This is the first post in a series that goes through How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie and summarizes the key ideas.
A Classic
What better place to start reading about communication and interacting with other people than one of the all-time international best sellers? How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie is as famous as it is old (it was originally written in 1912). With all the hype and despite a book title that always makes me cringe slightly, I think there is value to be found in it.
Personal Blame
Carnegie quickly raises important points that people do not blame themselves for anything, and therefore they don’t take criticism well. He doesn’t use much more than an array of stories to illustrate this happening, though this does agree with what I have read to date about cognitive dissonance and things like confirmation bias.
Of course, it is possible to blame yourself for something, but the key is that it is extremely unlikely. People have a very hard time changing their mind or admitting they were wrong.
Useless Criticism
Criticism is very unlikely to be effective, because it will just put people on the defensive. As Carnegie says,
“Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself. Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment.”
Carnegie then presents several examples of criticism going bad, and follows it up with saying,
“Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain—and most fools do.
But it takes great character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.”
He ends the chapter with the following paragraph,
“Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do. That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing that criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness.”
Summary
Principle 1: Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.
Why? Because it won’t accomplish anything. Criticising may feel good to do, but it will hurt your chances of getting the person to realize their mistakes, let alone change their ways.
This isn’t to say that we should only praise people, regardless of what they’ve done. We’re only talking about the day-to-day interactions we have with other people.
All three of these things we should not do (criticise, condemn and complain) are actions that, in my experience, easily happen ‘automatically’ or out of habit, and so it can be hard to catch yourself doing them until it’s too late.
Still, simply being aware that criticism can be counter-productive will hopefully help me catch myself when I do it.
///
