📚 How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age

A gem I discovered through productivity YouTubers. What captivated me was its emphasis on valuing people and offering practical advice not just for business but also personal life. The timeless message of making more friends by showing genuine interest resonated with me, for those seeking communication and leadership improvement or finding it challenging to connect with people, this book offers actionable takeaways emphasizing the art of connection and staying connected on common ground. It’s a three-hour investment that explores essential engagement, lasting impressions, building trust, and leading change with practical wisdom, making it a worthwhile read for personal and professional growth.

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About the book

Author:	Dale Carnegie and Brent Cole
Year of release:	2011
Genre:	Communication, Self-Help, Nonfiction, Psychology, Leadership, Relationships
Pages:	272
Average WPM:	300
Date Started/Finished:	24-June-22 to 6-July-22
Time took:	3.81 Hours

What I Liked About It and What I didn’t

• What I liked
  • I loved the focus on valuing people
  • Great advice for not only business but also for private life
• What I didn’t like
  • Some of the information is very generic/cant be used in every scenario
  • At a few parts (very few) it seems to be the transcript that a business training company uses

How I Discovered It

I don’t remember but it was one of the productivity youtubers I watch

Who Should Read It?

• Whoever wants to get better at communication and leadership
• Whoever finds it hard to get along with people

Actionable Takeaways

• Most of this is common sense, but that’s not to say that everyone practices common sense
• In the end, the art of winning friends and influencing people in the digital age is summed up in the activity of connecting and staying connected on common ground.

Summary + Notes

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Why Carnegie’s Advice Still Matters

What all come to understand is that there is no such thing as a neutral exchange. You leave someone either a little better or a little worse. The best among us leave others a little better with every nod, every inflection, every interface. This one idea embodied daily has significant results.

“You can make more friends in two months by becoming more interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you.”

You are 1 in 7 billion—your progress is not meant for you alone. The sooner you allow this truth to shape your communication decisions, the sooner you will see that the quickest path to personal or professional growth is not in hyping yourself to others but in sharing yourself with them.

• The two highest levels of influence are achieved when, People follow you because of:
  1. What you’ve done for them and
  2. Who you are.

Highest levels of influence are reached when generosity and trustworthiness surround your behavior.

• Consider a few of his foundational principles
  • don’t criticize, condemn, or complain;
  • talk about others’ interests;
  • if you’re wrong, admit it;
  • let others save face.

• When we learn a person’s behavior has an ulterior motive, he has less influence with us than someone we’ve met only once.

• The relationship is doomed unless he confesses and makes a change. Even then, a residue of skepticism will remain.

When you put the medium before the meaning, your message is in danger of becoming, in the words of Shakespeare’s Macbeth,

“a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Any medium carrying a message that lacks meaning will fall short of its intention

Emotion is difficult to convey without nonverbal cues.

We ignore the niceties of common courtesy; we say, “I can’t possibly apply these principles to a blog comment, to an email, at a virtual conference where I’m not even sure I can be heard.” But these interactions are when Carnegie’s principles are most valuable. It is in the common, everyday moments where altruistic actions most clearly stand out.

The difference, as they say, is in the details—the often subtle details of your daily interactions.

Part 1: Essentials of Engagement

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Chapter 1: Bury Your Boomerangs

Ask both Adolf Hitler and Martin Luther King Jr. for a basic definition of influence and you might get similar answers.

When we attempt to use criticism to win an argument, to make a point, or to incite change, we are taking two steps backward.

Focus on improving yourself instead of others

• Resist badmouthing as a differentiation strategy. Its long-term effect is far more harmful than helpful. In a global economy, you never know when your greatest competitor will become your greatest collaborator.
• Make your messages meaningful by removing your agenda.
• Calm yourself before communicating to another.

While it is difficult at times to downplay our right to speak freely, a quick scan through history will remind you that the greatest influencers are those who held their tongue and swallowed their pride when the tide of negative emotion was arising, and instead let brevity, humility, and wisdom say far more than a critical tirade ever could.

Chapter 2: Affirm What’s Good

“When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be.”

Ultimately, gaining influence is about setting yourself apart, stepping to a higher plane in the mind and heart of another. If all you do is act and react like anyone would, you will never be set apart. The reasons are simple.

