Any fool can criticise, condemn and complain – and most fools do.
It takes character and self-control to be understanding and
forgiving.
A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.
Bob Hoover, a famous test pilot and frequent performer at air
shows, was returning to his home in Los Angeles from an air show in San Diego.
As described in the magazine Flight Operations, at three hundred feet in the
air, both engines suddenly stopped. By deft manoeuvring he managed to land the
plane, but it was badly damaged although nobody was hurt. Hoover’s first act
after the emergency landing was to inspect the aeroplane’s fuel. Just as he
suspected, the World War II propeller plane he had been flying had been fuelled
with jet fuel rather than gasoline. Upon returning to the airport, he asked to
see the mechanic who had serviced his aeroplane. The young man was sick with
the agony of his mistake. Tears streamed down his face as Hoover approached. He
had just caused the loss of a very expensive plane and could have caused the
loss of three lives as well. You can imagine Hoover’s anger. One could
anticipate the tongue-lashing that this proud and precise pilot would unleash
for that carelessness. But Hoover didn’t scold the mechanic; he didn’t even
criticise him. Instead, he put his big arm around the man’s shoulder and said,
‘To show you I’m sure that you’ll never do this again, I want you to service my
F-51 tomorrow.
There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a person as
criticisms from superiors. I never criticise anyone. I believe in giving a
person incentive to work. So I am anxious to praise but loath to find fault. If
I like anything, I am hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise.
If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to
get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as
well as from your own.
Owen D. Young, a noted lawyer and one of America’s great business
leaders, once said: ‘People who can put themselves in the place of other
people, who can understand the workings of their minds, need never worry about
what the future has in store for them.’
First, arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do
this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.
You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in
other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested
in you.
A famous old Roman poet, Publilius Syrus, remarked: ‘We are
interested in others when they are interested in us.’
If you want others to like you, if you want to develop real
friendships, if you want to help others at the same time as you help yourself,
keep this principle in mind: Become genuinely interested in other people.
Actions speak louder than words.
Everybody in the world is seeking happiness – and there is one
sure way to find it. That is by controlling your thoughts. Happiness doesn’t
depend on outward conditions. It depends on inner conditions.
‘There is nothing either good or bad,’ said Shakespeare, ‘but
thinking makes it so.’
Benton Love, chairman of Texas Commerce Bancshares, believes that
the bigger a corporation gets, the colder it becomes. ‘One way to warm it up,’
he said, ‘is to remember people’s names. The executive who tells me he can’t
remember names is at the same time telling me he can’t remember a significant
part of his business and is operating on quicksand.’
Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and
most important sound in any language.
If you aspire to be a good conversationalist, be an attentive
listener. To be interesting, be interested. Ask questions that other persons
will enjoy answering. Encourage them to talk about themselves and their accomplishments.
Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves. Talk
in terms of the other person’s interests.
The law is this: Always make the other person feel important.
The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be
appreciated.
Remember what Emerson said: ‘Every man I meet is my superior in
some way.
Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.
Nine times out of ten, an argument ends with each of the
contestants more firmly convinced than ever that he is absolutely right.
You can’t win an argument. You can’t because if you lose it, you
lose it; and if you win it, you lose it.
As wise old Ben Franklin used to say: If you argue and rankle and
contradict, you may achieve a victory sometimes; but it will be an empty
victory because you will never get your opponent’s good will.
Better give your path to a dog than be bitten by him in
contesting for the right. Even killing the dog would not cure the bite.
The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say, ‘You’re
wrong.’
Remember the old proverb: ‘By fighting you never get enough, but
by yielding you get more than you expected.’
If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
If a man’s heart is rankling with discord and ill feeling toward
you, you can’t win him to your way of thinking with all the logic in
Christendom. Scolding parents and domineering bosses and husbands and nagging
wives ought to realize that people don’t want to change their minds. They can’t
be forced or driven to agree with you or me. But they may possibly be led to,
if we are gentle and friendly, ever so gentle and ever so friendly.
Here are Lincoln’s words: It is an old and true maxim that ‘a
drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.’ So with men, if you
would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere
friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart; which, say what you
will, is the great high road to his reason.
Years ago, when I was a barefoot boy walking through the woods to
a country school out in northwest Missouri, I read a fable about the sun and
the wind. They quarrelled about which was the stronger, and the wind said,
‘I’ll prove I am. See the old man down there with a coat? I bet I can get his
coat off him quicker than you can.’ So the sun went behind a cloud, and the
wind blew until it was almost a tornado, but the harder it blew, the tighter
the old man clutched his coat to him. Finally, the wind calmed down and gave
up, and then the sun came out from behind the clouds and smiled kindly on the
old man. Presently, he mopped his brow and pulled off his coat. The sun then
told the wind that gentleness and friendliness were always stronger than fury
and force.
Remember what Lincoln said: ‘A drop of honey catches more flies
than a gallon of gall.’
Begin in a friendly way.
It took me years and cost me countless thousands of dollars in
lost business before I finally learned that it doesn’t pay to argue, that it is
much more profitable and much more interesting to look at things from the other
person’s viewpoint and try to get that person saying “yes, yes.”’
The Chinese have a proverb pregnant with the age-old wisdom of
the Orient: ‘He who treads softly goes far.’
La Rochefoucauld, the French philosopher, said: ‘If you want
enemies, excel your friends; but if you want friends, let your friends excel
you.’ Why is that true? Because when our friends excel us, they feel important.
Letting the other person feel that the idea is his or hers not
only works in business and politics, it works in family life as well.
