Wanamaker didn’t say a word. Quietly slipping
behind the counter, he waited on the woman himself
and then handed the purchase to the salespeople to be
wrapped as he went on his way.
Public officials are often criticized for not being accessible
to their constituents. They are busy people, and
the fault sometimes lies in overprotective assistants who
don’t want to overburden their bosses with too many
visitors. Carl Langford, who has been mayor of Orlando,
Florida, the home of Disney World, for many years, frequently
admonished his staff to allow people to see him.
clamed he had an “open-door” policy; yet the citizens
of his community were blocked by secretaries and
administrators when they called.
Finally the mayor found the solution. He removed the
door from his office! His aides got the message, and the
mayor has had a truly open administration since the day
his door was symbolically thrown away.
Simply changing one three-letter word can often spell
the difference between failure and success in changing
people without giving offense or arousing resentment.
Many people begin their criticism with sincere praise
followed by the word “but” and ending with a critical
statement. For example, in trying to change a child’s
careless attitude toward studies, we might say, “We’re
really proud of you, Johnnie, for raising your grades this
term. But if you had worked harder on your algebra, the
results would have been better.”
In this case, Johnnie might feel encouraged until he
heard the word “but.” He might then question the sincerity
of the original praise. To him, the praise seemed
only to be a contrived lead-in to a critical inference of
failure. Credibility would be strained, and we probably
would not achieve our objectives of changing Johnnie’s
attitude toward his studies.
This could be easily overcome by changing the word
“but” to “and.” “We’re really proud of you, Johnnie, for
raiseing your grades this term, and by continuing the
same conscientious efforts next term, your algebra grade
can be up with all the others.”
Now, Johnnie would accept the praise because there
was no follow-up of an inference of failure. We have
called his attention to the behavior we wished to change
indirectly and the chances are he will try to live up to
our expectations.
Calling attention to one’s mistakes indirectly works
wonders with sensitive people who may resent bitterly
any direct criticism. Marge Jacob of Woonsocket, Rhode
Island, told one of our classes how she convinced some
sloppy construction workers to clean up after themselves
when they were building additions to her house.
For the first few days of the work, when Mrs. Jacob
returned from her job, she noticed that the yard was
strewn with the cut ends of lumber. She didn’t want to
antagonize the builders, because they did excellent
work. So after the workers had gone home, she and her
children picked up and neatly piled all the lumber debris
in a corner. The following morning she called the
foreman to one side and said, “I’m really pleased with
the way the front lawn was left last night; it is nice and
clean and does not offend the neighbors.” From that day
forward the workers picked up and piled the debris to
one side, and the foreman came in each day seeking
approval of the condition the lawn was left in after a
day’s work.
One of the major areas of controversy between members
of the army reserves and their regular army trainers
is haircuts. The reservists consider themselves civilians
(which they are most of the time) and resent having to
cut their hair short.
Master Sergeant Harley Kaiser of the 542nd USAR
School addressed himself to this problem when he was
working with a group of reserve noncommissioned officers.
As an old-time regular-army master sergeant, he
might have been expected to yell at his troops and
threaten them. Instead he chose to make his point indirectly.
“Gentlemen,” he started, “you are leaders. You will
be most effective when you lead by example. You must
be the example for your men to follow. You know what
the army regulations say about haircuts. I am going to
get my hair cut today, although it is still much shorter
than some of yours. You look at yourself in the mirror,
and if you feel you need a haircut to be a good example,
we’ll arrange time for you to visit the post barbership.”
The result was predictable. Several of the candidates
did look in the mirror and went to the barbershop that
afternoon and received “regulation” haircuts. Sergeant
Kaiser commented the next morning that he already
could see the development of leadership qualities in
some of the members of the squad.
On March 8, 1887, the eloquent Henry Ward Beecher
died. The following Sunday, Lyman Abbott was invited
to speak in the pulpit left silent by Beecher’s passing.
