How To Win Friends & Influence People

Be a leader

“30 million copies sold, The Original Bestseller” can be found written on the cover of this book. Written by Dale Carnegie, this book was published in 1937 in an edition of only five thousand copies. Neither the author nor the publishers had expected but it turned into overnight sensation and edition after edition it rolled off the presses. Hence it has turned into an all-time international best-sellers. It falls onto my MUST_READ Book list. According to this book,” About 15% of one’s financial success is due to one’s technical knowledge and about 85% is due to skill in human engineering – to personality and the ability to lead people.” Personally, I liked this book very much and I consider this book as one of my greatest asset because the knowledge that I gained from this book is overwhelming. I strongly suggest to read this book and one thing, please don’t forget to take pen or pencil while reading because you will find many important things which you will need to underline for remembering. Now lets deep dive into the content.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

 This book has been divided into four major sections and they are:

1.  Fundamental techniques in handling people
2.  Six ways to make people like you
3.  Win people to your way of thinking
4.  Be a leader

These sections are again divided into sub-sections which are pretty interesting. The lessons here have been explained by real-life examples which I found very much impressive. Lets talk about the first topic i.e. Fundamental techniques in handling people.

George B. Johnston was the safety coordinator for an engineering company. One of his responsibilities was to see whether the employees were wearing their hard hats on the job. But they didn’t. So he thought of applying another method. Next time, when he found the employees were not wearing the hat, he asked them in a very pleasant tone if the hats were uncomfortable and reminded them that the hat was designed to protect them from injury and suggested them to wear it on the job. And as he expected, the result was on his side.

The chapter is filled with many more such kinds of real life examples which teaches us how  to handle people and get our desired result. The first chapter is further sub-divided into four sub-sections and at the end of every sub-sections the principle has been mentioned. The four principles from the first chapter are:

•         Don’t criticize, condemn or complain
•          Give honest and sincere appreciation
•          Arouse in the other person an eager want

    2)   Six ways to make people like you:

     At a dinner party in New York, one of the guest who was very rich, wanted to impress people around her. For that, she came in very richly manner wearing diamonds, pearls and some other kind of valuable jewelry. But she forgot one thing i.e. she forgot to put a smile on her face which is one of the most important treasure of human. Her face reflected selfishness and sourness. She didn’t realized that one cannot be attracted by merely wearing fine clothes rather one should have a nice smile on his/her face too.  When one smiles by seeing some person, it indicates that I like you. I am happy to see you.  That’s why many people love dogs. They are so happy to see us that they almost jump out of their skin that’s why we too love dogs. A baby’s smile too has the same effect.

On this section, author Mr. Dale Carnegie has collected such more examples and instructs us to do the same to attract people around us. Same as first chapter, there are some principles mentioned to make people like you around your circle and out of your circle. Those are mentioned as below:

•          Become genuinely interested in other people
•        Smile
•          Remember a person’s name
•          Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
•         Talk in terms of the other person’s interests
•         Make the other person feel important and do it sincerely.

There are some more principles mentioned on next chapters but I am not going to describe all those. In order to know about other principles, you have to read this book. For now, only this much from my side. Thank you for reading my article. I will come up with some more new articles. Have a great time ahead!

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