🤔 Should You Read This Book?
Rating: 10/10
Yes! This is one the books I've recommended most. Why? Because it explores a timeless challenge. Building important relationships with people that matter. Since finishing the book I have implemented many of the ideas. How to Win Friends and Influence People gives you the playbook and techniques to build extraordinary relationships.
👋 Hey - I'm Toby. This summary wasn't written by AI. I'm a real leader, managing teams in large organisations. I read to solve tough problems. I share book summaries to help other leaders tackle scary challenges.
💡3 Big Ideas from How to Win Friends and Influence People
Big Idea 1 - Become genuinely interested in other people.
You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. Do this by listening intently and asking questions.
Big Idea 2 - Don't criticise the person.
Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment. By criticizing, we do not make lasting changes and often incur resentment. Challenge the task, not the person.
Big Idea 3 - Give suggestions, not orders.
People are more likely to accept an order if they have had a part in the decision that caused the order to be issued. Do this by asking questions and welcoming input on ideas. Help people feel like they are in control.
💬 2 Best Quotes from How to Win Friends and Influence People
You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.
If you aspire to be a good conversationalist, be an attentive listener. To be interesting, be interested. Ask questions that other persons will enjoy answering. Encourage them to talk about themselves and their accomplishments.
✅ Toby's Top Takeaway
I teach coaching skills to managers and leaders. I help them develop skills such as how to ask great questions, listen well and be fully aware.
What surprises many, is how far-reaching these simple, hard-to-master skills can have.
Here is what one student recalled:
"I feel more engaged in conversations. Listening to what the other person is saying. I feel curious and open. When I speak, I feel listened to. Multiple people have remarked on how they enjoy talking with me."
How to Win Friends and Influence People is about becoming a master conversationalist.
Dale Carnegie's tips include:
Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
Make the other person feel important — and do it sincerely.
Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.
Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.
Look familiar?
By becoming better at asking questions, listening and building awareness, you'll have better conversations.
As a result, you will win friends and influence people.
💡Big Ideas Expanded
Nine Suggestions on How to Get the Most Out of This Book
Read with intent. A driving desire to learn, a vigorous determination to increase your ability to deal with people.
Read each chapter rapidly at first to get a bird’s-eye view of it.
Stop frequently in your reading to think over what you are reading.
Read with a crayon, pencil, pen, magic marker or highlighter in your hand.
The rapidity with which we forget is astonishing. After reading it thoroughly, you ought to spend a few hours reviewing it every month.
Learning is an active process. We learn by doing. So, if you desire to master the principles you are studying in this book, do something about them. Apply these rules at every opportunity.
Remember that you are not merely trying to acquire information. You are attempting to form new habits. Ah yes, you are attempting a new way of life. That will require time and persistence and daily application. Regard this as a working handbook on human relations.
Offer your spouse, your child or some business associate a dime or a dollar every time he or she catches you violating a certain principle. Make a lively game out of mastering these rules.
Keep a journal of how you apply the ideas.
In a Nutshell: Fundamental Techniques in Handling People
Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.
Give honest and sincere appreciation.
Arouse in the other person an eager want.
In a Nutshell: Six Ways to Make People Like You
Become genuinely interested in other people.
Smile.
Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
Make the other person feel important — and do it sincerely.
In a Nutshell: Win People to Your Way of Thinking
The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say, “You’re wrong.”
If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
Begin in a friendly way.
Get the other person to say “yes, yes” immediately.
Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.
Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.
Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires.
Appeal to the nobler motives.
Dramatize your ideas.
Throw down a challenge.
In a Nutshell: Be a Leader
A leader’s job often includes changing your people’s attitudes and behavior. Some suggestions to accomplish this:
Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.
Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.
Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
Let the other person save face.
Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be “hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise”.
Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.
“If You Want to Gather Honey, Don’t Kick Over the Beehive”
Criticism
Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself. Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment. By criticizing, we do not make lasting changes and often incur resentment.
Become genuinely interested in other people.
You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.
Showing a genuine interest in others not only wins friends for you but helps your business too.
Exclusive attention to the person who is speaking to you is very important. Nothing else is so flattering as that.
An example of how all a thinking partner needs to do is listen:
During the darkest hours of the Civil War, Lincoln wrote to an old friend in Springfield, Illinois, asking him to come to Washington. Lincoln said he had some problems he wanted to discuss with him. The old neighbor called at the White House, and Lincoln talked to him for hours about the advisability of issuing a proclamation freeing the slaves. Lincoln went over all the arguments for and against such a move, and then read letters and newspaper articles, some denouncing him for not freeing the slaves and others denouncing him for fear he was going to free them. After talking for hours, Lincoln shook hands with his old neighbor, said good night, and sent him back to Illinois without even asking for his opinion. Lincoln had done all the talking himself. That seemed to clarify his mind. “He seemed to feel easier after that talk,” the old friend said. Lincoln hadn’t wanted advice, He had wanted merely a friendly, sympathetic listener to whom he could unburden himself. That’s what we all want when we are in trouble.
One of the great listeners of modern times was Sigmund Freud. A man who met Freud described his manner of listening: “It struck me so forcibly that I shall never forget him. He had qualities which I had never seen in any other man. Never had I seen such concentrated attention.”
If you want to know how to make people shun you and laugh at you behind your back and even despise you, here is the recipe: Never listen to anyone for long. Talk incessantly about yourself. If you have an idea while the other person is talking, don’t wait for him or her to finish: bust right in and interrupt in the middle of a sentence.
People who talk only of themselves think only of themselves.
Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
If you aspire to be a good conversationalist, be an attentive listener. To be interesting, be interested. Ask questions that other persons will enjoy answering. Encourage them to talk about themselves and their accomplishments.
Remember that the people you are talking to are a hundred times more interested in themselves and their wants and problems than they are in you and your problems.
Don't Prove Wrong
Never begin by announcing “I am going to prove so-and-so to you.” That’s bad. That’s tantamount to saying: “I’m smarter than you are, I’m going to tell you a thing or two and make you change your mind.”
Over three hundred years ago Galileo said
You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to find it within himself.
There’s magic, positive magic, in such phrases as: “I may be wrong. I frequently am. Let’s examine the facts.”
I have found it of enormous value when I can permit myself to understand the other person. The way in which I have worded this statement may seem strange to you, Is it necessary to permit oneself to understand another? I think it is. Our first reaction to most of the statements (which we hear from other people) is an evaluation or judgment, rather than an understanding of it. When someone expresses some feeling, attitude or belief, our tendency is almost immediately to feel “that’s right,” or “that’s stupid,” “that’s abnormal,” “that’s unreasonable,” “that’s incorrect,” “that’s not nice.” Very rarely do we permit ourselves to understand precisely what the meaning of the statement is to the other person.
Carl Rogers
I had become so busy defending my position on the new system that I had left them no opening to graciously admit their problems on the old one. The issue was dead.
No One Likes to Take Orders
Give suggestions, not orders.
Instead of:
“Do this or do that,” or “Don’t do this or don’t do that.”
Consider:
“You might consider this,” or “Do you think that would work?”
After a suggestion you could say:
“What do you think of this?”
Always give people the opportunity to do things themselves; let people do things and learn from their mistakes
Asking questions not only makes an order more palatable; it often stimulates the creativity of the persons whom you ask. People are more likely to accept an order if they have had a part in the decision that caused the order to be issued.
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