How to Win Friends and Influence People - Part 1
One of the most foundational books that I have read is How to Win Friends and Influence People. This is easily one of the books that I would recommend everyone to read purely because it has proven to be timeless. Published in 1936, the book was foundational to many successful people. The methods in this book are rudimentary, and while they seem basic, this does not mean that practicing these methods is easy. I still get most of this book wrong in my day-to-day practice and I still need to work on improving and integrating most of these into my life. A lot of it sounds like it won’t work but if practiced sincerely you may be amazed at what small changes in your actions can do for your relationships, personal or business.
I recently re-read this book and want to write about it as a reminder to myself as I go through my medical training. I know a lot of the time we tend to feel that in medicine people are different and it’s ok to operate in ways that tend to ignore the human aspect of the human in front of us. Whether it is patients, nurses, or doctors, I, as much as anyone, need to be reminded that these guidelines will still apply.
The book is long so I will split the different sections of the book into different posts: Fundamentals, Six Ways to Make People Like You, Twelve Ways to Win People to Your Way of Thinking, Be a Leader; How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment.
Fundamental Techniques in Handling People:
Don’t criticize, condemn, or complain - “If you want to gather honey, don’t kick over the beehive"
Human nature doesn’t like to admit fault. When people are criticized or humiliated, they rarely respond well and will often become defensive and resent their critic. To handle people well, we must never criticize, condemn, or complain because it will never result in the behavior we desire.
To be fair, the medical culture probably hasn’t heard of this book and therefore doesn’t know, because medicine is rampant with criticism and condemnation. We criticism and complain on a daily basis when things are not done our way, when nurses don’t give the medicines we want, or the interns don’t write the orders in the right way. We justify our mean culture by saying that lives are on the line. And that’s reasonable. However, I’m not sure if a better way would be to adopt the Dale Carnegie approach. A lot of people are learning on the job and everyone is overworked. This creates an environment where mistakes are bound to happen, and they do. And people get yelled at. A lot. And if they don’t get criticized they definitely will get complained about behind closed doors. Such is the culture in medicine. I’m not sure what can be done to fix it, but I think a culture shift may help. How this will happen will necessarily take time and concerted effort from everyone as criticism is easy to dole out and yet hard to take. In any case, avoiding criticism may be a good place to start.
The Big Secret of Dealing with People - Give honest and sincere appreciation
Appreciation is one of the most powerful tools in the world. People will rarely work at their maximum potential under criticism, but honest appreciation brings out their best. Appreciation, though, is not simple flattery, it must be sincere, meaningful and with love.
Interesting that Carnegie already wrote that “people will rarely work at their maximum potential under criticism”. Again, the medical culture probably hasn’t heard of this book, let alone have read it. The thing is, as a trainee I know people want this. I want it. A few kind words from an attending physician will fuel much harder work from me than the attending that yells at me. Few people will admit it and will admit it in the ways that make it obvious bear with me. People really do want this. They crave positive attention. Think of the last sincere compliment you received, one that felt genuine. No one wanted anything from you, they weren’t trying to sell you anything, they weren’t trying to go home with you. How good did that feel? Probably made your day, right? The trick is that you have the power to do that to other people every day. I know it doesn’t solve your problem of not feeling appreciated on a day to day basis. But the more you do this the more people are likely to give you these compliments in return. Think of it as positive karma. Putting good vibes out into the universe. Whatever you want to call it, it’s good for your soul as well as others’.
“He Who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way” - Arouse in the other person an eager want
To get what we want from another person, we must forget our own perspective and begin to see things from the point of view of others. When we can combine our desires with their wants, they become eager to work with us and can mutually achieve our objectives.
In medicine, this is difficult because as a fellow, I get to boss the residents around. They technically have to do what I say. They don’t really get much of a choice because if they don’t do what I say then they’re really in trouble. That being said there are different ways to give out orders. I try to avoid responses that amount to “because I say so” when someone asks me a question about my management of a patient. Unless there is an emergency I at least let the other person say what they want to say. Carnegie states that the only way to get anyone to do anything is to make them want to do it. So if you want to be persuasive and not an authoritarian boss you need to level with people. Show them why a particular medicine is the best one for the patient even when it adds another thing to the longer than a long to-do list. I’ve had attendings say that they like to spend a bit more time with patients during their first visit to build rapport and eventually save time later. I like to think of the attending example as a different flavor of this fundamental. It takes a bit more time upfront but will save time later.
I’m going to keep breaking down this post with a bit of medical spin to it in the coming weeks. So if you liked this post share it with your friends. I’m going to keep working on these fundamentals - it’s always good to dust off the fundamentals and spend some concerted effort honing them from time to time. I hope this helped. By all means, go read the actual book and let me know what you think.