How to Deal with People: Part 1

My personal assessment of Dale Carnegie's principles

tldr; I give personal examples of recent gaffes where I should have applied Dale Carnegie’s advice on people interactions. Each of my examples are within day-to-day CRE tech work.

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I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not perfect. This was especially stark as I compared a recent interaction with a coworker to what I should have done, according to Dale Carnegie.

I’m on vacation (woohoo!) and in the middle of my annual-ish re-read of How to Win Friends and Influence People. Every time I read it, I pause after each chapter to 1) rate myself on how consistently I apply the principle and 2) think of a recent example where I could have applied the principle more effectively (or at all).

My hope is that with each passing year I do this assessment, I get better and better at dealing with people. Because let’s face it: we deal with people in some form or fashion every day. So why not have the best possible interactions with them?

With that, let’s see how I did.

Part 1: Fundamental Techniques in Handling People

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

Rating: 6/10

In Carnegie’s first chapter, he describes why criticism doesn’t motivate people to do the things you want them to do. In fact, it almost always works the opposite way. Tell someone they’re doing something wrong, and they’ll resent you for it. The same thing happens with condemnation. Condemn someone for bad behavior, and immediately they will justify it. And they will do the same if you complain about them. Here’s an example he gives:

George B. Johnston of Enid, Oklahoma, is the safety coordinator for an engineering company. One of his responsibilities is to see that employees wear their hard hats whenever they are on the job in the field. He reported that whenever he came across workers who were not wearing hard hats, he would tell them with a lot of authority of the regulation and that they must comply. As a result he would get sullen acceptance, and often after he left, the workers would remove the hats. He decided to try a different approach. The next time he found some of the workers not wearing their hard hat, he asked if the hats were uncomfortable or did not fit properly. Then he reminded the men in a pleasant tone of voice that the hat was designed to protect them from injury and suggested that it always be worn on the job. The result was increased compliance with the regulation with no resentment or emotional upset.

I rated myself a 6/10 here because I generally don’t complain or condemn others, but I do find myself criticizing their work. I often feel like I’m not criticizing them and therefore it’s okay. But criticizing their work is practically the same thing as criticizing the individual.

Recent example of how I can improve

I recently collaborated with a CRE tech colleague whose UI designs needed improvement. And I mean significant improvement. Many others had independently told me this too, but no one had explicitly told this person. No one had encouraged or offered help to make it better, either. So I decided to have a conversation with them about it. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Why did you do the design this way? Have you considered other layouts?

Colleague: [immediately justifies their design with other examples]

Me: But do you really think that this is what the customer wants?

Colleague: [continues to justify their original design, more insistently this time]

Me: [growing more and more frustrated] But it’s bad! Don’t you see that it’s bad?! [I go on to walk through specific examples of what needs improvement and why.]

Dale Carnegie would have been horrified. I let impatience get the best of me rather than patiently leading my colleague by offering the examples I gave after criticizing them rather than before. Instead, I should have gently shown them examples of other amazing and similar products, asking them what they liked about them and whether they could conceive of ways to include them in their product.

Let them believe that it’s their idea, and then they’ll be more open to incorporating it.

And of course, a compliment sandwich doesn’t hurt either!

Principle 2: Give honest and sincere appreciation.

Rating: 8/10

If I see something I like, I say something about it. See something, say something. I’m generally pretty good about this.

Recent example of how I can improve

I could save my honest and sincere appreciation about a specific product during a collab or coworking session for when I run into scenarios like the UI design one above. Most of the time, I share it immediately. But when difficult conversations arise, having a few sincere praises in my back pocket would be useful. Repeating them would work great too, so long as I have them ready to go.

Principle 3: Arouse in the other person an eager want.

Rating: 4/10

I’m okay at this but need to improve. See below as to why.

Recent example of how I can improve

Last week, we had our big company revenue kick-off meeting. It was AWESOME. I had way more fun than I was expecting! And then we jumped right into our extended leadership team meeting. That’s when I stumbled.

Each department went around the horn talking about our goals for 2025. When one of the teams went, I realized that an important area to my work had been left off of their goals. So of course, I raised my hand and asked where it was. When my coworker didn’t explicitly answer, I asked them politely to please put this item on their goals list.

First stumble: Talking about their miss publicly.

Then, I followed that up with a Slack message plea, saying that we hadn’t received the attention for this area in the past and really needed their help.

Second stumble: Giving them an “out” by suggesting that it’s okay to ignore our work.

