Show
respect
for
the
other
person’s
opinions.
Never
say," You're
wrong.”
3.
IF YOU’RE WRONG, ADMIT
IT
Within a minute’s walk of my house there was a wild
stretch of virgin timber, where the blackberry thickets
foamed white in the springtime, where the squirrels
nested and reared their young, and the horseweeds grew
as tall as a horse’s head. This unspoiled woodland was
called Forest Park - and it was a forest, probably not
much different in appearance from what it was when
Columbus discovered America. I frequently walked in
this park with Rex, my little Boston bulldog. He was a
friendly, harmless little hound; and since we rarely met
anyone in the park, I took Rex along without a leash or a
muzzle.
One day we encountered a mounted policeman in the
park, a policeman itching to show his authority.
“‘What do you mean by letting that dog run loose in
the park without a muzzle and leash?” he reprimanded
me. “Don’t you know it’s against the law?”
“Yes, I know it is,” I replied softy, “but I didn’t think
he would do any harm out here.”
"You didn’t think! You didn’t think! The law doesn’t
give a tinker’s damn about what you think. That dog
might kill a squirrel or bite a child. Now, I’m going to let
you off this time; but if I catch this dog out here again
without a muzzle and a leash, you’ll have to tell it to the
judge ."
I meekly promised to obey.
And I did obey - for a few times. But Rex didn’t like the muzzle, and neither did I; so we decided to take a
chance. Everything was lovely for a while, and then we
struck a snag. Rex and I raced over the brow of a hill one
afternoon and there, suddenly - to my dismay - I saw
the majesty of the law, astride a bay horse. Rex was out
in front, heading straight for the officer.
I was in for it. I knew it. So I didn’t wait until the
policeman started talking. I beat him to it. I said: “Officer,
you’ve caught me red-handed. I’m guilty. I have no
alibis, no excuses. You warned me last week that if I
brought the dog out here again without a muzzle you
would fine me.”
"Well, now,” the policeman responded in a soft tone.
“I know it’s a temptation to let a little dog like that have
a run out here when nobody is around.”
“Sure it’s a temptation,” I replied, “but it is against
the law.”
“Well, a little dog like that isn’t going to harm anybody,”
the policeman remonstrated.
"No, but he may kill squirrels,” I said.
“Well now, I think you are taking this a bit too seriously,”
he told me. “I’ll tell you what you do. You just
let him run over the hill there where I can’t see him - and
we’ll forget all about it.”
That policeman, being human, wanted a feeling of importance;
so when I began to condemn myself, the only
way he could nourish his self-esteem was to take the
magnanimous attitude of showing mercy.
But suppose I had tried to defend myself - well, did
you ever argue with a policeman?
But instead of breaking lances with him, I admitted
that he was absolutely right and I was absolutely wrong;
I admitted it quickly, openly, and with enthusiasm.
The
affair terminated graciously in my taking his side and his
taking my side. Lord Chesterfield himself could hardly
have been more gracious than this mounted policeman,
who, only a week previously, had threatened to have the
law on me.
If we know we are going to be rebuked anyhow, isn’t
it far better to beat the other person to it and do it ourselves?
Isn’t it much easier to listen to self-criticism than
to bear condemnation from alien lips?
Say about yourself all the derogatory things you know
the other person is thinking or wants to say or intends to
say - and say them before that person has a chance to
say them. The chances are a hundred to one that a generous,
forgiving attitude will be taken and your mistakes
will be minimized just as the mounted policeman did
with me and Rex.
Ferdinand E. Warren, a commercial artist, used this
technique to win the good will of a petulant, scolding
buyer of art.
“It is important, in making drawings for advertising
and publishing purposes, to be precise and very exact,”
Mr. Warren said as he told the story.
