How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age
The original book How-to-Win-Friends-and-Influence-People was written at a time when communications were limited to face-to-face, phone, and letter interactions. These foundational principles have become even more important in today’s digital age, where we are surrounded by constant self-promotion, clever publicity tactics, and “me-ism”.
In this book summary on How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age, we’ll review ideas from the original book, with tips on how to apply them in today’s digital age, so you can stand out as a leader and build rich, trusting and lasting relationships.
Rather than using marketing tactics and technology to replace people’s fundamentals, we should work on the meaning and intent behind our messages, so we can communicate them digitally and multiply the effect using media.
Mục lục bài viết
Essentials of Engagement
- Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.
- Give honest and sincere appreciation.
- Arouse in the other person an eager want.
There are 3 principles of engagement that underlie all other principles in the book. Chances are, most of us violate these principles in our daily interactions, and the (negative) impact is being multiplied through social media, emails, messages and other forms of digital communications.
- Bury your Boomerang: Don’t criticize, condemn or complain. The next time you’re tempted to criticize someone or give them a piece of your mind via social media, email or message, hold yourself back. This will achieve nothing, and can only backfire.
- Affirm what’s Good: Everyone makes mistakes, and we all want to feel valued and appreciated. Rather than put others down, we can choose to affirm them.
- Connect with Core Desires: Influence is about tapping into what others are already feeling, what they really want, and then finding a way to offer it to them in a mutually beneficial way.
Six ways to make people like you
6 Ways to Make a Lasting Impression
- Become genuinely interested in other people.
- Smile.
- Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
- Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
- Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
- Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.
- Take interest in others’ interests: Self-interest is an inherent part of human nature. People gravitate towards people who are interested in them and their interests. Rather than just engage in digital media or campaigns, invest time to truly know people and their problems/interests. That’s the only real way to achieve mutual benefit.
- Smile: We tend to gravitate towards smiles, grins, and giggles. In the digital space, your voice – be it spoken or written – can effectively convey a digital smile.
- Reign with Names: In the digital age, your name is like a company logo, and an identifiable name has great commercial value. However, when you interact with and know and interact with others, you have a relationship, which is even more valuable.
- Listen to Longer: People want to be heard. Good listening leaves a lasting impression, and a strong connection and builds trust. The key is to be present – suspend your own thoughts and give full attention to what the other person has to say.
- Discuss what matters to them: Don’t just “push” your message – focus on what really matters to the other person:
- Leave others a little better: The best way to build relationships is to add value to others.
Gain & Maintain Others’ Trust
The best way to gain trust is to genuinely listen, understand, and try to add value to others, rather than try to be “right” or to asset yourself. Carnegie outlines 10 key ways to do so:
- Avoid Argument: Arguments only cause both sides to dig deeper into their own positions.
- Never say “You’re Wrong”: Resist the temptation to tell someone they are wrong, or indirectly convey it through your look, intonation, or gesture.
- Admit faults quick and emphatically: Don’t try to hide or deny your mistakes; in today’s digital world, news spread faster than ever.
- Begin in a friendly way: When we’re friendly, we validate the other person. When people feel friendly toward us, they are more likely to agree with us.
- Surrender the Credit: When you surrender credit as a way of life, you spread the effect of success, and collaboration will occur more naturally.
- Access affinity: In the digital age, we can build affinity with people we haven’t even met – get people to say “yes” as often as possible, by offering what they want (rather than pitching our own products or causes).
- • Engage with Empathy: Most people don’t stop to consider how others feel in a situation. You’ll stand out simply by making a sincere effort to understand someone’s circumstances and perspective.
- Appeal to noble motives: By targeting the noble desires of people, we appeal to the side of them that wants to be presented in the best light.
- Share your Journey: When you share your story, people get to see who you are and what you strive to be, creating points of commonality that allow friendships to develop.
- Throw down a challenge: Use challenges to inspire and compel, rather than discourage and depress.
Lead Change without Resistance/Resentment
As with other tips in the book, the key idea here is to win people over through sincerity, positive expectations, empathy, and showing them what they want rather than what you want. Get more details on these 8 tips:
- Begin on a positive note: When you start on a negative note, your listeners tend to focus on that so completely that they lose the positive points that follow.
- Acknowledge your baggage: This shifts the attention away from the other person’s mistakes and avoids triggering a defensive reaction.
- Call out mistakes quietly: Most people resent direct criticism. Check out the book or our summary for some examples on how to call out mistakes subtly.
- Ask questions instead of giving direct orders, to stimulate creative solutions, and promote ownership of the problem.
- Mitigate fault: Always consider how to let others save face, and never discuss others’ mistakes publicly.
- Magnify improvement: Praise and encouragement are 2 critical ingredients for motivating people to change and fulfill their potential.
- Give others a fine reputation to live up to: People tend to live up to our positive or negative expectations of them, so you’re indirectly influencing the results from others around you.
- Stay connected on common ground: This is the essence of the book – to know people’s goals, work on win-win outcomes and communicate this sincerely.
***
On criticism
Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself. Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment. …. Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain—and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.
That reminds me of this famous quote by Thomas Carlyle: “A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.”
On dealing with people
When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.
On influence
[T]he only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.
On the secret of success
If there is anyone 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.
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