How To Win Friends - For Half A Century

Nation's Business
December, 1986
by Sharon Nelton

In January, 1937, humorist James Thurber reviewed Dale Carnegie's how To Win Friends and Influence People for the Saturday Review of Literature and found the book wanting.

"Mr Carnegie," Thurber complained, "loudly protests that one can be sincere and at the same time versed in the tricks of influencing people. Unfortunately, the disengenuities in his set of rules and in his case histories stand out like ghosts at a banquet."

But never mind. Though Carnegie died in 1955 and Thurber joined him in the great beyond six years later, The Book lives on. First published in October, 1936, by Simon & Schuster with a printing of 5,000 copies and a hardcover price of $1.98 (now $16.95), How To Win Friends, aimed at helping readers achieve success through self-confidence, made publishing history.

Soon 5,000 copies were being sold a day, revealing the tremendous hunger in America for self-help books and setting sales records for nonfiction. Now celebrating its 50th anniversary, The Book has been translated into more than 30 languages, and more than 15 million hardcover copies have been sold.

Leon Shimkin, then a junior executive and later board chairman at Simon & Schuster, was responsible for acquiring The Book for his company. Shimkin first heard Carnegie in Larchmont, N.Y., when Carnegie gave an introduction to his famous course in public speaking and human relations. Shimkin was impressed enough to take the course.

Then he was impressed enough to suggest that Carnegie do a book based on his lectures. Carnegie wasn't interested. But he finally agreed to let his secretary gather notes, and between the secretary, Shimkin and Carnegie, a book came into being two years later.

"It became more successful than his course ever was," says Shimkin, now 79 and retired.
The son of a Maryville, Mo., farmer, Carnegie was born Nov. 24, 1888. His mother reared Dale as a strict Methodist and, given to making speeches on sin, liquor and the salvation of souls, she was his first oratorical role model. Perhaps the earliest hint of his destiny came one morning in 1900 when the skinny farm boy stood up in Sunday school and gave a talk entitled, "The Saloon, Offspring of Hell."

As a student at the State Teachers College (now Central Missouri state University) at Warrensburg, Mo., he couldn't afford to board in town, and he had to ride to and from school on horseback.

"This had its compensations, however," observed a droll Current Biography 1941, "because Carnegie could try out his recitations on the horse."

After college, he tried brief stints at selling and acting, and in 1912 he found himself in New York without a job. He decided to teach public speaking and approached the YMCA on 125th Street.

"The Y had so little faith in my public speaking course that it refused to risk $2 a night--a teacher's salary in those days," said Carnegie. He offered to work on a profit-sharing basis: From the first money that came in, the Y could pay for printed matter and postage for the course. If there was any profit, it could be divided.

Within a few months, Carnegie was teaching classes in YMCAs in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Willington and making $30 to $40 a night in commissions.

People came, he said, because "they wanted to solve their problems. They wanted to be able to stand up on their feet and say a few words at a business meeting without fainting from fright. Salesmen wanted to be able to call on a tough customer without having to walk around the block three times to get up courage. They wanted to develop poise and self-confidence. They wanted to get ahead in business. They wanted to have more money for their families."

His first marriage ended in divorce, but a dozen years later he met stenographer Dorothy Price Vanderpool, who had taken a Carnegie course in her native Tulsa. Smitten, he asked her to come to New york as his secretary. According to William Longgood, author of a book about Carnegie, Dale and Dorothy were married in November, 1944, after a tempestuous courtship during which she quit her job and was packing to go home "only to have him turn on the how-to-win-friends charm and influence her into staying."

Though his upbringing was strict and his message tinged with a religious fervor, Dale Carnegie was not without a sense of fund. He enjoyed collecting examples of humor drubbing him, including a book called How To Lose Friends and Alienate People. The New Yorker once reported that he had turned up as a supernumerary in a performance of the ballet "Scheherazade" at the City Center with his friend Homer Croy (to whom The Book is dedicated).
They were paid a reported $1 apiece. One of the professional dancers was asked if she felt influenced by Carnegie. "If Nijinsky was a super," she responded, "he wouldn't influence me.

