Book Review : How to Win Friends and Influence People

​If you’re into self-improvement and especially if you’re looking for some good books on social skills, I’m sure you already know this one.

It’s like a legend in the self-help community. Whenever you read or watch something related to self-improvement, its name comes up.

​Let’s dive into it.

​What is the book about ?

​Forget about the first part of the title that says “How to win friends”. This book is definitely not that simple. However, it’s more about how you can learn to influence people, and that’s where it gets interesting.
The book is about 220 pages long. It’s divided into four main parts which are :

• Fundamental Techniques in Handling People
• Six Ways to Make People Like You
• How To Win People To Your Way of Thinking
• Be a leader : how to change people

​Each one has a number of principles that you can apply to become more effective when dealing with people.
At the end of each principle or main chapter, you’ll find a summary of all the principles you’ve just read about.
With each chapter, you’ll find tons of real life examples of real people that applied these principles and how they’ve had really amazing success using the principles taught in the book.
If you’re wondering what’s in it, here are a few of them here :
​

• Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to : Similar to appealing to people’s nobler motives, giving the other person a lofty reputation to live up to incites in them a desire to meet those expectations.
• Talk about your mistakes before criticising : The next step to changing people’s ways without inflicting negative feelings is to admit that we are also susceptible to mistakes.
• Dramatize your ideas : it’s not enough to merely state a truth. If we truly want someone’s attention, we have to present that truth in a vivid, interesting, dramatic way.

​What’s good about the book :

​Here’s what I think :

• It’s simple to understand
• Very practical. It contains a lot of real-life examples and very clear instruction for you to apply.
• There’s a one-line summary for every principle you read in addition to a small recap of all the principles at the end of each main chapter so you won’t forget about what you’ve already read.

​What’s not so good :

​As a whole, if you follow what the book tells you to do, I think you’re going to learn a lot of stuff about dealing with people. However, the book has one major flaw : It makes it a point to try to please everyone.
There are some principles that I don’t completely agree with such as :

• Let the other person feel that idea is his or hers
• Never say you’re wrong

Carnegie tells us to never tell a person he’s wrong, but at the same time, we should admit it when we are. It doesn’t seem so fair does it ?

Another thing I noticed was that the book insists on listening to other people and letting them talk about their interests, but it totally ignores your end of the conversation.

​While it’s good to be a listener, you also need to know how and when to speak. If you follow the advice in the book literally, you’ll find yourself becoming a people pleaser so you have to know when to use the advice from the book.

Rating :

15/20

​Who is it for ?

​If you want to learn how to make people like you more and how you can win them to your way of thinking, this book is for you.

​Conclusion :

​Overall, I think you can learn a lot from this book but if you really want to get the best out of it, you have to find the right approach to deal with people without trying to please every person you meet.

I think you should definitely read it, just know when to apply it.

You can buy the book from Amazon here