Try honestly to see things from the other
person’s point of view.
9.
WHAT EVERYBODY
WANTS
Wouldn't you like to have a magic phrase that would
stop arguments, eliminate ill feeling, create good will,
and make the other person listen attentively?
Yes? All right. Here it is: "I don’t blame you one iota
for feeling as you do. If I were you I would undoubtedly
feel just as you do.”
An answer like that will soften the most cantankerous
old cuss alive. And you can say that and be 100 percent
sincere, because if you were the other person you, of
course, would feel just as he does. Take Al Capone, for
example. Suppose you had inherited the same body and
temperament and mind that Al Capone had. Suppose
you had had his environment and experiences. You
would then be precisely what he was - and where he
was. For it is those things - and only those things - that
made him what he was. The only reason, for example,
that you are not a rattlesnake is that your mother and
father weren’t rattlesnakes.
You deserve very little credit for being what you are
- and remember, the people who come to you irritated,
bigoted, unreasoning, deserve very little discredit for
being what they are. Feel sorry for the poor devils. Pity
them. Sympathize with them. Say to yourself: “There,
but for the grace of God, go I.”
Three-fourths of the people you will ever meet are
hungering and thirsting for sympathy. Give it to them,
and they will love you.
I once gave a broadcast about the author of Little
Women, Louisa May Alcott. Naturally, I knew she had
lived and written her immortal books in Concord, Massachusetts.
But, without thinking what I was saying,
I
spoke of visiting her old home in Concord. New Hampshire.
If I had said New Hampshire only once, it might
have been forgiven. But, alas and alack! I said it twice, I
was deluged with letters and telegrams, stinging messages
that swirled around my defenseless head like a
swarm of hornets. Many were indignant. A few insulting.
One Colonial Dame, who had been reared in Concord,
Massachusetts, and who was then living in Philadelphia,
vented her scorching wrath upon me. She couldn’t have
been much more bitter if I had accused Miss Alcott of
being a cannibal from New Guinea. As I read the letter,
I said to myself, “Thank God, I am not married to that
woman.” I felt like writing and telling her that although
I had made a mistake in geography, she had made a far
greater mistake in common courtesy. That was to be just
my opening sentence. Then I was going to roll up my
sleeves and tell her what I really thought. But I didn’t.
I controlled myself. I realized that any hotheaded
fool could do that - and that most fools would do just
that.
I wanted to be above fools. So I resolved to try to turn
her hostility into friendliness. It would be a challenge, a
sort of game I could play. I said to myself, "After all, if
I were she, I would probably feel just as she does.”
So, I determined to sympathize with her viewpoint.
The next time I was in Philadelphia, I called her on the
telephone. The conversation went something like
this:
ME: Mrs. So-and-So, you wrote me a letter a few weeks
ago, and I want to thank you for it.
SHE: (in incisive, cultured, well-bred tones): To whom
have I the honor of speaking?
ME: I am a stranger to you. My name is Dale Carnegie.
You listened to a broadcast I gave about Louisa May
Alcott a few Sundays ago, and I made the unforgivable
blunder of saying that she had lived in Concord, New Hampshire. It was a stupid blunder, and
I want to apologize for it. It was so nice of you to
take the time to write me.
SHE : I am sorry, Mr. Carnegie, that I wrote as I did. I lost
my temper. I must apologize.
ME: No! No! You are not the one to apologize; I am. Any
school child would have known better than to have
said what I said. I apologized over the air the following
Sunday, and I want to apologize to you personally
now.
SHE : I was born in Concord, Massachusetts. My family
has been prominent in Massachusetts affairs for two
centuries, and I am very proud of my native state. I
was really quite distressed to hear you say that Miss
Alcott had lived in New Hampshire. But I am really
ashamed of that letter.
ME: I assure you that you were not one-tenth as distressed
as I am. My error didn’t hurt Massachusetts,
but it did hurt me. It is so seldom that people of
your standing and culture take the time to write
people who speak on the radio, and I do hope you
will write me again if you detect an error in my
talks.
