The Big Secret of Dealing with People

There is only one way to get anybody to do anything, Carnegie wrote: by making them want to do it. And the way to make a person want to do something is to satisfy the deepest urge in human nature — the craving to be appreciated, to feel important. This is the big secret of dealing with people.

Sigmund Freud said everything we do springs from two motives: the sex urge and the desire to be great. John Dewey put it that the deepest urge in human nature is "the desire to be important." William James said the deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated. Note the word: not wished for, not desired — craved. It is a gnawing and unfaltering human hunger, and the rare individual who honestly satisfies it holds others in the palm of their hand.

Carnegie pointed to Charles Schwab, one of the first men to earn a million-dollar salary, who said his ability to earn it lay not in his knowledge of steel but in his ability to deal with people. "I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people the greatest asset I possess. There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a person as criticism from superiors. I am hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise." That, Schwab said, is what most people do exactly the opposite of.

The crucial distinction Carnegie drew is between appreciation and flattery. Appreciation is sincere; flattery is insincere. One comes from the heart out, the other from the teeth out. Flattery is telling the other person precisely what they think of themselves, and everyone sees through it eventually. The remedy is to stop thinking about our own accomplishments and wants, and to try honestly to see the fine points in the other person — then give honest, sincere appreciation, not cheap praise.

He told of the cynic who said flattery was worthless because he had tried it. Of course it failed — flattery, by definition, fails with anyone of sense. But genuine appreciation rarely fails. Emerson said every man he met was his superior in some way, and in that he learned of them. If that was true of Emerson, it is a thousand times more true of you and me: every person we meet has done something better than we have, and there is something we can honestly admire.

The application is to go through life leaving behind a little spark of gratitude. Give honest appreciation that is specific, not the cheap blanket compliment everyone discounts. The little phrases of appreciation — "thank you," "I'm grateful for the way you handled that" — are the small change of daily life, and they are the secret of getting along with people. The unvarnished truth, Carnegie concluded, is that almost all the people you meet feel themselves superior to you in some way; the surest path to their heart is to let them realize in some subtle way that you recognize their importance, and recognize it sincerely.