Yesterday I started reading Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. It had been on my reading for some time now, and I picked up a copy earlier this week at my local library.
In the first chapter, Carnegie presents his first principle: Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.
These tactics are worthless when trying to influence someone. Criticism typically causes the recipient to go on the defensive, justifying his actions and resenting the critic. People will have 101 excuses and reasons why they made their mistake, very rarely blaming themselves for their actions. They see the criticism as an attack, their pride takes a hit, and resentment rises.
“When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.”
Oftentimes the mistakes made by others seem to be irrational, but we are seeing these actions from a completely different lens of perception. When Abraham Lincoln’s wife spoke ill of the southern people, Lincoln responded, “Don’t criticize them; they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.”
What seems like crazy behavior to us, can be rationalized by the doer and seems like the right thing to do from their perspective. The criticism does not encourage change, it merely turns them against you.
Even for the logical, self aware individuals who hold themselves accountable for their own mistakes, criticism, condemnation, and complaints are still not the answer. These responsible individuals tend to be their own toughest critic. After a mistake, they give themselves a hard enough time and the external criticism is only insult to injury.
BF Skinner, a famous behavioral psychologist, discovered that animals learn better from being rewarded for their good behavior rather than punished for their mistakes. The same goes for humans. We are far more likely to act in a way that resulted in positive reinforcement rather than being scolded for an error in judgement.
Mistakes are inevitable. Knowing that you won’t get condemned for your mistakes gives you a little more leeway and alleviates some undue stress.
Losses are lessons. We must learn from our failures, see what we did wrong and course correct.
If people get humiliated for making an inevitable mistake, they are more inclined to give up. Fear of failure can be debilitating and prevents many from even trying certain tasks.
One of my favorite examples from the first chapter was about Bob Hoover, a famous test pilot and frequent air show performer. Once on a flight home from an air show his two engines suddenly stopped and he miraculously guided the plane to a crash landing, destroying the plane but leaving he and his crew unscathed.
Right after the emergency crash landing, Hoover inspected the plane, and just as he suspected, the plane had been mistakenly fueled with jet fuel rather than gasoline.
Upon returning to the airport, Hoover asked to see the mechanic who serviced his plane. This mechanic was responsible for ruining an expensive plane and nearly cost three men their lives.
You could imagine how angry Hoover was, but he refrained from tearing into the mechanic. Instead, he grabbed the teary eyed mechanic by the shoulder and said, “To show you I’m sure you’ll never do this again, I want you to service my F-51 tomorrow.”
If Hoover could hold back from condemning that mechanic, you can keep your complaint about too much ice in your ice water to yourself and not take it out on the server assistant.
“Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain – and most fools do. But it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving.”
Rather than criticizing others, even if justified, let’s seek to understand why they made that decision and forgive them for their mistake.
That being said, we still can’t walk through life with rose tinted glasses and look past everyone’s mistakes. If careless errors continue to pile up, without any attempt to rectify the situation, you must do what’s necessary and find a new friend, employee, mechanic, etc.
Talk again soon,
Shane