Carnegie began licensing the Dale Carnegie course in 1944 and in 1945 set up a private stock company with himself as president and dorothy as vice president. Dorothy Carnegie, who was born the year her husband began working for the Y, has carried on his work for the last three decades and is now chairman of the parent company, Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc., in Garden City, N.Y. President is another Carnegie devotee, J. Oliver Crom, whose wife, Rosemary, is Dorothy Carnegie's daughter by a previous marriage. The Croms' three children also work in the 300-employee company, two as managers and one as a course instructor.

The courses--prices range from $300 to $900--have grown from the original instruction in public speaking to such topics as sales, customer relations and professional development. Crom expects them to reach about 140,000 students this year through more than 100 licensed offices.

Although students have included virtually everyone from housewives to engineers, the names of some of the graduates add a special luster: Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca; Labor Secretary William E. Brock; Mary Kay Ashe, chairman of Mary Kay Cosmetics; and chicken magnate Frank Perdue.

Even two squads of Dallas Cowboys Cheerladers have been through Carnegie training. The courses teach the cheerleaders communication skills they need for public appearances and help them cope with instant celebrity, explains Debbie Bond, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders' assistant director and a Carnegie graduate herself.

Why has the How To Win Friends message enjoyed such longevity?

"Because it has been very effective; it works," answers Bond, who says the biggest impact on her has been in giving her self-motivation. "I tel people about Dale Carnegie all the time because it changed my life."

Oliver Crom believes the Book's success is based on the fact that his father-in-law turned to principles that have stood the test of time. "The ideas I stand for are not mine," Carnegie once said. "I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don't like their rules, whose would you use?" In an article in American heritage not long ago, business writer Peter Baida was discussing another acclaimed book, In Search of Excellence. "It is an interesting book that deserves to be widely read," he said. "But at bottom it has little to add to the lessons that Dale Carnegie taught to a whole generation of Americans half a century ago."

A successful life...

A successful life doesn't require that we've done the best, but that we've done our best.
-H. Jackson Brown

Stop worrying about the potholes in the road and celebrate the journey!
-Barbara Hoffman

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
-Mark Twain

Years may wrinkle the skin...

A promise must never be broken.
- Alexander Hamilton

The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don't like to do. They don't like doing them either necessarily. But their disliking is subordinated to the strength of their purpose.
- E.M. Gray

Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.
- Samuel Ullman

You can make more friends in two months...

I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions.
- Dorothy Day

Set your goals high, and don't stop till you get there.
- Bo Jackson

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

Nothing in the world...

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
- Calvin Coolidge

You can either have the results you want, or you can have all the reasons why you can't have those results, but you can't have both.
- Unknown

The person who goes farthest...

Your life will be no better than the plans you make and the action you take. You are the architect and builder of your own life, fortune, destiny.
- Alfred A. Montapert

I learned that if you want to make it bad enough, no matter how bad it is, you can make it.
- Gale Sayers

The person who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.
- Dale Carnegie

Most of the important things in the world...

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no help at all.
- Dale Carnegie

You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.
- Margaret Thatcher

Perseverance is failing nineteen times and succeeding the twentieth.
- Julie Andrews

If you have some idea you believe in...

Whatever you do, do with all your might.
-Marcus Tullius Cicero

There's no scarcity of opportunity to make a living at what you love. There is only a scarcity of resolve to make it happen.
-Wayne Dyer

If you have some idea you believe in, don't listen to the croaking chorus. Listen only to what your own inner voice tells you.
-Dale Carnegie

The next time you are appalled...

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.
-Kahlil Gibran

My advice is to go into something and stay with it until you like it. You can't like it until you obtain expertise in that work. And once you are an expert, it's a pleasure.
-Milton Garland

The next time you are appalled by some task, sail into it, accomplish the impossible. It can be done; if you will have the utmost confidence in yourself, you can do it.
-Dale Carnegie

People rarely succeed unless...

