Dale Carnegie’s Timeless Success Advice

Competence is one of the keys to success in my Common Sense Success System.  I discuss it in detail in several of my books: Straight Talk for Success; Your Success GPS; Star Power, I Want YOU…to Succeed and 42 Rules to Jumpstart Your Professional Success. 

If you want to succeed you need to develop four basic, but important competencies: 1) creating positive personal impact; 2) becoming a consistently high performer; 3) communication skills; and 4) relationship building.  

I’ve done two posts on relationship building this week.   Here is a third…

I was doing my annual deep office clean and I came across some gems that I put away to blog about and never did.  One of them was something called the “Golden Notebook: Principles from How to Win Friends and Influence People, based on the work of Dale Carnegie.”  The first two headers are 1) Become a Friendlier Person; and 2) Win People to Your way of Thinking.  These are two great common sense pieces of advice when it comes to relationship building.  There are 19 points that relate to these two headers.  These 19 points are worth posting here.

Become a Friendlier Person
1. Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.
2. Give honest, sincere appreciation.
3. Arouse an eager want in the other person.
4. Become genuinely interested in other people.
5. Smile.
6. Remember a person’s name is the sweetest and most important sound to that person.
7. Be a good listener.  Encourage others to talk about themselves.
8. Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
9. Make the other person feel important.

Win People to Your Way of Thinking
10. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
11. Show respect for the other person’s opinion. Never say, “You’re Wrong.”
12. When you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
13. Begin in a friendly way.
14. Get the other person saying “yes, yes’ immediately.
15. Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
16. Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.
17. See things from the other person’s point of view.
18. Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires.
19. Appeal to the other person’s nobler motives.

All of these points will help you build strong relationships.  However, I am particularly fond of point 4, “Become genuinely interested in other people.”  It is closely related to point 7, “Be a good listener.  Encourage others to talk about themselves.”

People are endlessly fascinating.  Therefore, it’s easy to become genuinely interested in them.  Most people really like to talk about themselves, their families, their jobs and their hobbies.  All it takes is a little interest and a few well chosen questions on your part. 

I was on a plane from Newark to Denver just before Christmas.  I was chatting with the guy sitting next to me.  He asked if I were traveling for business, and I said, “Yes, and you?”  He said no, “I was hunting for white tail.”  I’m not a hunter, and really don’t care for guns, but I asked him “What type of animal is a white tail?”  He said that white tail are deer and they are plentiful in New Jersey.  He then spent the next 30 minutes talking about all of the different types of deer he hunts and where he hunts for them.  I listened and asked follow up questions.  I got a bit of an education about the different deer populations in this USA.  I doubt if I’ll ever use this information in business, but I learned some interesting stuff that day.  All it took was a willingness to listen and to ask a couple of questions.

The common sense point here is simple.  Successful people build strong, lasting, mutually beneficial relationships with the people in their lives.  Dale Carnegie’s advice on relationship building is as fresh and valuable today as when he wrote How to Win Friends and Influence People.  If you want to build strong relationships follow his advice.  Become genuinely interested in other people.  Smile.  Call people by their names.  Be a good listener. Respect other people’s opinions.  Do these things and you’ll be on your way to building the relationships you need to create the successful life and career you want and deserve.

That’s my take on what Dale Carnegie has to say about relationship building.   What’s yours?  Please take a few minutes to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud