Carnegie Psychology of Communication
© LLC “Publishing house AST”, 2014
The quality of our life depends on the quality of communication
The ability to communicate, to make a good impression, to please people – today it is necessary for everyone and everyone, no matter where you work and no matter what you do. It is already proved that without successful communication skills it is impossible to make a career, or at least to succeed in any field. We live among people, and therefore, whether we want it or not, depend on them. Our own happiness, our satisfaction in life, our well-being, including our material well-being, depends no less than on how our relationships are formed and the impression we make on others. Those who make people like them, always and everywhere is a winner!
But the art of communication is taught neither at school nor at university. They do not teach the most important thing – the one without which in life is impossible to do! Of course, there are people who are naturally endowed with the gift of successful communication – but they are few. Most are forced to act by trial and error, relying on their own intuition and the skills of communication, which were learned from childhood in the parental family and among peers. But the trouble is that these skills sometimes not only do not help us in any way, but also harmful. Without wishing to do so, we commit error after error in communication and instead of making people feel indifferent, or worse, repel them.
And why? Because communication is an art, and it has its own laws. To communicate properly, these laws must be known and used. Without knowing these laws, many people often violate them. Here is a simple example: wanting to interest the interlocutor, we begin to tell him about himself, about his merits, achievements, plans and projects. We expect that the interlocutor’s eyes light up and he starts to catch every word we say – how else could it be, we are talking about what we are most interested!
But for some reason the person talks to look at the clock, hurry to wind up the conversation and does not seek to meet with us again. We end up blaming either ourselves (not interesting enough to talk), or the interlocutor (he was inattentive, does not understand us). And – forever lose a person who could have been a friend or at least a supporter, a like-minded person, a good friend.
And in order to immediately, from the first minute of conversation to win him over – it would only be necessary to begin the conversation not with yourself, but with what is interesting to him, the interlocutor. He would have instantly formed the best opinion of us, he would be sure that more interesting interlocutor and more pleasant person just is not in the world.
This is a law proven by practice: showing genuine interest in people, any person will make more friends in a month than he would have made in two years by trying to interest people in himself.
Such a simple rule! But why don’t we follow it? Simply because no one taught us to.
The first person who began to actively fill this serious gap in the education of mankind, who had hardly thought before about the art of communication, was Dale Carnegie, the man whose name is known today all over the world.
Dale Carnegie was born in 1888 in the American state of Missouri to a poor farmer’s family. From an early age, Dale was literally obsessed with learning. Neither poverty nor hardship stopped him, and, having entered college, which was three miles from his home, he studied hard by day and worked on the farm in the evenings – milking cows, feeding pigs, chopping wood, after which he sat over books and notebooks until midnight. And so, day after day, for many years. Very early on he began to exercise the art of oratory and even joined a debate club, where in a short time he was so successful that he began to win in all the debates. Among his fellow students there were those who asked him to teach them the same brilliant performance. As a result, while still a student, he was already quite successful in teaching public speaking.
But after graduation, Dale’s dreams of teaching failed: the farm owners, who made up the majority of the population in those parts, did not want to learn anything from the former student, despite all his attempts to lure them to the correspondence courses he organized.
Then he began to look for other work and did whatever he could: he was a sales agent, a mailman in Nebraska, and then even an actor in New York. But all the while Dale had his lifelong dream of becoming a writer and a teacher. And one day he once again attempted to start a school of public speaking, this time in New York. But at that time (1912) such schools and courses were new, and the Association of Christian Youth Schools, where Dale submitted his proposal, merely shrugged their shoulders. It was thought that no one would be interested in such courses. But Carnegie insisted: he agreed to work even without a salary, but only for a percentage of the profits from the courses, if any.
And so the courses opened – and began to enjoy unprecedented success. No one had expected this! Word of Dale Carnegie spread to other cities, where similar courses also began to open. And the longer Dale Carnegie taught – the more he understood that even more than oratory, people needed the art of getting along with others, the skills of successful communication, gaining sympathy and making friends. He adapted his curriculum accordingly.
Very soon it became clear that the courses required textbooks – but at that time there were no manuals on public speaking or the art of communication in the United States. So Dale Carnegie began to write these textbooks himself. That is how his books, which were not even originally intended for sale, were born. However they became bestsellers, which are still in demand and popular all over the world. The most popular of Carnegie’s books are: “How to Make Friends and Influence People”, “How to Develop Confidence and Influence People by Speaking in Public”, “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living”. By the 1930s, Dale Carnegie’s books and his teaching had made him perhaps the most popular man in the United States. He founded the Dale Carnegie Institute, branches of which opened in many countries around the world.
In 1955 he passed away, but the memory of the great orator, teacher and writer has not only not waned, but has only grown stronger over the years. Dale Carnegie’s legacy continues to help an enormous number of people achieve tremendous success in life.
Dale Carnegie proved that the quality of our communication determines to an enormous extent the quality of our lives as a whole. His system allows everyone to learn how to dispose of people, make friends, like and influence people without any pressure and rigid methods of subordination, to build a mutual benefit of communication, avoiding conflicts and disputes, to understand and respect each other in any situation.