Be ENTHUSIASTIC as a leader. You can't light a fire with a wet match!
-Unknown Author

Effort only full releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.
-Napoleon Hill

People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.
-Dale Carnegie

Heart of a Tiger

There is an ancient story of a cat in India who has a great fear of mice. The cat goes to a magician in search of help. The magician says "I'll turn you into what you fear the most" and then turns the cat into a mouse. Wonderful! Off goes the mouse, confident as ever because he has overcome his fear.

Until he meets a dog... So the mouse goes back to the magician and pleads for his help again. The magician reluctantly turns the mouse into Tiger. Everything again is wonderful until he meets a hunter. So the Tiger goes back to the magician and pleads yet again for more help. The Magician takes one look at the Tiger and say "I'm going to turn you back into a mouse for even though you have the body of a tiger you still have the marked heart of a mouse."

The question we need to ask ourselves is: Are there still places in our lives where we have the heart of a mouse? If so, what are we doing this very moment to propel ourselves toward not only having the body of a tiger but the heart of a tiger as well?

The way to defeat fear

Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.
-Benjamin Franklin

Overcoming fear and worry can be accomplished by living a day at a time or even a moment at a time. Your worries will be cut down to nothing.
-Robert Anthony

The way to defeat fear: decide on a course of conduct and follow it. Keep so busy and work so hard that you forget about being afraid.
-Dale Carnegie

Dig the well before you are thirsty.

I came across this Chinese Proverb today: "Dig the well before you are thirsty." and it reminded me of how this relates to our relationships. Before we need to take or ask something of anyone, we need to ensure that we've put in the effort and work in developing our relationships.

Worry never fixes anything.

Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years. If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry. Worry never fixes anything.
-Mary Hemingway

Enjoy the journey, enjoy ever moment, and quit worrying about winning and losing.
-Matt Biondi

First ask yourself: What is the worst that can happen? Then prepare to accept it. Then proceed to improve on the worst.
-Dale Carnegie

Today is a new life...

Even though you may want to move forward in your life, you may have one foot on the brakes. In order to be free, we must learn how to let go. Release the hurt. Release the fear. Refuse to entertain your old pain. The energy it takes to hang onto the past is holding you back from a new life. What is it you would let go of today?
-Mary Manin Morrissey

What's the use of worrying? It never was worth while, so pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag, and smile, smile, smile.
-George Asaf

Today is a new life. Shut the doors on the past and the future. Live in day-tight compartments.
-Dale Carnegie

Success is getting what you want.

Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.
- Dale Carnegie

The greatest error of all is to let any mistake destroy your faith in yourself.
- Norman Vincent Peale

A worthy goal in life is to strive to be the kind of person that your dog thinks you are.
- Unknown

I don't believe in failure...

I don't believe in failure. It is not failure if you enjoyed the process.
- Oprah Winfrey

You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Don't take anyone else's definition of success as your own.
- Jacqueline Briskin

Employee Engagement

Widespread failure to get workers to care about their roles within a company hurts productivity and the bottom line

Derek Sankey
Calgary Herald
Saturday, November 10, 2007

Employee engagement -- the desire by workers to go the extra mile to help their employer succeed and who deem their work meaning and satisfying -- is so low that in strong economies like Canada's, it's having a big financial impact on companies and is seriously hindering recruitment and retention efforts, a new study shows.

"Engagement matters in retention and in organizational success, so it's real clear (that) senior leadership is still not doing the job that employees expect in terms of changing their minds about engagement," says Mark Dahlman, a managing principal in Calgary with global consulting firm Towers Perrin.

The workforce study of 90,000 workers worldwide, including 5,000 in Canada, found that only 23 per cent of workers currently feel engaged at work, while 32 per cent of Canadian employees are partly or fully "disengaged."

"There's a misperception that employees leave companies because of their managers alone," says Dahlman. "We're finding that the organization plays a much greater role in an employee's decision to stay or go."

