The Secret of Socrates

The fifth principle is what Carnegie called the secret of Socrates: get the other person saying "yes, yes" immediately. When you begin a conversation, don't start by discussing the things on which you differ; begin by emphasizing — and keep emphasizing — the things on which you agree. Keep the other person saying "yes, yes" and steer them away from saying "no."

The reason is rooted in psychology. A "no" response, Carnegie explained, is a most difficult handicap to overcome. When a person says "no," all their pride of personality demands that they remain consistent with themselves. The whole nervous and muscular system gathers itself into a posture of rejection. But when a person says "yes," the organism moves forward in an attitude of acceptance and openness. The more "yeses" you can induce at the outset, the more likely you are to succeed in capturing the attention for your ultimate proposal.

Socrates, Carnegie noted, did something that few people have had the wit to do: he never told anyone they were wrong. His whole method — now called the Socratic method — was based on getting a "yes, yes" response. He asked questions with which his opponent would have to agree, kept winning one admission after another, until almost without realizing it his opponent found themselves embracing a conclusion they would have bitterly denied a few minutes before.

He gave the example of a bank clerk who nearly lost a new customer over a form, then saved the account by asking a series of questions to which the customer answered "yes" — gradually bringing the man around to completing it of his own accord. The clerk had stopped pushing his own demand and started building agreement, question by question.

The Chinese, Carnegie observed, have a proverb that carries the ancient wisdom of the East: "He who treads softly goes far." The person who argues and pushes triggers resistance; the person who leads with agreement and asks rather than tells finds the door already open. People resent being told what to think but readily follow a chain of conclusions they reached themselves.

The application is to build a runway of agreement before you ask for the landing. Open with the points you share. Ask questions whose answer is obviously "yes." Lead the other person, step by agreed step, toward your conclusion, so that when you arrive they feel they got there on their own. Get the other person saying "yes, yes" at the outset — it is one of the oldest and most reliable techniques of persuasion ever discovered.