How to win Friends and Influence people

One of my all time favourite book is the “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. I found this book in one of the HBR articles as a must-read for all business leaders, so I picked this up on my way to work, and I was transfixed. I will agree with the original article that this is must read for anyone who needs to work with people.

Moreover, I would suggest to Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland that they should make this book a mandatory for all Scrum Master to read before getting the certification for any Scrum role. This book teaches the core skills that all good Scrum Master need to use on a daily basis and I ask all the Scrum Masters that I mentor that they must read this book if they wish to keep me as their mentor.

The Structure of the book:

This book is divided into four sections, and each section has multiple chapters. Each chapter is basically a rule that we should follow. Each rule/Principle that Dale has written in this book is full of wisdom and Dale using examples and stories to put this point across.

The first section is titled “Fundamental Techniques in Handling People.”
It is the smallest part of the book and covers three Principles, and these are:

Principle: 1
Don’t criticise, condemn or Complain
Few points that I extremely like from this chapter of the book are:

• “ninety-nine times out of a hundred, people don’t criticise themselves for anything no matter how wrong it may be.”
• “Wrongdoers blaming everybody but themselves”
• “Remember we are NOT dealing with creatures of logic, we are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.”

Principle 2:
Give honest and sincere appreciation
In this chapter, we are taught to only use true from heart appreciation of something done well and to use flattering.
Principle 3:
Arouse in the other person an eager want.
Section two titled “Six ways to make people like you”, covers the following six principles:
Principle 1: Become genuinely interested in other person.
Principle 2: Smile
Principle 3: Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
Principle 4: Become a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
Principle 5: Talk in terms of the other person’s interest.
Principle 6: Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.

When I was flicking through my old copy that I have had for many years, two things caught my eyes that I had underlined. I thought I would share these with you:
1: “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in others than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”
2: Even our friends would much rather talk to us about their achievements than listen to us boast about ours.

The last two section of the book covers two important topics for anyone wishing to become a good Scrum Master or any sort of leader.
Part three is titled: “How to win people to your way of thinking” and contains 12 chapters. The fourth and the final section of the book is titled “Be a leader: how to change people without giving offence or arousing resentment” and this section has nine chapters. If you wish to find out more about these two sections, then buy the book.

This is a book has taught me many things and some of my best projects as a project manager before I became Scrum Master have been only successful because of the techniques I have learned from this book. As Scrum Master, I try to use the rules / Principle from this book every day, and I am successful in removing impediments for my team so quickly only because of the Principle I have learned from this book. No matter what field of work you are in, if you have any interaction with anyone, then you must read this book. It will improve your life and its happiness many folds over. The actual value of this book can not be calculated, but if I lost my copy of this book, then I would be will to pay the wait of this book in gold to get another copy.