A Drop of Honey
In this chapter Dale Carnegie emphasizes the importance of starting off in a friendly way with people when meeting them. If you start off like gangbusters you may get there attention but, your unlikely to win them over to your point of view. It may even get you short term results but, more than likely you won’t win over any good will and long term results. Here is an excellent quote from the book(How to Win Friends and Influence People) that summed it up nicely:
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.
I’m sure we’ve all have the picture in our minds of a drill instructor barking out orders and perhaps throwing the occasional trash can down the barracks hall(Yes my drill instructor did that). That may serve as an immediate attention getter and may even get immediate results in the short term. The workplace and friendships is not boot camp or a battlefield. Were interested in long term results and building friendships and goodwill. Here we can start using many of Dale’s previous tips like making others feel important and begin by talking about them and trying to understand them. I’ve found that many of Dale’s principles build upon another as they go along. Though each one may stand on it’s own merits.
Dale Carnegie Principle: Begin in a friendly way.
Next chapter: The Secret of Socrates
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