How to Win Friends and Influence People

‘The following that I’m going to share is perhaps the single most important thing that I can ever tell you when it comes to business communication,’ said Professor Michael Netzley, my Communication Strategies 101 instructor, ‘are you ready?’

‘Good communication is always audience centred,’ he said. And that he repeated again, ‘Good communication is ALWAYS audience centred.’ I couldn’t agree more.

Sun Tzu recorded this secret way back in 2000+ BC – Know yourself, know the enemy. In a hundred battles, you shall have a hundred victories. Long ago when language was first given its birth, a new battlefield was created. That battlefield remained as little changed today as it was thousands of years ago. That battle is the war of words; the battle of ideas and messages; the battle of mutual understanding.

We fight this battle on a daily basis, and not just in a business context or classroom setting. We fight this battle at home, when socializing, when reading or when writing. Colossal damages and mighty tragedies; great deeds and tremendous achievements can all be traced to the outcomes of the war of words. Look over those small and great - they take their food from a common plate. But what makes them truly great or so insignificant that you rarely know their presence is the kind of words that they say to you or me or anyone else, through their ideas cast in words that they use to talk or write with.

The key to win anyone’s trust is simple – be genuinely interested in what interests them. Everyone cares more about their own problems, period. They care about their own blisters and worries more than they do for the rest of the world combined. Naturally, they don’t care about you what you are interested in. Hence, the fastest and easiest way to enter their world and influence their thoughts and actions is to join in their narcissism. When you are willing to share in other’s interests, people will naturally be interested in yours. This is called the trading of words. Rather than trying to win a verbose war and sustaining emotional casualties along the way, why not trade for mutual benefits?

Trade is an age old practice; its benefits are known to the man on the street and are not exclusive to those who consider themselves instructed. All good economists, businessmen, politicians, hawkers and even young children know that trade is good. But still, the war of words persists in the masses. Parting with one’s money and goods is way easier than parting with one’s ego it seems.

It feels better to be listened to than for one to listen to other. To be listened to gives the speaker a feeling of empowerment, a sense of importance, and is one of the highest forms of flattery that can be shown to anyone. And so we seek ever so insistently to talk and make others listen to what we have to say. But the truth is, when you talk only about what you want and like, you deprive others of that feeling of empowerment and naturally they will not be comfortable with it. You end up being looked upon as a selfish, egomaniacal individual who is not a team player, a lousy leader and not worthy of trust and respect. All these troubles arose from your fundamental unwillingness to listen! How outrageously simple it will be, therefore, to gain others’ trust and friendship. We only have to listen – listen attentively and prompt the other person to talk more about himself. In turn he will find you interesting and will be more willing to listen to you than before.

Now we all know the goodness of trading words, but if you observe closely, wars of words are still waged in practically every occasion daily. Why is it so hard to trade words? The secret lies in our inherent self-assumed importance and our unwillingness to relinquish it. To listen is to lose that desired sense of self-empowerment. This food for our ego is so important that we can’t even contemplate about living without it for a minute! Now, a smart person will think reversely and realize that if the above is true for himself, it should be true for everyone else. If that occurs, he has just shifted his mental paradigm from that of a warrior to that of a trader. In a gladiatorial arena, there can only be one survivor, but in the world of trading, everyone gains. This brings us back to 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’s Habit 3: Think win/win.

So, now that I know the fundamental techniques of handling people, it is time to start winning more friends by developing a genuine interest in others and listen attentively while prompting them to talk more about themselves. Should be simple enough, and I sure like hell will put them into action.