“A lady in Washington,” wrote Taft, “whose husband
had some political influence, came and labored with me
for six weeks or more to appoint her son to a position.
She secured the aid of Senators and Congressmen in
formidable number and came with them to see that they
spoke with emphasis. The place was one requiring technical
qualification, and following the recommendation
of the head of the Bureau, I appointed somebody else. I
then received a letter from the mother, saying that I was
most ungrateful, since I declined to make her a happy
woman as I could have done by a turn of my hand. She
complained further that she had labored with her state
delegation and got all the votes for an administration bill
in which I was especially interested and this was the
way I had rewarded her.
“When you get a letter like that, the first thing you do
is to think how you can be severe with a person who has
committed an impropriety, or even been a little impertinent.
Then you may compose an answer. Then if you
are wise, you will put the letter in a drawer and lock the
drawer. Take it out in the course of two days – such communications
will always bear two days’ delay in answering
– and when you take it out after that interval, you
will not send it. That is just the course I took. After that,
I sat down and wrote her just as polite a letter as I could,
telling her I realized a mother’s disappointment under
such circumstances, but that really the appointment was
not left to my mere personal preference, that I had to
select a man with technical qualifications, and had,
therefore, to follow the recommendations of the head of
the Bureau. I expressed the hope that her son would go
on to accomplish what she had hoped for him in the
position which he then had. That mollified her and she
wrote me a note saying she was sorry she had written as
she had.
“But the appointment I sent in was not confirmed at
once, and after an interval I received a letter which purported
to come from her husband, though it was in the
the same handwriting as all the others. I was therein
advised that, due to the nervous prostration that had followed
her disappointment in this case, she had to take
to her bed and had developed a most serious case of
cancer of the stomach. Would I not restore her to health
by withdrawing the first name and replacing it by her
son’s? I had to write another letter, this one to the husband,
to say that I hoped the diagnosis would prove to
be inaccurate, that I sympathized with him in the sorrow
he must have in the serious illness of his wife, but that it
was impossible to withdraw the name sent in. The man
whom I appointed was confirmed, and within two days
after I received that letter, we gave a musicale at the
White House. The first two people to greet Mrs. Taft and
me were this husband and wife, though the wife had so
recently been in articulo mortis.”
Jay Mangum represented an elevator-escalator main-tenance
company in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which had the
maintenance contract for the escalators in one of Tulsa’s
leading hotels. The hotel manager did not want to shut
down the escalator for more than two hours at a time
because he did not want to inconvenience the hotel’s
guests. The repair that had to be made would take at
least eight hours, and his company did not always have
a specially qualified mechanic available at the convenience
of the hotel.
When Mr. Mangum was able to schedule a top-flight
mechanic for this job, he telephoned the hotel manager
and instead of arguing with him to give him the necessary
time, he said:
“Rick, I know your hotel is quite busy and you would
like to keep the escalator shutdown time to a minimum.
I understand your concern about this, and we want to do
everything possible to accommodate you. However, our
diagnosis of the situation shows that if we do not do a
complete job now, your escalator may suffer more serious
damage and that would cause a much longer shutdown.
I know you would not want to inconvenience
your guests for several days.”
The manager had to agree that an eight-hour shut
down was more desirable than several days’. By sympathizing
with the manager’s desire to keep his patrons
happy, Mr. Mangum was able to win the hotel manager
to his way of thinking easily and without rancor.
Joyce Norris, a piano teacher in St, Louis, Missouri,
told of how she had handled a problem piano teachers
often have with teenage girls. Babette had exceptionally
long fingernails. This is a serious handicap to anyone
who wants to develop proper piano-playing habits.
Mrs. Norris reported: “I knew her long fingernails
would be a barrier for her in her desire to play well.
During our discussions prior to her starting her lessons
with me, I did not mention anything to her about her
nails. I didn’t want to discourage her from taking lessons,
and I also knew she would not want to lose that
which she took so much pride in and such great care to
make attractive.
“After her first lesson, when I felt the time was right,
I said: ‘Babette, you have attractive hands and beautiful
fingernails. If you want to play the piano as well as you
are capable of and as well as you would like to, you
would be surprised how much quicker and easier it
would be for you, if you would trim your nails shorter.
