SDG 4 Quality Education: Book Summary- How to Win Friends and Influence People

How to Win Friends and Influence people is one of the masterpiece in the field of professional and personal communication. This international best seller has been the guiding light for various leaders which help them form deeper and meaningful relationships. Here are the few gems we can gather from this book while communicating with anyone:

1. We should give people a fine reputation to live upto. Human beings by their very nature tend to live upto their reputation. Eg- Author tells story of his mother who started to learn a new language and when she committed a mistake, his father was dismissive of her mistakes which disheartened her but when she talked to author, he used to encourage her and tell her that she is his hero as she always encourage him to never stop learning. This way he give his mother a fine reputation to live upto.
2. Encourage others to talk about themselves. People love to talk about themselves, their achievements, their struggles and their ambitions. So if you want to form deeper relations, want to understand people better and make yourself be understood encourage people to talk about themselves.
3. Become genuinely interested in other people. When interacting with people you should keep all your biases aside and be genuinely interested in them when listening to them empathetically.
4. Don’t resist people agree first. One of the major mistake people do while interacting with others is that they tend to be dismissive of other people ideas and start to resist, especially in arguments. What author wants to convey over here is when you are in an argument you should first of all understand others opinions and thoughts by listening to them empathetically. Once you understand the root cause of their opinions then you can think of an optimised solution which both parties can agree upon.
5. Appeal to their nobler motifs. People tend to value those ideas which they hold noble. Eg: When appealing people about the need of sustainable development we should bring in elements of utilising resources for their community and saving them for their posterity.
6. Talk in term of other people interest. While laying down the framework of growth we should put forward how every stakeholder is going to benefit from the proposal. Unless or until we incentivise the objectives, sincere involvement of stakeholders is difficult.
7. Ask questions instead of giving orders. To be an effective leader you should ask questions from your team on how to solve problems. This would encourage them to be innovate and be effective problem solver. Once you listen to their solution you should put forward your ideas and then reach to a much optimized solution.
8. Use encouragements and make their faults easy to correct. An effective mentor encourages people on their good work and help them correct their mistakes rather than just criticising them.
9. If you want people to genuinely like you, you should like them first. This is the golden rule of How to Win friends and influence people. If you want people to like you then you should genuinely develop interest in themselves, their problems and their aspirations.

I hope this summary would help the readers to be effective in forming greater professional and personal relationships and help work in a collaborative fashion to create sustaianble solutions. Please provide your inputs for the article.