Learn to Listen
As William James pointed out, "The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated."
You should be governed by the idea that one should seek first to understand, then to be understood. We're often so worried about what we're going to say next that we don't hear what's being said to us now.
There are few ways to signal to your listener that you are interested and listening actively. Take the initiative and be the first person to say hello. This demonstrates confidence and immediately shows your interest in the other person. When the conversation starts, don't interrupt. Show empathy and understanding by nodding your head and involving your whole body in engaging the person you're talking with. Ask questions that demonstrate (sincerely) you believe the other person's opinion is particularly worth seeking out. Focus on their triumphs. Laugh at their jokes. And always, always, remember the other person's name. Nothing is sweeter to someone's ears than their own name. At the moment of introduction, I visually attach a person's name to their face. Seconds later, I'll repeat the person's name to make sure I got it, and then again periodically throughout the conversation.
If All Else Fails, Five Words That Never Do
"You're wonderful. Tell me more."
The late professor Thomas Harrell of Stanford's Graduate School of Business loved researching the traits of alumni. His chief finding, as you now know, is that successful graduates are social, communicative, and outgoing. "Getting-along skills," more than anything else, determined who got ahead.
And that's why the legacy of Dale Carnegie—the first person to sell small talk as a corporate skill—remains intact, nearly seven decades after the 1 9 3 6 release of his bestseller How to Win Friends and Influence People.
For Carnegie, too, small talk became a means for self-advancement.
Born in 1 8 8 8 , the son of a Missouri pig farmer who struggled all his life, Carnegie grew up ashamed of being poor. The feeling never quite wore off, a n d , as a young man, he contemplated suicide. W h e n he was twenty-four, and struggling for subsistence in N e w York City, Carnegie offered to teach night classes in public speaking at the 1 25th Street Y M C A . Fewer than ten students attended his first class. For weeks, Carnegie shared with his students the skills he'd learned as a standout high school debater and as a student at Missouri State Teachers College. He taught people how to shirk shyness, boost self-confidence, and ease worry, using ideas that amount, then and now, to common sense. Remember people's names. Be a good listener. Don't criticize, condemn, or complain.
After his first several classes, Carnegie ran out of stories to tell. So he asked his students to stand up and talk about their own experiences—and offered feedback on their performances. It was then that he realized that as students overcame their fear of taking the floor, and became more comfortable talking openly about themselves, their self-confidence rose accordingly.
In Carnegie's classes, businessmen, salesmen, and other professionals found a place devoted to affordable, commonsensical selfimprovement. By 1 9 1 6 , Carnegie's course was so successful that he needed to train, for the first time, official "Dale Carnegie Course" instructors. By 1 9 2 0 , Carnegie had published Public Speaking, an official text that he used to launch Carnegie courses in Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.
And it's possible none of it would've happened had not
Carnegie encouraged his initial classes to open up and to share their stories. It's no wonder Carnegie never failed to stress listening as a crucial networking skill. In an age when computers and e-mail take the personal touch out of doing business, Carnegie's homespun logic remains as relevant as ever. People, after all, are still people, and w h o couldn't use a reminder of lessons like:
• "Become genuinely interested in other people."
• "Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves."
• "Let the other person do a great deal of the talking."
• "Smile."
• "Talk in terms of the other person's interests."
• "Give honest and sincere appreciation."
Though he successfully applied the fundamentals of smart smalltalking to his own life, Carnegie was reluctant—at first—to share his secrets in book form. The course cost $75, and Carnegie wasn't keen on giving away its content. But Leon Shimkin, an editor at Simon & Schuster, was a passionate graduate of Carnegie's classes. Shimkin finally convinced Carnegie, to the benefit of us all, to write a book. "Perhaps by practicing the very sort of flattery and persistence that Mr. Carnegie himself advocated and admired—Mr. Shimkin won him over," wrote Edwin McDowell in the New York Times in 1 9 8 6 .
For Shimkin, and millions more like him, Carnegie emboldened us with the belief that we can learn to get along better with other people—and achieve great success—no matter w h o we are or how poor we were.
III. Turning Connections into Compatriots
18. Health, Wealth, and Children
What do you really want? Side by side, those five words may be the most universally resonant in the English language.
As I discussed in the chapter "What's Your Mission?" the answer to "What do you really want?" determines all that you do and all the people who help you accomplish it. It provides the blueprint for all your efforts to reach out and connect with others. Likewise, when you understand someone else's mission, you hold the key to opening the door to what matters most to them. Knowing that will help you create deep, long-lasting bonds.
In my initial conversation with someone I'm just getting to know, whether it's a new men tee or simply a new business contact, I try to find out what motivations drive that person. It often comes down to one of three things: making money, finding love, or changing the world. You laugh—most people do when confronted with the reality of their deepest desires.
Get comfortable with that reality. Learning to become a connector means in some sense learning to become an armchair therapist. As you continue down this path, you'll become a keen observer of the human psyche. You'll have to learn what makes people tick and how best to satisfy whatever tick that may be. It means calling something BS when you see people being less than honest with themselves.
The most successful relationship builders are, indeed, a nifty amalgam of financial guru, sex therapist, and all-around dogooder.
Connecting is a philosophy of life, a worldview. Its guiding principle is that people, all people, every person you meet, is an opportunity to help and be helped. Why do I place so much importance on mutual dependence? For starters, because, as a matter of necessity, we are all social beings. Our strength comes from what we do and know cumulatively. The fact is, no one gets ahead in this world without a lot of help.
Eliminating things like intimidation and manipulation, there is only one way to get anybody to do anything. Do you know what it is?
This is far from a trivial question. Business is, after all, the ability to motivate a group of individuals to move an idea from concept to reality; to take a theory and make it a practice; to gain the buy-in of your employees and colleagues; to encourage others to execute your plans.