The manager was so impressed by the facilities at the
new station that when Mike visited him the next time,
his station was cleaned up and had recorded a sales increase.
This enabled Mike to reach the Number One
spot in his district. All his talking and discussion hadn’t
helped, but by arousing an eager want in the manager,
by showing him the modern station, he had accomplished
his goal, and both the manager and Mike benefited.
Most people go through college and learn to read Virgil
and master the mysteries of calculus without ever
discovering how their own minds function. For instance:
I once gave a course in Effective Speaking for the young
college graduates who were entering the employ of the
Carrier Corporation, the large air-conditioner manufacturer.
One of the participants wanted to persuade the
others to play basketball in their free time, and this is
about what he said: “I want you to come out and play
basketball. I like to play basketball, but the last few
times I’ve been to the gymnasium there haven’t been
enough people to get up a game. Two or three of us got
to throwing the ball around the other night – and I got a
black eye. I wish all of you would come down tomorrow
night. I want to play basketball.”
Did he talk about anything you want? You don’t want
to go to a gymnasium that no one else goes to, do you?
You don’t care about what he wants. You don’t want to
get a black eye.
Could he have shown you how to get the things you
want by using the gymnasium? Surely. More pep.
Keener edge to the appetite. Clearer brain. Fun. Games.
Basketball.
To repeat Professor Overstreet’s wise advice: First,
arouse in the other person an eager want He who can
do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot
walks a lonely way.
One of the students in the author’s training course was
worried about his little boy. The child was underweight
and refused to eat properly. His parents used the usual
method. They scolded and nagged. “Mother wants you
to eat this and that.” “Father wants you to grow up to be
a big man.”
Did the boy pay any attention to these pleas? Just
about as much as you pay to one fleck of sand on a sandy
beach.
No one with a trace of horse sense would expect a
child three years old to react to the viewpoint of a father
thirty years old. Yet that was precisely what that father
had expected. It was absurd. He finally saw that. So he
said to himself: “What does that boy want? How can I
tie up what I want to what he wants?”
It was easy for the father when he starting thinking
about it. His boy had a tricycle that he loved to ride up
and down the sidewalk in front of the house in Brooklyn.
A few doors down the street lived a bully – a bigger boy
who would pull the little boy off his tricycle and ride it
himself.
Naturally, the little boy would run screaming to his
mother, and she would have to come out and take the
bully off the tricycle and put her little boy on again, This
happened almost every day.
What did the little boy want? It didn’t take a Sherlock
Holmes to answer that one. His pride, his anger, his
desire for a feeling of importance – all the strongest
emotions in his makeup – goaded him to get revenge, to
smash the bully in the nose. And when his father explained
that the boy would be able to wallop the daylights
out of the bigger kid someday if he would only eat
the things his mother wanted him to eat – when his father
promised him that – there was no longer any problem
of dietetics. That boy would have eaten spinach,
sauerkraut, salt mackerel – anything in order to be big
enough to whip the bully who had humiliated him so
often.
After solving that problem, the parents tackled another:
the little boy had the unholy habit of wetting his bed.
He slept with his grandmother. In the morning, his
grandmother would wake up and feel the sheet and say:
“Look, Johnny, what you did again last night.”
He would say: “No, I didn’t do it. You did it.”
Scolding, spanking, shaming him, reiterating that the
parents didn’t want him to do it – none of these things
kept the bed dry. So the parents asked: “How can we
make this boy want to stop wetting his bed?”
What were his wants? First, he wanted to wear pajamas
like Daddy instead of wearing a nightgown like
Grandmother. Grandmother was getting fed up with his
nocturnal iniquities, so she gladly offered to buy him a
pair of pajamas if he would reform. Second, he wanted a
bed of his own. Grandma didn’t object.
His mother took him to a department store in Brooklyn,
winked at the salesgirl, and said: “Here is a little
gentleman who would like to do some shopping.”
