Carnegie 21.3.12: How to Win Friends and Influence People -PRINCIPLE 12 Throw down a challenge.

Pages 228 – 231

Appeal to people’s nobler vision (as called out in Principle 10), and then enlist them in the challenge of achieving it. This great goal is possible. Can you get there first? Can you get their faster than their competition?

Appeal to society’s better self.
Ensure that there are metrics and milestones so progress can be tracked.
Then appeal society’s better self to hit the target first.

Best Quote(s)

“That is what every successful person loves: the game. The chance for self-expression. The chance to prove his or her worth, to excel, to win. … The desire to excel. The desire for a feeling of importance.”

Page by Page

Page 228

““He asked us how many heats we made, and we told him six. He chalked it down on the floor.”

229

“Let Charles Schwab say it in his own words: “The way to get things done,” says Schwab, “is to stimulate competition. I do not mean in a sordid, money-getting way, but in the desire to excel.” The desire to excel! The challenge! Throwing down the gauntlet! An infallible way of appealing to people of spirit.”

Another mention of Roosevelt.

230

Carnegie tells of the persuasion of someone to take on the warren role at Sing Sing, a famous American prison. “Young fellow,” he said, “I don’t blame you for being scared. It’s a tough spot. It’ll take a big person to go up there and stay.”

“I have never found,” said Harvey S. Firestone, founder of the great Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, “that pay and pay alone would either bring together or hold good people. I think it was the game itself.”

231

“That is what every successful person loves: the game. The chance for self-expression. The chance to prove his or her worth, to excel, to win. That is what makes footraces and hog-calling and pie-eating contests. The desire to excel. The desire for a feeling of importance.”

From earlier – we are channeling their need to be important into a real outcome.

PRINCIPLE 12 Throw down a challenge.