“Some art editors demand that their commissions be
executed immediately; and in these cases, some slight
error is liable to occur. I knew one art director in particular
who was always delighted to find fault with some
little thing. I have often left his office in disgust, not
because of the criticism, but because of his method of
attack. Recently I delivered a rush job to this editor, and
he phoned me to call at his office immediately. He said
something was wrong. When I arrived, I found just what
I had anticipated - and dreaded. He was hostile, gloating
over his chance to criticize. He demanded with heat
why I had done so and so. My opportunity had come to
apply the self-criticism I had been studying about. So I said: ''Mr. So-and-so,
if what you say is true, I am at fault and there is absolutely no excuse for my
blunder. I have been doing drawings for you long enough to know better.
I’m ashamed of myself.’
“Immediately he started to defend me. ‘Yes, you’re
right, but after all, this isn’t a serious mistake.
It is
only '"I interrupted him. ‘Any mistake,’
I said, ‘may be
costly and they are all irritating.’
“He started to break in, but I wouldn’t let him. I was
having a grand time. For the first time in my life, I was
criticizing myself - and I loved it.
" ‘I should have been more careful,’ I continued. ‘You
give me a lot of work, and you deserve the best; so I’m
going to do this drawing all over.’
" ‘No! No!’ he protested. ‘I wouldn’t think of putting
you to all that trouble.’ He praised my work, assured me
that he wanted only a minor change and that my slight
error hadn’t cost his firm any money; and, after all, it was
a mere detail - not worth worrying about.
“My eagerness to criticize myself took all the fight out
of him. He ended up by taking me to lunch; and before
we parted, he gave me a check and another commission”
There is a certain degree of satisfaction in having the
courage to admit one’s errors. It not only clears the air of
guilt and defensiveness, but often helps solve the problem
created by the error.
Bruce Harvey of Albuquerque, New Mexico, had incorrectly
authorized payment of full wages to an employee
on sick leave. When he discovered his error, he
brought it to the attention of the employee and explained
that to correct the mistake he would have to
reduce his next paycheck by the entire amount of the
overpayment. The employee pleaded that as that would
cause him a serious financial problem, could the money
be repaid over a period of time? In order to do this,
Harvey explained, he would have to obtain his supervisor's
approval. “And this I knew,” reported Harvey,
“would result in a boss-type explosion, While trying to
decide how to handle this situation better, I realized that
the whole mess was my fault and I would have to admit I
it to my boss.
“I walked into his office, told him that I had made a
mistake and then informed him of the complete facts.
He replied in an explosive manner that it was the fault
of the personnel department. I repeated that it was my
fault. He exploded again about carelessness in the accounting
department. Again I explained it was my fault.
He blamed two other people in the office. But each time
I reiterated it was my fault. Finally, he looked at me and
said, ‘Okay, it was your fault. Now straighten it out.’ The
error was corrected and nobody got into trouble. I felt
great because I was able to handle a tense situation and
had the courage not to seek alibis. My boss has had more
respect for me ever since.”
Any fool can try to defend his or her mistakes - and
most fools do - but it raises one above the herd and gives
one a feeling of nobility and exultation to admit one’s
mistakes. For example, one of the most beautiful things
that history records about Robert E. Lee is the way he
blamed himself and only himself for the failure of Pickett’s
charge at Gettysburg.
Pickett’s charge was undoubtedly the most brilliant
and picturesque attack that ever occurred in the Western
world. General George E. Pickett himself was picturesque.
He wore his hair so long that his auburn locks
almost touched his shoulders; and, like Napoleon in his
Italian campaigns, he wrote ardent love-letters almost
daily while on the battlefield. His devoted troops
cheered him that tragic July afternoon as he rode off
jauntily toward the Union lines, his cap set at a rakish
angle over his right ear. They cheered and they followed
him, man touching man, rank pressing rank, with banners
flying and bayonets gleaming in the sun. It was a
gallant sight. Daring. Magnificent. A murmur of admiration
ran through the Union lines as they beheld it.
Pickett’s troops swept forward at any easy trot, through
orchard and cornfield, across a meadow and
over a ravine.
All the time, the enemy’s cannon was tearing
ghastly holes in their ranks, But on they pressed, grim,
irresistible.
