Today we look at Chapter 28 of Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” (DC). Chapter 28 claims that if you let a man know that you have a good opinion of him, he will strive to live up to it.
Summary
Today’s representative quote:
… [I]f you want to improve a person in a certain respect, act as though that particular trait were already one of his outstanding characteristics. … Give him a fine reputation to live up to, and he will make prodigious efforts rather than see you disillusioned.
Honor
This chapter puts me in mind of an idea from “Men Against Fire”:
… [P]ersonal honor is the one thing valued more than life itself by the majority of men.
Honor is intimately bound up with reputation (in fact, it might be said to be reputation) and so it is not surprising to see Carnegie suggest that reputation can be used as a means of persuasion. To give a man a good reputation is to give him a reason to act so as to preserve it.
