You can tell, when you read it, that Dale Carnegie’s book is not of this era – the language overly courteous, the case studies too quaint, and a suite of recommended actions that are surely too fawning for these sceptical times.
And yet, every single year since it was published in 1936, How to Win Friends and Influence People1 has been an international bestseller. When the New York Public Library recently published its list of the most-borrowed titles of the past 125 years, Carnegie’s book appeared at number eight.
The enduring success of How to Win Friends is a reminder that despite everything, the hardest thing of all for our socially-dependent species is still…to know how to cause each other to shift.
Inside organisations, in this post command-and-control world, we are still grappling with the truth that we cannot make anyone do anything. We can only find a way, somehow, to let them want to do it; or at least be willing to tolerate it. We talk about needing to enable one or another rank of managers to ‘influence without authority’, forgetting that this is the quest we all, from new recruit to CEO, now face.
Carnegie recognised, way ahead of his time and the neuroscience that has since grown to endorse his approach, that the way we listen and speak to each other is the point at which we succeed or fail to have the people around us do the things we want them to do. And through case study after charming case study, step-by-step, he guides us away from our instincts, towards a communication approach that actually works.
The formula is blindingly simple: Make people feel good. When someone feels good they will let down their guard. With their guard down they are inclined to build a connection, rather than prove themselves. This is the moment in which they will find it easier to oblige or indulge than to challenge or block you. Job done.
The problem is, of course, that we are hardwired to directly pursue our own interest. We steam into conversations with our sights on the outcome we want and in the process trample over everything our audience may or may not think, feel and do. We give opinions rather than ask questions, ignore others’ agendas, criticise and instruct, fail to acknowledge and thank, fail to simply ask for help.
To be great communicators, we have to rise above our own programming.
Instead of letting our communication be determined by our intention, we need to make it be shaped by the impact we want to have. To think first, last and always, as we pursue our goal, about our audience – what it needs, what it knows, what it has an appetite to hear. You can call this ‘ethical communication’, if you like; I won’t disagree. But when the pressure is on, remember this: It is a strategy, and it works.