SHE: You know, I really like very much the way you have
accepted my criticism. You must be a very nice person. should like to know you better.
So, because I had apologized and sympathized with
her point of view, she began apologizing and sympathizing
with my point of view, I had the satisfaction of
controlling my temper, the satisfaction of returning
kindness for an insult. I got infinitely more real fun out
of making her like me than I could ever have gotten out
of telling her to go and take a jump in the Schuylkill
River,
Every man who occupies the White House is faced
almost daily with thorny problems in human relations.
President Taft was no exception, and he learned from
experience the enormous chemical value of sympathy in
neutralizing the acid of hard feelings. In his book Ethics
in Service, Taft gives rather an amusing illustration of
how he softened the ire of a disappointed and ambitious
mother.
“A lady in Washington,” wrote Taft, “whose husband
had some political influence, came and labored with me
for six weeks or more to appoint her son to a position.
She secured the aid of Senators and Congressmen in
formidable number and came with them to see that they
spoke with emphasis. The place was one requiring technical
qualification, and following the recommendation
of the head of the Bureau, I appointed somebody else. I
then received a letter from the mother, saying that I was
most ungrateful, since I declined to make her a happy
woman as I could have done by a turn of my hand. She
complained further that she had labored with her state
delegation and got all the votes for an administration bill
in which I was especially interested and this was the
way I had rewarded her.
“When you get a letter like that, the first thing you do
is to think how you can be severe with a person who has
committed an impropriety, or even been a little impertinent.
Then you may compose an answer. Then if you
are wise, you will put the letter in a drawer and lock the
drawer. Take it out in the course of two days - such
communications
will always bear two days’ delay in
answering and when you take it out after that interval, you
will not send it. That is just the course I took. After that,
I sat down and wrote her just as polite a letter as I could,
telling her I realized a mother’s disappointment under
such circumstances, but that really the appointment was
not left to my mere personal preference, that I had to
select a man with technical qualifications, and had,
therefore, to follow the recommendations of the head of
the Bureau. I expressed the hope that her son would go
on to accomplish what she had hoped for him in the
position which he then had. That mollified her and she
wrote me a note saying she was sorry she had written as
she had.
“But the appointment I sent in was not confirmed at
once, and after an interval I received a letter which purported
to come from her husband, though it was in the
the same handwriting as all the others. I was therein
advised that, due to the nervous prostration that had followed
her disappointment in this case, she had to take
to her bed and had developed a most serious case of
cancer of the stomach. Would I not restore her to health
by withdrawing the first name and replacing it by her
son’s?
I had to write another letter, this one to the husband,
to say that I hoped the diagnosis would prove to
be inaccurate, that I sympathized with him in the sorrow
he must have in the serious illness of his wife, but that it
was impossible to withdraw the name sent in. The man
whom I appointed was confirmed, and within two days
after I received that letter, we gave a musicale at the
White House. The first two people to greet Mrs. Taft and
me were this husband and wife, though the wife had so
recently been in articulo mortis."
Jay Mangum represented an elevator-escalator main-tenance
company in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which had the
maintenance contract for the escalators in one of Tulsa’s
leading hotels. The hotel manager did not want to shut
down the escalator for more than two hours at a time
because he did not want to inconvenience the hotel’s
guests. The repair that had to be made would take at
least eight hours, and his company did not always have
a specially qualified mechanic available at the convenience
of the hotel.
When Mr. Mangum was able to schedule a top-flight
mechanic for this job, he telephoned the hotel manager
and instead of arguing with him to give him the necessary
time, he said:
“Rick, I know your hotel is quite busy and you would
like to keep the escalator shutdown time to a minimum.
I understand your concern about this, and we want to do
everything possible to accommodate you. However, our
diagnosis of the situation shows that if we do not do a
complete job now, your escalator may suffer more serious
damage and that would cause a much longer shutdown.
I know you would not want to inconvenience
your guests for several days.”
The manager had to agree that an eight-hour shut
down was more desirable than several days'. By sympathizing
with the manager’s desire to keep his patrons
happy, Mr. Mangum was able to win the hotel manager
to his way of thinking easily and without rancor.