Things such as office politics, having adequate resources to do the job, an organization's commitment to social responsibility, open lines of communication with senior leaders, opportunities for advancement, challenging work and training all contribute to an employee's perception of engagement in the workplace.

"There has been no real increase in engagement levels among workers," says Byrne Luft, regional vice-president of Manpower in Calgary. "That just goes to show the lack of awareness around engagement, which starts out at a very, very early time in your working career."
He says some organizations don't fully understand the concept -- or how to improve it -- so it falls to the bottom of the priority list.

However, that doesn't mean it's not having a significant financial impact on the company's profitability.

The Towers Perrin study found that firms with the highest percentage of engaged employees collectively increased operating income by 19 per cent and earnings per share by 28 per cent year-over-year.

In contrast, the companies with the lowest percentage of engagement showed declines of 33 per cent in operating income and 11 per cent in earnings per share.

The study is published at a landmark time in Canadian history with the country's unemployment rate dipping below six per cent for the first time in 33 years, giving people more options about where to work than they've seen in decades.

Add to that picture the stark demographic reality facing companies and the situation will intensify in coming years.

Human resource experts say failure to address engagement could translate into financial failure sooner than later.

Figuring out strategies to improve employee engagement starts with researching your employees thoroughly, knowing who they are and what they value, and then segmenting those employees in whatever way matters to them, says Dahlman.

For example, the number one factor affecting engagement for workers over the age of 35 is the reputation of the company and how that translates into the daily workplace versus workers between 18 to 35 who value opportunities for advancement and challenging new work projects.
"But what drives engagement depends on what kind of organization you have," Dahlman says, explaining that the industry, structure and culture of a company have a big impact on what measures can be taken to improve engagement.

"If you're in a customer service or retail business, employee engagement is impacted by their autonomy to meet the customers' demands," he says.

"The kinds of companies where operational efficiency is highly important, like the pipeline and oilfield services business, will improve engagement with better training and development."

Adding to the challenge of engaging workers is the fact that a growing percentage of a company's human capital is now considered part of the "contingent" workforce -- consultants, independent contractors and temporary workers.

The number is expected to grow dramatically as baby boomers retire and return as consultants in the next few years, particularly in industries such as the oilpatch.

"Even though they're contractors, they still have career aspirations and those are all real drivers of engagement," says Dahlman. "They still make decisions as to whether or not to stay."

Dale Carnegie Training works with over 400 of the Fortune 500 companies, and has graduated over 8 million people in 95 years, strengtheneing the people skills of their leaders to create strong teams and positively influence morale, leading to an increase in productivity.

If money is your hope...

If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.
- Henry Ford

The highest point of philosophy is to be both wise and simple; this is the angelic life.
- John ChrysoStom (BC 347-407)

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
- George Bernard Shaw

Write it on your heart...

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year.
- Ralph Emerson, Philosopher

I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of quiet life stimulates the creative mind.
- Albert Einstein, Physicist

Great things are only possible with outrageous requests.
- Thea Alexander

Getting Extraordinary Performance When You Can't Pay for It.

It was one of those grunt jobs that employees in any organization might have to do: move a computer center to a new location. Except mortgage lender Fannie Mae asked more than 550 employees to do their "day jobs" all week and then throw themselves into this new task over 13 consecutive weekends, pulling all-nighters on Friday evenings -- without even the promise of extra pay.

To do it, the group had to bring down, move, and start up more than 300 business applications. It had to unplug, wrap, and box 577 computer servers, lay more than 1.8 million feet of copper cable and 35 miles of fiber, and perform more than a million separate tasks to transfer the data center from the Fannie Mae corporate headquarters in Washington, DC to an office park in Reston, Virginia, some 25 miles away. Remarkably, they did it flawlessly, without a single interruption to the company's business -- and it was full-time Fannie Mae people who did almost all of the work.