We are all united by one single desire: to be valued by another. Whether this message is conveyed is not a group decision.

Chapter 3: Connect with Core Desires

1. Influence requires more intuition than intellect.
   • Influencing others is not a matter of outsmarting them. It is a matter of discerning what they truly want and offering it to them in a mutually beneficial package.
2. Influence requires a gentle hand.

Part 2: 6 Ways to Make a Lasting Impression

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Chapter 1: Take Interest in Others’ Interests

If we are not mindful, our self-defense can turn into self-detention, keeping us from meaningful interaction and in some cases cutting us off from interpersonal progress altogether.

“It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men,” “who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from such individuals that all human failures spring.” - Alfred Adler, the famous Austrian psychotherapist

That’s quite an audacious statement. But it is a statement borne out in fact.

The ancient maxim is still true: “For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” Our effectiveness with others is ultimately a matter of motive and merchandise.

• There are 2 things to say about this.
  • First, self-interest in its purest form is part of human nature—fight or flight is fact.
  • Second, the pinnacle of this principle is not complete self-denial. Notice the principle does not read, “Replace your interests with others’ interests.” It instead reads, “Take interest in others’ interests,” and that is the secret to its application.

Chapter 3: Reign with Names

• Twitter and Facebook in particular have done more than simply add to an information-based economy; they have also created a new kind of name-based economy in which we are largely known by the name we brand and campaign to the world.

• The opportunities to be known by others and to know others are ultimately two sides of the same coin

The primary business payoff of remembering people’s names: they remember you.

We must remember that a person is more interested in their own name than in all the other names on earth put together.

Remember a name and use it easily, and you have paid a subtle and very effective compliment. But forget it or misspell it, and you have placed yourself at a sharp disadvantage.

Chapter 4: Listen Longer

“We’re not saying people are completely isolated,” notes Lynn Smith-Lovin, a Duke University sociologist who helped conduct the study. “They may have 600 friends on Facebook . . . and e-mail 25 people a day, but they are not discussing matters that are personally important.”

Chapter 5: Discuss What Matters to Them

When it comes to mattering to others, you must discuss what matters to them. Assume all else will fall on deaf,

An equally great risk is that having intimate friends opens us up to being deeply hurt by those friends. Some people protect themselves from relational pain by having no intimate friends. Others do it by having so many shallow friends that a hurt inflicted by one is diffused by the mass.

Perhaps what is most meaningful to you, after all, is being meaningful to others. One thing is certain: In an age when the mass of messages multiplies daily, only a small number really matter. To influence others, make sure yours are among them.

Chapter 6: Leave Others a Little Better

You must always remember that what motivates you to win friends is rarely what motivates others to grant you friendship.

There are no neutral exchanges. You leave someone either a little better or a little worse.

Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want them to do to you. Two thousand years ago Jesus put a slightly different spin on it:

“Do to others what you would have them do to you.”

Always leave people a little better, and you might be surprised how big it makes you and how far it takes you.

Part 3: How to Merit and Maintain Others’ Trust

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Chapter 1: Avoid Arguments

Arguing with another person will rarely get you anywhere; they usually end with each person more firmly convinced of his rightness.

“My mother always said two people can’t fight if one person doesn’t want to,” Lula told a reporter once. And so Lula doesn’t fight, an approach that helped him become the president of Brazil and hold the position for almost ten years.

2 people can’t fight if 1 person doesn’t want to

“All of us know how to get attention,” asserts Jeles, “but few of us know how to get attention and respect at the same time.” Set yourself apart by being one who avoids the arguments that most jump into with both feet.

Chapter 2: Never Say, “You’re Wrong”

• “Negotiations become more productive,” concludes Malhotra, “when each party acknowledges that the other may have legitimate concerns

• At the heart of the assertion that others are wrong is actually an unspoken admittance that we don’t want to be rejected. It is in the spirit of not wanting to be wrong ourselves that we project that role on others.

• Telling people they are wrong will only earn you enemies. Few people respond logically when they are told they are wrong; most respond emotionally and defensively because you are questioning their judgment.

Telling people they are wrong will only earn you enemies.

