Do unto others as Carnegie would do unto you

I've finished "How to win friends and influence people" now and as far as I can tell, the basic premise is thus.

Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

Yup, thats right, the core of Carnegie's book is that by pleasing someone, by praising them and complementing them you can get them to agree with you, to do whatever you want, to be a friend for life.

The book goes through a series of "Rules of Engagement" in several separate parts and relates how these rules have worked for various people and how to apply them to everyday life. While some of them seem contrived the book itself is quite easy to read and shouldn't take too long for someone to breeze through it. The book is broken up into six parts.

This first part, Fundamental Techniques of Handling People, is summed up as follows be nice, never criticize and make other people want the same things that you want via sincere and honest appreciation.

Part Two, Six ways to make people like you, gives you a few ways to win people over to your side, to make them your friends, basically five of the six ways can be stated simply as be a good listener and focus on what the other person wants, the remaining principle is to smile. But the over arching theme is that when you do all of this you must do it sincerely, you have to make yourself want to be interested in the other person.

Part Three, How to Win People to your way of thinking, is focussed on debate and reasoning, more specifically how to get people to agree with you. Carnegie here gives twelve rules for winning arguments and people over. The first is don't get into an argument to begin with and this is a great point, once you have descended into an argument you have already lost. The second, which ties into a couple of the other points is, respect the other persons opinion and never ever tell someone they are wrong, they'll end up getting pig headed about the whole thing. This ties into being friendly, letting the other person do most of the talking and being sympathetic to their ideas and desires and viewing the world from their point of view. The remaining principles focus on getting the person to think that your idea is their idea (that way they want to win the argument), challenging them and appealing to nobler motives. The final and perhaps most important principle is to admit when you are wrong.

Nice ways to change people without giving offense or arousing resentment, is the next part of the book and focuses on changing other peoples behavior and attitudes. Carnegie again supplies some rules and these can be summed up as follows. Always begin with praise and keep giving it, never single out a persons mistakes except your own and ask questions instead of giving orders to make them want to do what you want. The other interesting idea is that by holding the other person in greater esteem they'll strive to maintain that reputation.

From here the book trails off a little, Part 5, is a series of letters from fans of Carnegie's lectures, which the book is based upon, and the final part focuses on making your home life happier. Basically you need to do the same thing at home as you do in the rest of the world, that is use the suggestions from the first five parts of the book, oh and you need to be good in bed (yup, you read that correctly). To me this final section is the only one that really dates the book, it was originally published in 1936 after all, suggestions like a 'wife' should keep the home interesting and attractive and vary the menu so dinner time is interesting will probably raise the ire of some people these days but don't let that detract from what is overall still a good book on human nature and I would say a must read for someone that wants to do well in the world of business and life in general.


I would definitely recommend reading this to anyone that has difficulties dealing with coworkers or trouble getting people to come around to your way of thinking.

 If you have any suggestions for other books in a similar vein can you please post a comment here or on my earlier post, On a voyage of self discovery that lists a few books I'm going to read, when I get around to it.

 If you want to help me earn my first ever Amazon associate money then you can use the link on this post. Alternatively the book is in pretty much every second handbook shop worth its salt. I had a request for an audio book link, I didn't have much luck on Amazon but you can try yours with this Search Amazon.com for How to win friends and influence people audio book.