I wrapped up reading Dale Carnegie’s bestselling book How to Win Friends & Influence People. The book, with now over 70 years in print, lays out techniques Carnegie learned during his years in the workforce to do as the title says. More than 15 million copies of the University of Central Missouri grads book have been sold, and for good reason. Carnegie lays out practical ways to make friends, family or coworkers comfortable with you and be more inclined to act in a way that is beneficial to you.
No one questions the books effectiveness.
But, about three quarters of the way through, I began to wonder if these ideas are grounded in strong moral footing. With sections titled “Six Ways to Make People like You”, it’s easy to become a bit queasy, especially if you live by my mother’s “be yourself” rule.
On the other hand, it’s not as if Carnegie is saying you should change your entire persona. Much of Carnegie’s advice is more about tweaking your everyday encounters in ways that subtle yet surprisingly effective.
Case in point: I’m not much of a smile-er unless I’m laughing. One subsection advised me on “how to make a good first impression.” The advice was to smile at the beginning and during conversations or when meeting someone new. So I began smiling. I smiled when shaking hands, waving at people and answering questions. Perhaps it was a “placebo effect” of some sort, but my interactions seemed to have more of a positive outcome.
But was I being deceptive?
My motives were not one of being genuinely happy to see the person, rather to make the person more prone to do something for me later on.
In my opinion, moral gray areas are inevitable. As long as I’m not using Carnegie’s strategies with nefarious intentions, I do not feel guilty if I smile more frequently or feign interest in a subject someone is perhaps more enthralled in than I. Likewise, nowhere in Carnegie’s book does he advocate anything but pure intentions.
