Carnegie 20.3.11: How to Win Friends and Influence People – PRINCIPLE 11 Dramatize your ideas.

Pages 223 – 227

With Twitter, Instagram and Youtube – we live today in an age of showmanship and promotion.  Carnegie’s guidance from 100 years ago still rings true today.  His words speak to us, like a ghost from the past telling us our own future.

People like a show.  Invite them to one.  Use it to prove your point. You are competing with other shows, so win the one you put on.

Hap Klopp once told me, “You can invite people to a ballet or a rock show – and they’ll have a good time at either.  But you can’t invite them to one and give them the other.”  People like a show – but tell them what show you’re inviting them to.

Best Quote(s)

“This is the day of dramatization. Merely stating a truth isn’t enough. The truth has to be made vivid, interesting, dramatic. You have to use showmanship. The movies do it. Television does it. And you will have to do it if you want attention.” Page 223

Page by Page

Page 223

“This is the day of dramatization. Merely stating a truth isn’t enough. The truth has to be made vivid, interesting, dramatic. You have to use showmanship. The movies do it. Television does it. And you will have to do it if you want attention.”

224

“With that I threw a handful of pennies on the floor.”

225

“What I finally did was this. I wrote him a formal letter. I indicated in the letter that I fully understood how extremely busy he was all week, but it was important that I speak with him.”

226

“He argued and I argued. He told me I was wrong, and I tried to prove that I was right.”

Not following earlier rules leads to bad performance.  Carnegie has already told us that “You can’t win an argument.”

227

PRINCIPLE 11 Dramatize your ideas.