âThe only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.â â Dale Carnegie
Carnegie opens this chapter with one of his most memorable images: a man who loves strawberries and cream going fishing. Does he bait his hook with strawberries and cream? Of course not. He uses wormsâbecause that is what the fish wants. Yet when it comes to human beings, most people do exactly that: they bait their hooks with what they want, not with what the other person wants.
A father wants his son to stop smoking. The father tells the son about the health risks, the expense, his own disappointment. Every argument is about what the father wantsâa healthy, financially responsible son. But the son? The son wants to be cool, to belong to his peer group, to feel independent. Until the father speaks to those desiresâuntil he helps the son see how not smoking serves the sonâs own interestsâthe arguments will fall on deaf ears.
This is Carnegieâs third and perhaps most strategically important principle: the only way to influence anyone is to discover what they want and show them how to get it.
Every person wakes up in the morning thinking primarily about themselvesâtheir needs, their problems, their desires, their goals. This is not selfishness; it is human nature. And it means that if you want to influence someone, you must enter their world, understand what they are already motivated by, and connect your request to those existing motivations.
Carnegie emphasizes that this is not manipulation. Manipulation involves deceiving people into thinking something serves their interests when it doesnât. Carnegieâs principle is different: it asks you to genuinely understand what the other person wants and find ways where helping them genuinely serves your mutual goals. When you cannot honestly show someone how your request serves their interests, perhaps you should reconsider whether it is a reasonable request.
Before asking anyone to do anything, ask yourself:
If you cannot answer these questions, you are not ready to ask. If you can, you are already halfway to success.
Dale Carnegie (no relation to the steel magnate) tells the story of the original Andrew Carnegie negotiating a contract with a railroad executive. Carnegie needed a favorable rate. Rather than arguing about what Carnegie needed, he spent time understanding the railroadâs situationâwhat pressures the executive was under, what he was trying to achieve, what would make him look good to his own superiors.
By framing the contract in terms of how it helped the railroad executive achieve his own objectives, Carnegie turned a potentially adversarial negotiation into a collaborative one. The executive felt understood and respected; Carnegie got his rate. Both parties left satisfied.
This is the genius of thinking in terms of the other personâs interest: it transforms zero-sum competition into mutual benefit.
Carnegie cites the challenge many parents face: getting a child to eat foods they dislike. A typical approach is to say, âYou need to eat your vegetables. Theyâre good for you.â This is entirely parent-centered. What does the child want? Usually, to feel grown-up, to have some control over their life, to be taken seriously.
A more Carnegie-style approach: âWould you like to help choose the vegetables for dinner this week?â The child now has ownership, agency, and importance. The same resultâthe child eating vegetablesâis achieved through a completely different method.
A classic Carnegie example involves a real estate agent trying to sell a house to a couple. The husband was fixated on price; the wife was fixated on space for her garden. The agent who shows only floor plans and price comparisons serves only the most surface-level interests. The agent who says to the wife, âThe south-facing yard gets sun all afternoonâI think your roses would do beautifully there,â and to the husband, âThis neighborhood has appreciated 15% in the last three years,â is speaking directly to each personâs primary interest. Different desires, different language, same house.
Owen D. Young, a prominent American businessman and diplomat, had a simple philosophy: to always put yourself in the other manâs position. Not to merely imagine what you would want in their position, but to genuinely try to understand what theyâwith their background, their fears, their ambitionsâactually want.
Young observed that those who could do this had a mastery over the human heart that could not be bought at any price. They did not manufacture desires in others; they discovered existing ones and connected their proposals to them.
The skill Young describes is empathic imagination: the ability to temporarily set aside your own perspective and genuinely inhabit someone elseâs. It requires:
One simple technique Carnegie suggests is to change the subject of your sentences. Instead of âI need you to do this,â try âYou will find that doing this will help you achieveâŠâ Instead of âI want to show you something,â try âWould you be interested in seeing something that could help you with X?â
This is not merely rhetorical window-dressing. The shift in subject forces you to actually think about the other personâs perspective before you speak. It re-centers your thinking on them rather than yourself.
Take the last three requests you made of someone else (at work, at home, with a friend) and rewrite them so that each one:
Notice how this exercise forces you to actually think about the other personâs desiresâand whether your requests were ones you had any right to expect them to fulfill.
Think of a situation where you want to influence someone but have been getting resistance. What does that person actually want? Is there a way you could frame your request that genuinely connects to those wants? What would you need to understand about them to do this well?