Suddenly the Union infantry rose from behind the
stone wall on Cemetery Ridge where they had been hiding
and fired volley after volley into Pickett's onrushing
troops. The crest of the hill was a sheet of flame, a
slaughterhouse, a blazing volcano. In a few minutes, all
of Pickett’s brigade commanders except one were down,
and four-fifths of his five thousand men had fallen.
General Lewis A. Armistead, leading the troops in the
final plunge, ran forward, vaulted over the stone wall,
and, waving his cap on the top of his sword, shouted:
“Give ‘em the steel, boys!”
They did. They leaped over the wall, bayoneted their
enemies, smashed skulls with clubbed muskets, and
planted the battle flags of the South on Cemetery Ridge.
The banners waved there only for a moment. But that
moment, brief as it was, recorded the high-water mark of
the Confederacy.
Pickett’s charge - brilliant, heroic - was nevertheless
the beginning of the end. Lee had failed. He could not
penetrate the North. And he knew it.
The South was doomed.
Lee was so saddened, so shocked, that he sent in his
resignation and asked Jefferson Davis, the president of
the Confederacy, to appoint "a younger and abler man.”
If Lee had wanted to blame the disastrous failure of
Pickett’s charge on someone else, he could have found a
score of alibis. Some of his division commanders had
failed him. The cavalry hadn’t arrived in time to support
the infantry attack. This had gone wrong and that had
gone awry.
But Lee was far too noble to blame others. As Pickett’s
beaten and bloody troops struggled back to the Confederate
lines, Robert E. Lee rode out to meet them all
alone and greeted them with a self condemnation
that
was little short of sublime. “All this has been my fault,”
he confessed. "I and I alone have lost this battle.”
Few generals in all history have had the courage and
character to admit that.
Michael Cheung, who teaches our course in Hong
Kong, told of how the Chinese culture presents some
special problems and how sometimes it is necessary to
recognize that the benefit of applying a principle may be
more advantageous than maintaining an old tradition.
He had one middle-aged class member who had been
estranged from his son for many years. The father had
been an opium addict, but was now cured. In Chinese
tradition an older person cannot take the first step. The
father felt that it was up to his son to take the initiative
toward a reconciliation. In an early session, he told the
class about the grandchildren he had never seen and
how much he desired to be reunited with his son. His
classmates, all Chinese, understood his conflict between
his desire and long-established tradition. The father felt
that young people should have respect for their elders
and that he was right in not giving in to his desire, but to
wait for his son to come to him.
Toward the end of the course the father again addressed
his class. “I have pondered this problem,” he
said. “Dale Carnegie says, ‘If you are wrong, admit it
quickly and emphatically.’ It is too late for me to admit
it quickly, but I can admit it emphatically. I wronged my
son. He was right in not wanting to see me and to expel
me from his life. I may lose face by asking a younger
person’s forgiveness, but I was at fault and it is my responsibility
to admit this.” The class applauded and
gave him their full support. At the next class he told how
he went to his son’s house, asked for and received forgiveness
and was now embarked on a new relationship
with his son, his daughter-in-law and the grandchildren
he had at last met.
Elbert Hubbard was one of the most original
authors
who ever stirred up a nation, and his stinging sentences
often aroused fierce resentment. But Hubbard with his
rare skill for handling people frequently turned his enemies
into friends.
For example, when some irritated reader wrote in to
say that he didn’t agree with such and such an article
and ended by calling Hubbard this and that, Elbert Hubbard
would answer like this:
Come to think it over, I don’t entirely agree with it myself.
Not everything I wrote yesterday appeals to me today. I am
glad to learn what you think on the subject. The next time
you are in the neighborhood you must visit us and we’ll get
this subject threshed out for all time. So here is a handclasp
over the miles, and I am, Your sincerely,
What could you say to a man who treated you like
that?
When we are right, let’s try to win people gently and
tactfully to our way of thinking, and when we are wrong
- and that will be surprisingly often, if we are honest
with ourselves - let’s admit our mistakes quickly and
with enthusiasm. Not only will that technique produce
astonishing results; but, believe it or not, it is a lot more
fun, under the circumstances, than trying to defend oneself.
Remember the old proverb: "By fighting you never
get enough, but by yielding you get more than you expected.”
