The Laines

How to Win Friends and Influence People (1.1)

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by

Angela Laines
in ,

“If You Want to Gather Honey, Don’t Kick Over the Beehive”

Principle 1: Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.

Chapter 1 contains many different real-life examples that support this first principle.

The author starts with a few different stories of criminals throughout history, who never thought they did anything wrong. Even after being caught, tried and convicted, they would go to their death bed defending themselves as a good person.

With those stories, the author poses the question, if they never blamed themselves for anything – what about everyday people?

He then talks about a study that showed both animals and humans learn more rapidly and retain what they learn more effectively when rewarded for good behavior than when punished for bad behavior. It makes sense. As a parent, children respond better when helping in a calm tone rather than scolding.

In connection to the professional world, if you’re a manager or leading a team of coworkers, you’ll likely see that your colleagues might respond better to you if you treat them like people. If you ask for suggestions or try to find a solution to an issue with them rather than criticizing them for doing something wrong and leaving it at that.

Here are some additional points that I have wrote down:

  • We blame everyone but ourselves. “Criticisms are like homing pigeons, they always return home.”
  • Improve yourself before trying to improve others.
  • People are not creatures of logic, but emotional with prejudices, pride and vanity.
  • Anyone can criticize, it takes character and self-control to understand and forgive.

The author then ends the chapter with an excerpt from an editorial called “Father Forgets,” about a Father noticing himself criticizing his child. As a parent, this one hit me right in the feels. How we criticize our kids as if they’re adults and have wild expectations, we get so caught up in emotion and lash out at them (deja vu from ‘No More Perfect Moms’!)

After the excerpt of “Father Forgets,” he closes the chapter with noting that instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand them and figure out why they do what they do. It’s more profitable and intriguing than criticism and breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness.

– Angela

Comments

One response to “How to Win Friends and Influence People (1.1)”

  1. Denny

    This, surprisingly to me, is a very interesting book. I have a few takeaways I’d like to leave here:
    Condemnation is demoralizing for everyone. Related to the learning through punishment or reward. It is the “honey” we want, not the punishment.
    History teaches us that criticism is futile. I liked the examples of Lincoln writing letters until he was asked to duel. Then coming up with the sentence “Don’t criticize them. They are what we would be in similar circumstances”.
    The Mark Twain example, where he used to do the same. Write nasty letters but his wife never sent them.
    Another quote that hit hard was “The great man shows his greatness by the way he treats the small men”. The author also reminds us that Any fool can criticize and condemn, and most do. But what we need to give and want is value and attention.
    I am also with you with the section where he says that we reprimand kids for being kids. All because we expect too much from them.
    We don’t need to condemn but to understand. To know it all is to forgive it all. Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.

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