Chapter 4: Begin in a Friendly Way

There is a big difference between engagement and interest. Interest is piqued in a number of ways, many of which are less than genial. It often begins and ends on a superficial level because the primary emotions tapped are curiosity, surprise, or disgust. Engagement occurs on a deeper level when a person’s core values are tapped. Common to all core values is the notion of being considered worthy of relationship. When you engage another in a friendly manner, you convey to him he is someone worthy of friendship, someone whom you’d like to call friend. It is for this reason “he who sows courtesy reaps friendship.”

Chapter 5: Access Affinity

Today, there are 2 kinds of agreement.

• The first kind of agreement is the common variety. It is the sort that surrounds 2 parties holding the same opinion on a particular issue.
• This second kind of agreement is based on 2 parties liking the same thing—or, as we might view it, being similar people. We don’t typically call this sort of harmony an “agreement,” but in the digital age it is best to think of it as such because we are always drawn to those with whom we have something in common.

Chapter 6: Surrender the Credit

What is the worst quality in a leader? Ask the followers and they would tell you it is the quality of taking credit when things go well and dishing out blame when things go wrong.

Interesting paradox: the more you surrender the credit for something you’ve done, the more memorable you become, and the more you actually end up receiving credit.

Chapter 7: Engage with Empathy

“Cooperativeness in conversation, is achieved when you show that you consider the other person’s ideas and feelings as important as your own.” - Gerald S. Nirenberg

Remember, empathy is not a networking tactic to be learned and leveraged; it is a link to immediate affluence in human relations.

Chapter 10: Throw Down a Challenge

While connection is necessary to keep us thriving, competition is necessary to keep us striving.

Part 4: How to Lead Change Without Resistance or Resentment

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Chapter 1: Begin on a Positive Note

In his classic book Leadership Is an Art, author Max DePree famously asserted,

“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.”

Chapter 2: Acknowledge Your Baggage

Marshall Goldsmith writes,

“No one expects us to be right all the time. But when we’re wrong, they certainly expect us to own up to it. In that sense, being wrong is an opportunity—an opportunity to show what kind of person and leader we are. . . . How well you own up to your mistakes makes a bigger impression than how you revel in your successes.”

Chapter 5: Mitigate Fault

Charlene Li, in her important book Open Leadership, maps out 5 actions that leaders can take to instill organizational resilience within their teams:

1. Acknowledge that failure happens. Leaders can acknowledge failures quickly when they happen, but they can also discuss with their teams the likelihood of failures occurring.
2. Encourage dialogue to foster trust.
3. Separate the person from the failure.
4. Learn from your mistakes.
5. Create a risk-taking and failure system.

Charlene Li’s advice can be transferred to situations when we should help an individual save face to recover from a minor error, oversight, or gaffe.

• Acknowledge that a mistake was made, but do it gently. Pretending that nothing happened certainly meets the “forgive” criteria, but it seems a little disingenuous when the error was blatant.
• Recognize and address your own role, even if minor.
• Focus on what was gained.
• When appropriate to do so without making others culpable, address the issue from a broad perspective.

If you need to discuss a mistake or gaffe that somebody made, it’s best to do it in person or over the phone. Save your written communication for praise and constructive advice.

Chapter 6: Magnify Improvement

People are genuinely more motivated by personal and social encouragement than by material rewards.

Author and psychologist Jon Carlson defined some essential practices that we can use to create an encouraging environment:

1. Make healthy relationships a priority. Respect and positive communication are 2 key elements of making that happen.
2. Practice encouragement daily
3. Be inclusive. For instance, include others in your decision making process whenever possible; it shows your faith in their sound judgment.
4. Don’t let conflicts fester.

(Chapter 7: Give Others a Fine Reputation to Live Up To) Act as though the trait you are trying to influence is already one of the person’s outstanding characteristics.

Chapter 8: Stay Connected on Common Ground

Ask people what they did over the weekend, what they hope to do for their next vacation, or what books they’ve recently read, and you’ll discover something compelling and revealing about their goals, their dreams.

6 degrees to Kevin Bacon is an interesting pop culture phenomenon, but it’s actually a fantastic way to think about those you want to influence. When you expand the translation to include common interests, common experiences, common goals, the truth is that we are only 1 degree away from anyone. To be influential with others, to make them happy to do what it is we would like them to do, we simply have to find that 1 degree that connects us.

In the end, the art of winning friends and influencing people in the digital age is summed up in the activity of connecting and staying connected on common ground.