Nothing will work in all cases – and nothing will work with all
people. If you are satisfied with the results you are now getting, why change?
If you are not satisfied, why not experiment?
The way to get things done,’ says Schwab, ‘is to stimulate
competition. I do not mean in a sordid money-getting way, but in the desire to
excel.’
All men have fears, but the brave put down their fears and go
forward.
‘Sometimes to death, but always to victory’ was the motto of the
King’s Guard in ancient Greece.
The one major factor that motivated people was the work itself.
If the work was exciting and interesting, the worker looked forward to doing it
and was motivated to do a good job.
That is what every successful person loves: the game. The chance
for self-expression. The chance to prove his or her worth, to excel, to win.
It is always easier to listen to unpleasant things after we have
heard some praise of our good points.
Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.
Talk about your own mistakes before criticising the other person.
Admitting one’s own mistakes – even when one hasn’t corrected them – can help
convince somebody to change his behaviour. This was illustrated more recently
by Clarence Zerhusen of Timonium, Maryland, when he discovered his
fifteen-year-old son was experimenting with cigarettes. ‘Naturally, I didn’t
want David to smoke,’ Mr. Zerhusen told us, ‘but his mother and I smoked
cigarettes; we were giving him a bad example all the time. I explained to Dave
how I started smoking at about his age and how the nicotine had gotten the best
of me and now it was nearly impossible for me to stop. I reminded him how
irritating my cough was and how he had been after me to give up cigarettes not
many years before. I didn’t exhort him to stop or make threats or warn him
about their dangers. All I did was point out how I was hooked on cigarettes and
what it had meant to me. ‘He thought about it for a while and decided he
wouldn’t smoke until he had graduated from high school. As the years went by
David never did start smoking and has no intention of ever doing so. ‘As a
result of that conversation I made the decision to stop smoking cigarettes
myself, and with the support of my family, I have succeeded.’
Even if we are right and the other person is definitely wrong, we
only destroy ego by causing someone to lose face. The legendary French aviation
pioneer and author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote: ‘I have no right to say or
do anything that diminishes a man in his own eyes. What matters is not what I
think of him, but what he thinks of himself. Hurting a man in his dignity is a
crime.’
A real leader will always follow . . .
Let the other person save face.
In his book I Ain’t Much, Baby – But I’m All I Got, the
psychologist Jess Lair comments: ‘Praise is like sunlight to the warm human
spirit; we cannot flower and grow without it.’
Use of praise instead of criticism is the basic concept of B.F.
Skinner’s teachings. This great contemporary psychologist has shown by
experiments with animals and with humans that when criticism is minimised and
praise emphasised, the good things people do will be reinforced and the poorer
things will atrophy for lack of attention.
Remember, we all crave appreciation and recognition, and will do
almost anything to get it. But nobody wants insincerity. Nobody wants flattery.
Talking about changing people. If you and I will inspire the
people with whom we come in contact to a realisation of the hidden treasures
they possess, we can do far more than change people. We can literally transform
them.
Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be
‘hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.’
In short, if you want to improve a person in a certain respect,
act as though that particular trait were already one of his or her outstanding
characteristics. Shakespeare said ‘Assume a virtue, if you have it not.’ And it
might be well to assume and state openly that other people have the virtue you
want them to develop. Give them a fine reputation to live up to, and they will
make prodigious efforts rather than see you disillusioned.
There is an old saying: ‘Give a dog a bad name and you may as
well hang him.’ But give him a good name – and see what happens!
Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
Always make the other person happy about doing the thing you
suggest.
The effective leader should keep the following guidelines in mind
when it is necessary to change attitudes or behaviour:
1 Be sincere. Do not promise anything that you cannot deliver.
Forget about the benefits to yourself and concentrate on the benefits to the
other person.
2 Know exactly what it is you want the other person to do.
3. Be empathetic. Ask yourself what is it the other person really
wants.
4 Consider the benefits that person will receive from doing what
you suggest.
5 Match those benefits to the other person’s wants.
6. When you make your request, put it in a form that will convey
to the other person the idea that he personally will benefit. We could give a
curt order like this: ‘John, we have customers coming in tomorrow and I need
the stockroom cleaned out. So sweep it out, put the stock in neat piles on the
shelves and polish the counter.’ Or we could express the same idea by showing
John the benefits he will get from doing the task: ‘John, we have a job that
should be completed right away. If it is done now, we won’t be faced with it
later. I am bringing some customers in tomorrow to show our facilities. I would
like to show them the stock-room, but it is in poor shape. If you could sweep
it out, put the stock in neat piles on the shelves, and polish the counter, it
would make us look efficient and you will have done your part to provide a good
company image.’
If one aspired to wear the captain’s cap and navigate the ship of
business, personality and the ability to talk are more important than a
knowledge of Latin verbs or a sheepskin from Harvard.
Dale Carnegie claimed that all people can talk when they get mad.
He said that if you hit the most ignorant man in town on the jaw and knock him
down, he would get on his feet and talk with an eloquence, heat and emphasis
that would have rivalled that world famous orator William Jennings Bryan at the
height of his career. He claimed that almost any person can speak acceptably in
public if he or she has self-confidence and an idea that is boiling and stewing
within.
The way to develop self-confidence, he said, is to do the thing
you fear to do and get a record of successful experiences behind you. So he
forced each class member to talk at every session of the course. The audience
is sympathetic. They are all in the same boat; and, by constant practice, they
develop a courage, confidence and enthusiasm that carry over into their private
speaking.
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