Eager to do his best, he wrote, rewrote and polished his
sermon with the meticulous care of a Flaubert. Then he
read it to his wife. It was poor – as most written speeches
are. She might have said, if she had had less judgment,
“Lyman, that is terrible. That’ll never do. You’ll put people
to sleep. It reads like an encyclopedia. You ought to
know better than that after all the years you have been
preaching. For heaven’s sake, why don’t you talk like a
human being? Why don’t you act natural? You’ll disgrace
yourself if you ever read that stuff.”
That’s what she might have said. And, if she had, you
know what would have happened. And she knew too.
So, she merely remarked that it would make an excellent
article for the North American Review. In other words,
she praised it and at the same time subtly suggested that
it wouldn’t do as a speech. Lyman Abbott saw the point,
tore up his carefully prepared manuscript and preached
without even using notes.
An effective way to correct others’ mistakes is . . .
PRINCIPLE 2
Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.
3
TALK ABOUT YOUR OWN
MISTAKES FIRST
My niece, Josephine Carnegie, had come to New York
to be my secretary. She was nineteen, had graduated
from high school three years previously, and her business
experience was a trifle more than zero. She became
one of the most proficient secretaries west of Suez, but
in the beginning, she was – well, susceptible to improvement.
One day when I started to criticize her, I
said to myself: “Just a minute, Dale Carnegie; just a
minute. You are twice as old as Josephine. You have had
ten thousand times as much business experience. How
can you possibly expect her to have your viewpoint, your
judgment, your initiative – mediocre though they may
be? And just a minute, Dale, what were you doing at
nineteen? Remember the asinine mistakes and blunders
you made? Remember the time you did this . . . and
that . . . ?”
After thinking the matter over, honestly and impartially,
I concluded that Josephine’s batting average at
nineteen was better than mine had been – and that, I’m
sorry to confess, isn’t paying Josephine much of a compliment.
So after that, when I wanted to call Josephine’s attention
to a mistake, I used to begin by saying, “You have
made a mistake, Josephine, but the Lord knows, it’s no
worse than many I have made. You were not born with
judgment. That comes only with experience, and you are
better than I was at your age. I have been guilty of so
many stupid, silly things myself, I have very little incliion
to criticize you or anyone. But don’t you think it
would have been wiser if you had done so and so?”
It isn’t nearly so difficult to listen to a recital of your
faults if the person criticizing begins by humbly admitting
that he, too, is far from impeccable.
E. G. Dillistone, an engineer in Brandon, Manitoba,
Canada, was having problems with his new secretary.
Letters he dictated were coming to his desk for signature
with two or three spelling mistakes per page. Mr. Dillistone
reported how he handled this:
“Like many engineers, I have not been noted for my
excellent English or spelling. For years I have kept a
little black thumb – index book for words I had trouble
spelling. When it became apparent that merely pointing
out the errors was not going to cause my secretary to do
more proofreading and dictionary work, I resolved to
take another approach. When the next letter came to my
attention that had errors in it, I sat down with the typist
and said:
” ‘Somehow this word doesn’t look right. It’s one of
the words I always have had trouble with. That’s the reason
I started this spelling book of mine. [I opened
the book to the appropriate page.] Yes, here it is. I’m
very conscious of my spelling now because people do
judge us by our letters and misspellings make us look
less professional.
“I don’t know whether she copied my system or not,
but since that conversation, her frequency of spelling
errors has been significantly reduced.”
The polished Prince Bernhard von Bülow learned the
sharp necessity of doing this back in 1909. Von Bülow
was then the Imperial Chancellor of Germany, and on
the throne sat Wilhelm II-Wilhelm, the haughty; Wilhelm
the arrogant; Wilhelm, the last of the German Kaisers,
building an army and navy that he boasted could
whip their weight in wildcats
Then an astonishing thing happened. The Kaiser said
things, incredible things, things that rocked the continent
and started a series of explosions heard around the
world. To make matters infinitely worse, the Kaiser
made silly, egotistical, absurd announcements in public,
he made them while he was a guest in England, and he
gave his royal permission to have them printed in the
Daily Telegraph. For example, he declared that he was
the only German who felt friendly toward the English;