Criticizing in public and then giving them a reason to not work on our area was the exact opposite of what I should have done! At best, my coworker pities my team. At worst, they’ve decided that it’s not worth their time to focus on this area.

What I should have done was make them excited to work on our project.

They recently joined our company, and I could have talked about how our team’s work is a big part of the budget in 2025 and expected to exceed our goals with a newly hired team leader. If this colleague wanted to piggyback off of our inevitable growth and success, then they should add our team’s area to their goals list. Why not get an easy win, right?! Make a big splash right after joining.

I also should have waited to have this conversation until after the public departmental presentations. Or best case, I would have had the conversation before our presentations. Lesson learned. Cheers to getting better.

Six Ways to Make People Like You

Principle 1: Become genuinely interested in other people.

Rating: 9/10

I’m good at this. I find most people have a fascinating story; you just have to ask them a few questions to unearth it. My favorite quote from the book on this is when “a famous old Roman poet, Publilius Syrus, remakred: ‘We are interested in others when they are interested in us.’”

Recent example of how I can improve

There are rare occurrences where I make up my mind about someone quickly and shouldn’t. That breeds disinterest. But it’s rare enough to where I don’t have a recent example.

Principle 2: Smile.

Rating: 8/10

Recent example of how I can improve

I’m generally good at this and don’t have a recent example of needing to improve. Let me share a story about the magic of smiling instead.

When I was a pre-teen, I remember asking my Dad for advice on how to make friends. I was quite shy at the time. His response? “Smile.”

I attended a pool party that weekend and decided to test his theory. I told myself that I would smile as much as would be not-too-creepy at that party. When we were floating in the pool and I twisted around in a circle, I stopped to smile at each person I made eye contact with. When someone asked me my name, I replied with a big toothy grin. When we stopped swimming to eat pizza, I smiled after each bite and regularly remarked at how delicious it was.

The most shocking thing happened: smiling worked. Just like magic.

I had more friends and even boys who were interested in me after that one party than all the other parties. And the only thing I changed was how much I smiled. Simple as that.

Principle 3: Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.

Rating: 4/10

Not my best.

Recent example of how I can improve

We had our annual revenue kick-off at work last week. We work remotely so getting together in person is a real treat. Unfortunately, there were a couple of people whose names I could not for the life of me remember. We didn’t interact outside of maybe one email or Slack message, and I hadn’t met them in person before. But still! I’d seen their photo and we’d had an interaction. I should have remembered their names. One of them spoke with me for quite a while, and I felt so guilty that I couldn’t recall their name that I sneaked away to the bathroom for a quick search on our team portal.

I never want to be in that situation again. Not only does it feel rude, it breaks Carnegie’s cardinal rule of making people feel important. And the kicker was that these people were and are important, at least to me. Going forward, I’m stealing Napoleon’s trick of writing the person’s name down and then visualizing them to cement their name and likeness in memory.

Principle 4: Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.

Rating: 7/10

Generally, I’m decent at this. But there are times when I crave the microphone, and it can be difficult to resist that urge.

Recent example of how I can improve

This example is in the gray zone. You may not see it as an area where I need to improve, but I do.

During our leadership meeting last week, I wanted to talk to a particular coworker about one of his projects. When I spotted him in a group, I casually joined the group and their conversation. I realized that I was genuinely interested in what they were talking about and continued listening and asking questions for probably 10 minutes or so. A lull naturally occurred, and I jumped at the opportunity to say, "[so-and-so] I wanted to talk to you separately about your project.” I felt the others disengage immediately, which is to be expected when you break someone apart from the group. But something about the interaction felt off. Perhaps I made it seem like I wasn’t actually interested in listening to them after all? Or maybe they didn’t think that, but some small part doubted I cared?

I made one coworker feel important at the sacrifice of several others.

What I could have done was wait for the others to wrap up the conversation more naturally and then ask for a few minutes with my coworker. Or I could have waited until I spotted him solo and re-approached him. I could have improved this interaction, even if it was only marginally.

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That’s as much as I’ve read and reflected this week. Until next week for part 2!

I appreciate reader feedback, so if you enjoyed today’s piece, let me know with a like or comment at the bottom of this page!

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Jen’s Reading Corner

Surprise, surprise! This week’s book is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Can you believe this book is nearly 100 years old?! And yet the principles still apply to modern society. I highly recommend you read this book if you haven’t yet or haven’t picked it up in a few years.

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