I’ll be honest – I went into this book with preconceived notions of sliminess. The title is off-putting – it feels like a manual for social interactions, targeted at people who were raised by wolves.
I love a podcast called “By The Book” – they read well-known self help books, then live by the self-help book for two weeks, discussing their experiences on the podcast. Their most recent season focused on historic self help books, with every episode focused on the most popular self help book from each decade of the twentieth century. For the 1930’s, it was “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, and when they read it, it sounded sort of interesting and less slimy.
At my school, I moved into a new role in October – I moved from teaching fifth and sixth grade math to being a Dean of Operations. I love my new role, and it’s come with some new areas for me to learn. As a teacher, I had to influence ten and eleven year-olds. As a Dean of Operations, I have to influence adults, and adults are really different from ten and eleven year-olds. Coaching adults is a major area that I want to get better at in my role, and my coach suggested that I read “How to Win Friends and Influence People” and specifically focus on the influencing people part.
Parts three and four of the book are the sections that are more about influencing people, and each chapter is summarized in a principle that’s a few sentences long – which is helpful.
Principle One “The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.”
This is hard for me sometimes because there are some situations where I am right and I know that I am right.
Principle Two “Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say ‘You’re wrong.’ “
This is an area where I could probably use some work. I sometimes go with “I disagree because you’re wrong.” and it rubs people the wrong way.
Principle Three: “If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.”
I’m alright at this – if I am completely wrong, I will generally get over myself and admit it.
Principle Eleven: “Dramatize your ideas.”
I’ve seen this work well when I’m trying to get a group of people to do something. At the end of this school year, I needed to get teachers to come to the school to get their belongings and clean out their classrooms. I was thinking of talking to them about why it’s important for everyone to take their things with them for the summer because they might be in a different classroom next year, and we need to have the floors stripped and waxed.
Teachers do not care that I have to get the floors stripped and waxed.
On our all staff video call, I went into the messiest, most cluttered classroom in the school, and I made the pitch to the staff that I needed them to come to the school to clean out their classrooms, because we had left everything a mess, thinking that we were coming back after spring break.
It worked. Teachers came and took care of their task lists because of the drama applied to the idea.
Principle Twelve: “Throw down a challenge.”
When my principal wanted all of the math teachers to improve their student’s quiz data, he taped photos of math teachers from other schools with better quiz data on our desks and on the copiers, along with a note describing how wonderful these other math teachers were. We beat their quiz data the next week.
I don’t think all of the principles in “How to Win Friends and Influence People” are applicable in the same way today as they were eighty years ago, but there are pieces that are worthwhile. The book’s usefulness is also dependent on where you, yourself, actually could use some change. I’m a woman who was raised in the midwest – I learned to be very smiley most of the time. Principle Two of part one – “Smile.” is not particularly helpful advice for me.