Joyce Norris, a piano teacher in St, Louis, Missouri,
told of how she had handled a problem piano teachers
often have with teenage girls. Babette had exceptionally
long fingernails. This is a serious handicap to anyone
who wants to develop proper piano-playing habits.
# 168
Mrs. Norris reported: “I knew her long fingernails
would be a barrier for her in her desire to play well.
During our discussions prior to her starting her lessons
with me, I did not mention anything to her about her
nails. I didn’t want to discourage her from taking lessons,
and I also knew she would not want to lose that
which she took so much pride in and such great care to
make attractive.
“After her first lesson, when I felt the time was right,
I said: ‘Babette, you have attractive hands and beautiful
fingernails. If you want to play the piano as well as you
are capable of and as well as you would like to, you
would be surprised how much quicker and easier it
would be for you, if you would trim your nails shorter.
Just think about it, Okay?’ She made a face which was
definitely negative. I also talked to her mother about this
situation, again mentioning how lovely her nails were.
Another negative reaction. It was obvious that Babette’s
beautifully manicured nails were important to her.
“The following week Babette returned for her second
lesson. Much to my surprise, the fingernails had been
trimmed. I complimented her and praised her for making
such a sacrifice. I also thanked her mother for influencing
Babette to cut her nails. Her reply was ‘Oh, I had
nothing to do with it. Babette decided to do it on her
own, and this is the first time she has ever trimmed her
nails for anyone.’ "
Did Mrs. Norris threaten Babette? Did she say she
would refuse to teach a student with long fingernails?
No, she did not. She let Babette know that her fingernails
were a thing of beauty and it would be a sacrifice
to cut them. She implied, “I sympathize with you - I
know it won’t be easy, but it will pay off in your better
musical development.”
Sol Hurok was probably America’s number one impresario.
For almost half a century he handled artists - such
world-famous artists as Chaliapin, Isadora Duncan, and
Pavlova. Mr. Hurok told me that one of the first lessons
he had learned in dealing with his temperamental stars
was the’ necessity for sympathy, sympathy and more
sympathy with their idiosyncrasies.
For three years, he was impresario for Feodor Chaliapin -
one of the greatest bassos who ever thrilled the
ritzy boxholders at the Metropolitan, Yet Chaliapin was
a constant problem. He carried on like a spoiled child.
To put it in Mr. Hurok’s own inimitable phrase: “He
was a hell of a fellow in every way.”
For example, Chaliapin would call up Mr. Hurok
about noun of the day he was going to sing and say, “Sol,
I feel terrible. My throat is like raw hamburger. It is
impossible for me to sing tonight.” Did Mr. Hurok argue
with him? Oh, no. He knew that an entrepreneur
couldn’t handle artists that way. So he would rush over
to Chaliapin’s hotel, dripping with sympathy. “What a
pity, " he would mourn. “What a pity! My poor fellow.
Of course, you cannot sing. I will cancel the engagement
at once. It will only cost you a couple of thousand dollars,
but that is nothing in comparison to your reputation."
Then Chaliapin would sigh and say, “Perhaps you had
better come over later in the day. Come at five and see
how I feel then.”
At five o’clock, Mr. Hurok would again rush to his
hotel, dripping with sympathy. Again he would insist on
canceling the engagement and again Chaliapin would
sigh and say, “Well, maybe you had better come to see
me later. I may be better then.”
At seven-thirty the great basso would consent to sing,
only with the understanding that Mr. Hurok would walk
out on the stage of the Metropolitan and announce that
Chaliapin had a very bad cold and was not in good voice.
Mr. Hurok would lie and say he would do it, for he
knew that was the only way to get the basso out on the
stage.
Dr. Arthur I. Gates said in his splendid book Educational
Psychology: “Sympathy the human species universally
craves. The child eagerly displays his injury; or
even inflicts a cut or bruise in order to reap abundant
sympathy. For the same purpose adults . . . show their
bruises, relate their accidents, illness, especially details
of surgical operations. ‘Self-pity’ for misfortunes real or
imaginary is in some measure, practically a universal
practice."
