I was recently reminded of the classic How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie and was tempted to reread it. I was struck by what appeared to be a common theme throughout the book, which was finding a way to affect change in others without directly, or at least minimally, criticizing them, so as to not cause resentment and make them unmotivated, or reluctant to make the requested change. Carnegie offers a few different potential tactics one can use when attempting to affect change in others, either personally or professionally.
Instead of criticizing, the book instead suggests the use of praise, not just for attempting to get people to change their behavior, but also in relationship building. There is, however, an important distinction between genuine praise and flattery. People can generally tell when they are merely being flattered, versus being genuinely complimented for a particular attribute or job well done. By rewarding good behavior, rather than criticizing bad, we can hopefully over time cause a shift in behavior, without incurring any negative feelings against us, or as Carnegie explains:
B. F. Skinner, the world-famous psychologist, proved through his experiments that an animal rewarded for good behavior will learn much more rapidly and retain what it learns far more effectively than an animal punished for bad behavior. Later studies have shown that the same applies to humans. By criticizing, we do not make lasting changes and often incur resentment.
Another suggestion for changing behavior is to appeal to one’s higher motives. Even people who knowingly do wrong can come up with reasons to justify their behavior. When we decide to do something, there’s potentially two reasons why we are doing it, the real reason, and the reason we tell others, as Carnegie explains:
J. Pierpont Morgan observed, in one of his analytical interludes, that a person usually has two reasons for doing a thing: one that sounds good and a real one.
The person himself will think of the real reason. You don’t need to emphasize that. But all of us, being idealists at heart, like to think of motives that sound good. So, in order to change people, appeal to the nobler motives.
By appealing to one’s nobler motives and showing that what we are asking is for the person to choose to take the honorable path, even if we know that their true motives are still selfish, they can still change. By painting an image of them as a noble person for doing, or not doing something, they will be more inclined to live up to the image we have presented of them.
At the same time that we may want to change others, they may also want to change us, and even if they do not, we likely would like to change something about ourselves. The topic of working to change others reminded me of what Eric Greitens had to say about changing oneself in his book, Resilience. There’s almost always some aspect of ourselves that we would like to change or improve, as we’re not born perfect, and despite a lifetime of effort, will never come close to being it, so there’s always room for improvement. There’s likely also plenty that others would like to see change in us, even if they haven’t explicitly told us. We should therefore always be working at changing and improving ourselves, Greitens says:
Don’t expect a time in your life when you’ll be free from change, free from struggle, free from worry. To be resilient, you must understand that your objective is not to come to rest, because there is no rest. Your objective is to use what hits you to change your trajectory in a positive direction.
The goal then, is not to get to a point where we feel we don’t need to change anymore, because then we would stop growing as a person, but to always be looking for, and working towards, positive change in our lives. Whether we want it or not, life will throw situations at us that will require us to change and adapt to get through and passed them, so we might as well be ready and working to change ourselves, before life eventually forces us to anyway.
It’s not enough to just know how we need to change, but we must also continuously practice these changes to see any real improvement. As Greitens points out, not practicing enough when attempting to change people is a problem than can even affect those who are professionals at trying to help people change and improve, he says:
Many programs run by the professional improvers of society are built on education, not training — on delivering facts rather than strengthening practice. Knowledge matters. But our efforts too often stop at knowledge, because it’s easier to measure what we’ve told people than it is to measure how we’ve changed people. It is easier to preach to people than to practice with them.
Even if we do observe the change we would like to see in the other person, it can be difficult, if not impossible to measure their improvement. As they change, our expectations may continue to shift, so that instead of being glad and grateful that they are changing, we instead continue pushing for them to change, because we cannot remember and measure their true level of progress so far. In this case we should just continue to do as Carnegie suggests and praise their continued good behavior and not take it for granted that they will continue to behave in the new, improved way out of habit.
Life demands that everyone change over time, we don’t have a choice in that, but what we do have a choice in is if it will be for the better, or the worse. Along with us, everyone else is changing as well, and at times we will want them to change along with us. If we are going to attempt to change others, instead of criticizing what they do wrong, we should attempt to focus upon suggesting possible ways of improvement, and encourage any positive changes, whenever we see them. By minimizing criticism and praising good behavior, we can help to encourage others to improve, without causing resentful feelings for asking them to change.