‘He Who Can Do This Has the Whole World with Him. He Who Cannot Walks a Lonely Way’

The third fundamental principle answers the question of how to actually move people: arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him; he who cannot walks a lonely way. The only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.

Carnegie illustrated it with fishing. He himself was fond of strawberries and cream, but he had found that for some strange reason fish preferred worms. So when he went fishing, he did not bait the hook with what he wanted; he baited it with what the fish wanted. Why not use the same common sense with people? When you want someone to do something, the productive question is never "how can I get them to do this?" but "how can I make them want to do it?"

Harry Overstreet, in his book Influencing Human Behavior, put the principle at its core: "Action springs out of what we fundamentally desire. The best piece of advice which can be given to would-be persuaders, whether in business, in the home, in the school, in politics, is: First, arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way."

Andrew Carnegie's nephew worried his two sons at college never answered their mother's anxious letters. Carnegie bet he could get a reply by return mail without even asking for one. He wrote the boys a chatty letter and mentioned casually, in a postscript, that he was enclosing a five-dollar bill for each of them — then "forgot" to enclose the money. The replies came by return mail, thanking dear Uncle Andrew for his kind letter and noting that, unfortunately, the money he mentioned was missing.

Henry Ford expressed the same insight: "If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own." That is so simple, so obvious, that anyone ought to see the truth of it at a glance; yet ninety percent of the people on earth ignore it ninety percent of the time.

The application is to frame every request in terms of the other person's benefit before your own. Tomorrow you may want to persuade somebody to do something. Before you speak, pause and ask: "How can I make this person want to do it?" That question will stop you from rushing heedlessly into the conversation babbling about what you want. Arousing an eager want is not manipulation; it is the discipline of finding the genuine overlap between what you need and what the other person already wants.