This book has four parts. In all parts of the book the author suggests various ways/ principles to make people like you and how to win people to make your way of thinking. Moreover, these principles are escorted with some quotes mentioned in the book to taste the real essence of these principles.
Part 1: Fundamental Techniques in Handling People
Principle 1: Don’t criticize, condemn or complain
“Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes them strive to justify themselves.”
Principle 2: Give honest and sincere appreciation
The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
Principle 3: Arouse in the other person an eager want
Of course, you are interested in what you want. But no one else is. The rest of us are just like you: we are interested in what we want.
Part 2: Six Ways to Make People like You
Principle 1: Become genuinely interested in other people
There is only one way under high heaven to get the best of an argument – and that is to avoid it.
Principle 2: Smile
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
Principle 3: Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language
The average person is more interested in his or her own name than in all the other names on earth put together.
Principle 4: Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
If you want to know how to make people shun you and laugh at you behind your back and even despise you, here is the recipe: Never listen to anyone for long. Talk incessantly about yourself. If you have an idea while the other person is talking, don’t wait for him or her to finish: bust right in and interrupt in the middle of a sentence.
Principle 5: Talk in terms of the other person’s interests
The royal road to a person’s heart is to talk about the things he or she treasures most.
Principle 6: Make the other person feel important—and do it sincerely
If we are so contemptibly selfish that we can’t radiate a little happiness and pass on a bit of honest appreciation without trying to get something out of the other person in return – if our souls are no bigger than sour crab apples, we shall meet with the failure we so richly deserve.
Part 3: How to Win People to Your Way of Thinking
Principle 1: The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it
There is only one way under high heaven to get the best of an argument – and that is to avoid it.
Principle 2: Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say, “You’re wrong.”
You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to find it within himself.
Principle 3: If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically
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.
Principle 4: Begin in a friendly way
A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.
Principle 5: Get the other person saying, “yes, yes” immediately
Socrates kept on asking questions until finally, almost without realizing it, his opponents found themselves embracing a conclusion they would have bitterly denied a few minutes previously
Principle 6: Let the other person do a great deal of the talking
If you want enemies, excel your friends; but if you want friends, let your friends excel you.
Principle 7: Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers
Principle 8: Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view
There is a reason why the other man thinks and acts as he does. Ferret out that reason – and you have the key to his actions, perhaps to his personality.
Principle 9: Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires
Three-fourths of the people you will ever meet are hungering and thirsting for sympathy. Give it to them, and they will love you.
Principle 10: Appeal to the nobler motives
The way to get things done is to stimulate competition. I do not mean in a sordid, money-getting way, but in the desire to excel.
Principle 11: Dramatize your ideas
Principle 12: Throw down a challenge
All men have fears, but the brave put down their fears and go forward, sometimes to death, but always to victory.
Part 4: Be a Leader—How to Change People without Giving Offense or Rousing Resentment
Principle 1: Begin with praise and honest appreciation
Beginning with praise is like the dentist who begins his work with Novocain. The patient still gets a drilling, but the Novocain kills the pain.
Principle 2: Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly
Principle 3: Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person
Admitting one’s own mistakes – even when one hasn’t corrected them – can help convince somebody to change his behavior.
Principle 4: Ask questions instead of giving direct orders
People are more likely to accept an order if they have had a part in the decision that caused the order to be issued.
Principle 5: Let the other person save face
I have no right to say or do anything that diminishes a man in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him, but what he thinks of himself. Hurting a man in his dignity is a crime.
Principle 6: Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be “hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.”
Praise is like sunlight to the warm human spirit – we cannot flower and grow without it. And yet, while most of us are only too ready to apply to others the cold wind of criticism, we are somehow reluctant to give our fellow the warm praise of sunshine.
Principle 7: Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to
If you want to improve a person in a certain aspect, act as though that particular trait were already one of his or her outstanding characteristics.
Principle 8: Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct
Be liberal with your encouragement, make the thing seem easy to do, let the other person know that you have faith in his ability to do it, that he has an undeveloped flair for it – and he will practice until the dawn comes in the window in order to excel.
Principle 9: Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.
So the key to being a leader and master of the art of human relations is to adapting these principles in your life is to practice them. This will change your attitude towards life and people without arousing resentment.