Will You Be My Friend?

If someone you knew was reading a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie, would you commend them or get worried?

Even more troubling: if a college professor assigned the book to a class of undergraduates and they take took the book to heart, would said professor have been doing a noble or vile act?

When I was putting together my new course (Leadership and the Liberal Arts), I Googled (ah Google, thou art so fair) things along the lines of “Great Books on Leadership” and browsed through the many book lists which appeared. This book showed up repeatedly.  The sheer variety of books on such lists was also illustrative: there are not that many books which consistently show up on such lists—this one and another one I also assigned (review coming up in a few weeks) were persistent, but after those two, there was not much consistency.  Apparently even the makers of Lists of Great Books on leadership are not quite sure what Leadership is or what books one should read to learn about it. 

I’d never read Carnegie’s book before.  I always mentally tossed it in the category of “Tedious self-help books”—a category which I loathe for their endless insipid rambling pep talks.  (Shudder.)  I was a bit hesitant to even assign such a book in a college class; after all, I am aiming for Great Books here, not Pathetic Books which lots of people have read.  But, then I convinced myself that having a book (or as will be revealed in a few weeks—well, technically, it was reveled in the preceding paragraph—two books) in this category might provide some frission to the class and then I figured “Why Not?  Maybe it will be entertaining.  And after all , these people who talk about leadership all the time sure talk about this book a lot.  And, Warren Buffet did praise Dale Carnegie and Warren Buffet is really rich and so at least one really rich guy liked this book and that would be enough to recommend it to some people and so why should I have a higher standard for book selection that that?”  I also figured that having a book like this on the syllabus would be a nod to the way this class used to be before I took it over and put a bunch of Great Books on the reading list.

It was the first book on the syllabus.  The conclusion: it is nowhere near as bad and painful as I thought it would be—which is not praise at all.  But, I didn’t mind reading it—which is surprising, and thus can be considered to be praise. 

Dale Carnegie is the quintessential enthusiastic, peppy, can-do type of guy and the book is an endless stream of anecdotes illustrating 30 different Principles which if followed will allow you to win friends (section 2), convince them to think the way you think (section 3), and then become a leader (section 4).  To his credit, Carnegie knows how to keep a story quick and to the point, and so the book is a fast read.

The conclusion: if Carnegie is right, then Leadership is Technique.  Follow these simple steps and you too will be a leader in no time.  Smile.  Start with the positive.  Think about what the other person wants.  Get other people to talk about themselves.  Let others save face.  Avoid direct confrontation.  And so on.

One of my students said the whole book was really just kindergarten advice, which was a perceptive remark.  That comment also immediately started a debate about whether anyone really learns this in kindergarten (obviously not), but nonetheless she was fundamentally right—even though we don't actually teach 5 year olds to “Call attention to other people’s mistakes indirectly” the general impulse of this book is akin to the “Be nice. Play fair.’ advice which we do give to 5 year olds.  Sadly, many people forget all about that advice as they get older.  So, one way to read this book is as a corrective to the failings of adults. 

Read that way the book has good advice, but it is shallow.  Very shallow.  Carnegie insists in a “stomp your foot when you say it” way that it is not sufficient to feign interest in others, you actually have to be interested in others.  But, the book is also premised on the fact that everyone is selfish, so if you want to win friends and influence people then you need to learn to manipulate that selfishness inherent in others.  But, do that in a genuine way.  And then report back on how you got what you wanted by manipulating others using this list of 30 tricks of the trade.  Then Carnegie can use your anecdotes about manipulating others to show everyone how his principles are really useful and then everyone will want to use them too.  Oh, and by the way, be genuine about all this caring about others.  Really, be genuine.  But, be sure to smile and tell someone all about what a nice head of hair he has (an actual anecdote in the book), because if you do that, then the person with a nice head of hair will be really happy and after all, you want to make people happy, right?, and then you can insist that you only wanted to make people happy because you are altruistic despite the fact that a few chapters earlier you noted that nobody else is altruistic and only does nice things because they get that warm fuzzy feeling from doing seemingly nice things, except of course if you are Dale Carnegie, in which case you only write books and give seminars for the good you can do for humanity and not for the large royalty checks.

Truth be told, that last paragraph wasn't really fair to Dale Carnegie and this book.  This is not a book which is meant to be taken all that seriously.  It is a book meant to be read in a rather uncritical way and then (hopefully) go out and be a little bit nicer and find that being nicer makes other people nicer too.  Honestly, I should just take the book for what it is—a quick read with some kindergarten advice, that, all in all, isn’t a bad reminder that I really ought to smile the next time I get irritated with a sales associate in a store.

The book would also come in handy for a situation like this.