How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie is a self-help classic that reads as a life manual. The core idea is that you can change other people’s behavior simply by changing your own. It teaches you the principles to better understand people, become a more likable person, improve relationships, win others over, and influence behavior through leadership.

Fundamental Techniques in Handling People

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

Six Ways to Make People Like You
1. Become genuinely interested in other people
2. Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language
3. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves
4. Talk in terms of the other person’s interests
5. Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely

How to Win People to Your Way of Thinking

1. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it
2. Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say, ‘You’re wrong’
3. If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically
4. Begin in a friendly way
5. Get the other person saying ‘yes, yes’ immediately
6. Let the other person do a great deal of the talking
7. Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers
8. Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view
9. Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires
10. Appeal to the nobler motives
11. Dramatize your ideas
12. Throw down a challenge.