How To Win Friends And Influence People | Page 4

leaders of all ages had
dealt with people. We read their biographies, We read the life stories
of all great leaders from Julius Caesar to Thomas Edison. I recall that
we read over one hundred biographies of Theodore Roosevelt alone.
We were determined to spare no time, no expense, to discover every
practical idea that anyone had ever used throughout the ages for
winning friends and influencing people.

I personally interviewed scores of successful people, some of them
world-famous-inventors like Marconi and Edison; political leaders like
Franklin D. Roosevelt and James Farley; business leaders like Owen
D. Young; movie stars like Clark Gable and Mary Pickford; and
explorers like Martin Johnson-and tried to discover the techniques
they used in human relations.

From all this material, I prepared a short talk. I called it "How to Win
Friends and Influence People." I say "short." It was short in the
beginning, but it soon expanded to a lecture that consumed one
hour and thirty minutes. For years, I gave this talk each season to
the adults in the Carnegie Institute courses in New York.

I gave the talk and urged the listeners to go out and test it in their
business and social contacts, and then come back to class and speak
about their experiences and the results they had achieved. What an
interesting assignment! These men and women, hungry for self-
improvement, were fascinated by the idea of working in a new kind
of laboratory - the first and only laboratory of human relationships
for adults that had ever existed.

This book wasn't written in the usual sense of the word. It grew as a
child grows. It grew and developed out of that laboratory, out of the
experiences of thousands of adults.

Years ago, we started with a set of rules printed on a card no larger
than a postcard. The next season we printed a larger card, then a
leaflet, then a series of booklets, each one expanding in size and
scope. After fifteen years of experiment and research came this
book.

The rules we have set down here are not mere theories or
guesswork. They work like magic. Incredible as it sounds, I have
seen the application of these principles literally revolutionize the lives
of many people.

To illustrate: A man with 314 employees joined one of these courses.
For years, he had driven and criticized and condemned his
employees without stint or discretion. Kindness, words of
appreciation and encouragement were alien to his lips. After studying
the principles discussed in this book, this employer sharply altered
his philosophy of life. His organization is now inspired with a new
loyalty, a new enthusiasm, a new spirit of team-work. Three hundred
and fourteen enemies have been turned into 314 friends. As he
proudly said in a speech before the class: "When I used to walk
through my establishment, no one greeted me. My employees
actually looked the other way when they saw me approaching. But
now they are all my friends and even the janitor calls me by my first
name."

This employer gained more profit, more leisure and -what is infinitely
more important-he found far more happiness in his business and in
his home.

Countless numbers of salespeople have sharply increased their sales
by the use of these principles. Many have opened up new accounts -
accounts that they had formerly solicited in vain. Executives have
been given increased authority, increased pay. One executive
reported a large increase in salary because he applied these truths.
Another, an executive in the Philadelphia Gas Works Company, was
slated for demotion when he was sixty-five because of his
belligerence, because of his inability to lead people skillfully. This
training not only saved him from the demotion but brought him a
promotion with increased pay.

On innumerable occasions, spouses attending the banquet given at
the end of the course have told me that their homes have been
much happier since their husbands or wives started this training.

People are frequently astonished at the new results they achieve. It
all seems like magic. In some cases, in their enthusiasm, they have
telephoned me at my home on Sundays because they couldn't wait
forty-eight hours to report their achievements at the regular session
of the course.

One man was so stirred by a talk on these principles that he sat far
into the night discussing them with other members of the class. At
three o'clock in the morning, the others went home. But he was so
shaken by a realization of his own mistakes, so inspired by the vista
of a new and richer world opening before him, that he was unable to
sleep. He didn't sleep that night or the next day or the next night.