this - the deepest urge in human nature is "the desire to be important".

“Everybody likes a compliment.”

- Abraham Lincoln

Yes, people like to feel important.

First, arouse in the other person an eager want. Inspire them, and make them feel it's their idea. Make them feel important.

If you can do this -> you will have the whole world with you.

If you cannot -> you will walk a lonely way.

Here are the six ways to make anyone 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.

Here are 12 ways to get people to think like you, and do what you want:

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. To get cooperation, 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.

Finally, Carnegie presents 9 ways to change people as a leader, without making them offended or having them resent you.

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.

How to Win Friends & Influence People is a guide on how to make people like you, how to get people to do what you want, and even change them.

It's a social guide on how you conduct yourself and deal with people. An absolute classic book, written over almost 100 years ago, but it still holds true today. With advice that is applicable both in business and private life. And whether you are dealing with colleagues, customers, or friends.