Just think about it, Okay?’ She made a face which was
definitely negative. I also talked to her mother about this
situation, again mentioning how lovely her nails were.
Another negative reaction. It was obvious that Babette’s
beautifully manicured nails were important to her.
“The following week Babette returned for her second
lesson. Much to my surprise, the fingernails had been
trimmed. I complimented her and praised her for making
such a sacrifice. I also thanked her mother for influencing
Babette to cut her nails. Her reply was ‘Oh, I had
nothing to do with it. Babette decided to do it on her
own, and this is the first time she has ever trimmed her
nails for anyone.’ ”
Did Mrs. Norris threaten Babette? Did she say she
would refuse to teach a student with long fingernails?
No, she did not. She let Babette know that her finger-
nails were a thing of beauty and it would be a sacrifice
to cut them. She implied, “I sympathize with you – I
know it won’t be easy, but it will pay off in your better
musical development.”
Sol Hurok was probably America’s number one impresario.
For almost half a century he handled artists – such
world-famous artists as Chaliapin, Isadora Duncan, and
Pavlova. Mr. Hurok told me that one of the first lessons
he had learned in dealing with his temperamental stars
was the’ necessity for sympathy, sympathy and more
sympathy with their idiosyncrasies.
For three years, he was impresario for Feodor Chaliapin –
one of the greatest bassos who ever thrilled the
ritzy boxholders at the Metropolitan, Yet Chaliapin was
a constant problem. He carried on like a spoiled child.
To put it in Mr. Hurok’s own inimitable phrase: “He
was a hell of a fellow in every way.”
For example, Chaliapin would call up Mr. Hurok
about noun of the day he was going to sing and say, “Sol,
I feel terrible. My throat is like raw hamburger. It is
impossible for me to sing tonight.” Did Mr. Hurok argue
with him? Oh, no. He knew that an entrepreneur
couldn’t handle artists that way. So he would rush over
to Chaliapin’s hotel, dripping with sympathy. “What a
pity, ” he would mourn. “What a pity! My poor fellow.
Of course, you cannot sing. I will cancel the engagement
at once. It will only cost you a couple of thousand dollars,
but that is nothing in comparison to your reputation.”
Then Chaliapin would sigh and say, “Perhaps you had
better come over later in the day. Come at five and see
how I feel then.”
At five o’clock, Mr. Hurok would again rush to his
hotel, dripping with sympathy. Again he would insist on
canceling the engagement and again Chaliapin would
sigh and say, “Well, maybe you had better come to see
me later. I may be better then.”
At seven-thirty the great basso would consent to sing,
only with the understanding that Mr. Hurok would walk
out on the stage of the Metropolitan and announce that
Chaliapin had a very bad cold and was not in good voice.
Mr. Hurok would lie and say he would do it, for he
knew that was the only way to get the basso out on the
stage.
Dr. Arthur I. Gates said in his splendid book Educational
Psychology: “Sympathy the human species universally
craves. The child eagerly displays his injury; or
even inflicts a cut or bruise in order to reap abundant
sympathy. For the same purpose adults . . . show their
bruises, relate their accidents, illness, especially details
of surgical operations. ‘Self-pity’ for misfortunes real or
imaginary is in some measure, practically a universal
practice.”
So, if you want to win people to your way of thinking,
put in practice . . .
PRINCIPLE 9
Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas
and desires.
10
AN APPEAL THAT EVERYBODY LIKES
I was reared on the edge of the Jesse James country out
in Missouri, and I visited the James farm at Kearney,
Missouri, where the son of Jesse James was then
living.
His wife told me stories of how Jesse robbed trains
and held up banks and then gave money to the neighboring
farmers to pay off their mortgages.
Jesse James probably regarded himself as an idealist
at heart, just as Dutch Schultz, “Two Gun” Crowley, Al
Capone and many other organized crime “godfathers”
did generations later. The fact is that all people you meet
have a high regard for themselves and like to be fine and
unselfish in their own estimation.
J. Pierpont Morgan observed, in one of his analytical
interludes, that a person usually has two reasons for
doing a thing: one that sounds good and a real one.
The person himself will think of the real reason. You
don’t need to emphasize that. But all of us, being idealists
at heart, like to think of motives that sound good.
So, in order to change people, appeal to the nobler
motives.