How? "Napoleon said that an army marches on its stomach, and I fed the hell out of these guys," says Mary Cadagin, the Fannie Mae leader who spearheaded the move last summer. She's half-joking, of course, but she did serve about 1,600 pounds of chicken wings to her crews for midnight snacking -- not to mention the Friday-night themed dinners, ranging from New England clambakes to down-home southern cooking, or the full-blown Saturday morning breakfasts with pancakes, eggs, bacon, and sausage.

It wasn't just the chow. Cadagin is one of those relatively rare inspirational leaders who are able to get people to do extraordinary things. She is what Jon R. Katzenbach, an ex - McKinsey & Co. director who now heads up Katzenbach Partners LLC in New York, would call a pride builder: a leader who instills self-esteem in workers and builds unflagging support for remarkably tough assignments.

I'm not happy, I'm cheerful...

I'm not happy, I'm cheerful. There's a difference. A happy woman has no cares at all. A cheerful woman has cares, but has learned how to deal with them.
- Beverly Sills, Opera Singer

We don't love qualities, we love a person: sometimes by reasons of their defects as well as their qualities.
- Jacques Maritain, Philosopher

When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment.
- Georgia O'Keefe, Artist

Most workers blame their boss for quitting

Eric Beauchesne
CanWest News Service
Calgary Herald
Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Blame the boss. That's what most Canadian workers do when they quit their job, according to survey released yesterday by an online employment agency.

With shortages of skilled workers on the rise and with the tight labor market expected to get even tighter as baby boomers hit retirement age, companies cannot afford to lose employees. As a result, firms and their managers may want to review what workers like and don't like in a boss, results of the survey by Monster Canada suggests.

And what they like, according to the survey, is a boss who is fair, who respects the rights of workers and is not a bully.

Of the 2,687 Canadians who responded to the online poll, as many as 80 per cent of quitters blamed their boss for their decision. Thirty-two per cent claimed their boss "did not treat people fairly," another 28 per cent said their manager "ruled by intimidation and fear," and 24 per cent said the boss "did not respect the rights of employees."

Only 16 per cent claimed to have quit a job for reasons unrelated to the boss.

"There is no doubt that bosses typically are seen as the primary reason for people either loving or leaving their jobs and in today's tight labour market, it's more important than ever for companies to realize this as they compete for the best people,"said Gabriel Bouchard, Monster Canada's vice-president and general manager.

Another survey of 2,636 workers by the employment agency -- which asked: "What should your boss do to be a better leader?" --found that 35 per cent said their current boss should "set clearer expectations and provide constructive feedback." Twenty-seven per cent said their boss needs to "admit when a mistake is made instead of blaming others," 22 per cent that their boss needs to become "more accessible and open to communicating," and 16 per cent that their boss should "listen to employees more" on the job.

"It's a job-seeker's market and it's just going to get better for job candidates moving forward, which means that they are going to be a lot less patient with bad bosses," Bouchard said.
However, bosses are more challenged than ever, Bouchard added, explaining that they are having to deal with multiple generations and multiple cultures in the workplace.

Dale Carnegie offers programs to give managers the tools to be able to become effective leaders. We all have the opportunity to be leaders whether or not we are in a management position. We can all be leaders in our own teams.

Call 265-5344 to speak with one of our associates and find out more about how Dale Carnegie Training can help you become a better boss.

Be yourself.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that although the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.
- Ralphn Waldo Emerson

Dale Carnegie wanted us all to be the best we can be... "to cultivate our own garden and make the most of our own individuality.... Be yourself. Don't imitate others! You are an original. Be glad of it."

Let's not expect gratitude...

Let's not expect gratitude. Then, if we get some occasionally, it will come as a delightful surprise. If we don't get it, we won't be disturbed. It is natural for people to forget to be grateful; so, if we go around expecting gratitude, we are headed straight for a lot of heartaches.
- Dale Carnegie

I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.
- Ann Frank

If I were asked to give what I consider the most useful bit of advice for all humanity it would be this: Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life and when it comes, hold your head high, look it squarely in the eye and say, "I will be bigger than you. You cannot defeat me."
- Ann Landers

A bird does not sing...

A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.