Today the lessons of Dale Carnegie have become classics of the science and art of communication. They have not aged, they have not lost their relevance over the years–but they have proven over and over again to be true and universal for many generations of people around the world. These lessons are universal, because they allow any person to become a true genius of communication, regardless of the qualities of character, innate abilities to communicate, age, education, or social status. And to this day, numerous schools, systems, seminars, courses devoted to communication, in one way or another, are based on the foundation that was created by the founder of the science of communication – Dale Carnegie.
Carnegie Psychology of Communication
Douglas Moss, Alex Narbut.
Dale Carnegie. The complete course in communication techniques
© ACT Publishing House LLC, 2016
What is “quality of life” and what does it depend on?
In recent years from all sides we constantly hear about improving the quality of life . And every time such a message evokes a skeptical chuckle – both from a kindergarten teacher and a successful businessman.
And yet life has really improved over the past half-century. Judge for yourself:
Incomes have increased objectively, all kinds of products have become available, even those that have always been considered scarce.
Medicine has freed mankind from diseases that in former times caused the extinction of entire cities.
Technology has made our existence so easy that primitive physical labor seems exotic.
Why, then, is any statement that “life has become better, life has become more fun” perceived as something that does not correspond to reality?
The reason is that quality of life does not really depend on high incomes, good food, or technical innovations. All of these factors are not about quality, but quantity.
And what is quality of life?
And under what conditions would a person consider that his own quality of life has actually improved?
The answer to this question was unexpectedly given to the young Dale Carnegie, when in 1912 in New York he opened the first school of public speaking in American history.
At that time there were many different kinds of courses where anyone could learn something useful. By the way, oratory, by the way, was not considered one of these “useful things” at that time – as was announced by the Association of Christian Youth Schools, where Dale submitted his proposal. But Carnegie insisted and even agreed to work without pay. In the end, when the courses opened, the unbelievable happened: the flow of people who wanted to graduate from them was so great that he had to organize similar schools in other cities. And when it became clear that even this was not enough, Carnegie decided to write a manual based on his lectures – so that those who could not attend them could study on their own.
What was the secret of such overwhelming success? Was it the fact that everyone who attended the course dreamed of becoming a public speaker? Dale soon realized that people were not so much interested in the art of public speaking as in the ability to communicate with other people. The audience at his courses ranged from small shopkeepers to big business owners. And all lacked one thing: communication skills.
It turns out that the quality of communication and depends on the quality of life of any person.
The inability to communicate leads to loneliness.
To live a full life, a person needs other people, their understanding and support. After all, the worst diagnosis of our time – not cancer and not a heart attack. The worst diagnosis of our time is loneliness.
People in the modern world are lonely because they often look for profit in every relationship. In love, in friendship, in cooperation. And where profit comes first, there is no interaction between the two personalities. It is a purely functional relationship where it is not the person who is important, but the role he plays.
But if a spouse, a friend and an employee are just roles, it means the performers can be easily replaced? That’s what happens.
Spouses get divorced, friends leave, employees are fired… Their place is taken by other people – but again it does not bring the desired result.
We are used to throwing people away, so our lives are full of frustration and discomfort. That’s why people suffer from a tragic, almost hopeless loneliness. And if you at least occasionally feel lonely person, it’s a sure sign that your communication with people lacks sincerity and desire to understand the other.
Think about it: how do you communicate with the people you meet every day? Think back to any conversation you had with anyone that happened last night or this morning.
How did you feel during that conversation? Pleasure, anger, irritation, indifference?
How would you like to feel? Would you have preferred not to talk to this person at all?
Did you say everything you wanted to say, hear what you needed to hear? Most conversations (and conversation is the main type of communication) go to waste for the person at best. Often it’s nothing more than a tribute to propriety: a greeting, a few common phrases – that’s all communication.
Okay, it would be happening to people who play no role in our lives. But people often behave the same way with their loved ones, relatives and best friends, and they do not notice how they become more and more estranged from those who are the most important in their lives.
People get bogged down in their own problems, thoughts, worries, accumulate stress, irritation – and complain that no one understands them. They don’t even think about the fact that they themselves don’t want to understand others.
The goal of communication is not to gain an advantage, but to establish a sincere relationship.
Why does this happen? Why is there so much negativity in our relationships? Are we all so bad? Of course not. It’s just that most people today suffer from an inability to communicate… at every level of communication-from family to casual company in a fast train compartment.
We are not living in 1912: in today’s world, communication courses are not new. And manuals with recipes for “proper communication” in any bookstore is plentiful. The Internet is full of sites where every case of life will give universal advice – how to conduct negotiations properly, how to meet a girl or persuade her husband to buy a mink coat. But most of these courses, manuals and tips belong to the sphere of false communication. Why? Because the purpose of such communication becomes a one-sided benefit. And if communication benefits only one person, it is no longer communication, but manipulation.