The salesgirl made him feel important by saying:
“Young man, what can I show you?”
He stood a couple of inches taller and said: “I want to
buy a bed for myself.”
When he was shown the one his mother wanted him
to buy, she winked at the salesgirl and the boy was persuaded
to buy it.
The bed was delivered the next day; and that night,
when Father came home, the little boy ran to the door
shouting: “Daddy! Daddy! Come upstairs and see my
bed that I bought!”
The father, looking at the bed, obeyed Charles
Schwab’s injunction: he was “hearty in his approbation
and lavish in his praise.”
“You are not going to wet this bed, are you?” the father
said. ” Oh, no, no! I am not going to wet this bed.” The boy
kept his promise, for his pride was involved. That was
his bed. He and he alone had bought it. And he was
wearing pajamas now like a little man. He wanted to act
like a man. And he did.
Another father, K. T. Dutschmann, a telephone engineer,
a student of this course, couldn’t get his three-year
old daughter to eat breakfast food. The usual scolding,
pleading, coaxing methods had all ended in futility. So
the parents asked themselves: “How can we make her
want to do it?”
The little girl loved to imitate her mother, to feel big
and grown up; so one morning they put her on a chair
and let her make the breakfast food. At just the psychological
moment, Father drifted into the kitchen while
she was stirring the cereal and she said: “Oh, look,
Daddy, I am making the cereal this morning.”
She ate two helpings of the cereal without any coaxing,
because she was interested in it. She had achieved
a feeling of importance; she had found in making the
cereal an avenue of self-expression.
William Winter once remarked that “self-expression is
the dominant necessity of human nature.” Why can’t we
adapt this same psychology to business dealings? When
we have a brilliant idea, instead of making others think
it is ours, why not let them cook and stir the idea themselves.
They will then regard it as their own; they will
like it and maybe eat a couple of helpings of it.
Remember: “First, arouse in the other person an eager
want. He who can do this has the whole world with him.
He who cannot walks a lonely way.”
PRINCIPLE 3
Arouse in the other person an eager want.
In a Nutshell
FUNDAMENTAL TECHNIQUES IN
HANDLING PEOPLE
PRINCIPLE 1
Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.
PRINCIPLE 2
Give honest and sincere appreciation.
PRINCIPLE 3
Arouse in the other person an eager want.
PART TWO
Ways to Make People
Like You
1
DO THIS AND YOU’LL BE WELCOME
ANYWHERE
Why read this book to find out how to win friends? Why
not study the technique of the greatest winner of friends
the world has ever known? Who is he? You may meet
him tomorrow coming down the street. When you get
within ten feet of him, he will begin to wag his tail. If
you stop and pat him, he will almost jump out of his skin
to show you how much he likes you. And you know that
behind this show of affection on his part, there are no
ulterior motives: he doesn’t want to sell you any real
estate, and he doesn’t want to marry you.
Did you ever stop to think that a dog is the only animal
that doesn’t have to work for a living? A hen has to lay
eggs, a cow has to give milk, and a canary has to sing.
But a dog makes his living by giving you nothing but
love.
When I was five years old, my father bought a little
yellow-haired pup for fifty cents. He was the light and
joy of my childhood. Every afternoon about four-thirty,
he would sit in the front yard with his beautiful eyes
staring steadfastly at the path, and as soon as he heard
my voice or saw me swinging my dinner pail through
the buck brush, he was off like a shot, racing breathlessly
up the hill to greet me with leaps of joy and barks of
sheer ecstasy.
Tippy was my constant companion for five years. Then
one tragic night – I shall never forget it – he was killed
within ten feet of my head, killed by lightning. Tippy’s
death was the tragedy of my boyhood.
You never read a book on psychology, Tippy. You
didn’t need to. You knew by some divine instinct that
you can make more friends in two months by becoming
genuinely interested in other people than you can in two
years by trying to get other people interested in you. Let
me repeat that. 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.