Diplomacy at Work: What Planners Can Learn from Dale Carnegie
As Comms Planners working to create integrated creative, we’re balancing a many perspectives at once. We work with creatives, producers, account teams, behavioral planners, clients, media teams, and more. With so many cooks in the kitchen, it can be hard to have your voice heard, listen to everyone else, and keep your wits about you. Even if you’re the most well mannered diplomatic person in every room, pretty much everyone could use a refresher for how to treat delicate work situations.
Once upon a time in 1930, Dale Carnegie wrote a book called How to Win Friends and Influence People. In it he describes the best way to make people 1. like working with you and 2. listen to what you have to say. While the book has been accused of being a manual on how to manipulate people, it’s actually more about how to genuinely listen to others and, in turn, get them to listen to you. The title is misleading in that sense, but then again, Carnegie is following his own advice. Instead of selling it as a book on open-minded conflict resolution, he pitches it in terms of what the reader wants (a tip you’ll find below): how do I influence people to think the way that I think?
Carnegie argues that the best business men in history (it was written in the 1930s, so unfortunately he only talks about men) were successful primarily because of their people skills, not their business skills. He breaks up his book into 4 sections that I’ve aimed to condense.
So here’s your diplomacy refresher course:
Fundamental Techniques in Handling People
- Don’t criticism, complain, or condemn.
When you criticize people, it makes them defensive. It drives them to justify themselves, which will certainly not open them up to listen to whatever it is you need to tell them.
2. Give honest and sincere appreciation
Try to find something that you genuinely value about whomever you’re talking to. People can tell when compliments are forced but they’ll enjoy genuine appreciation, especially if it’s more about their quality of work and not about their cool new shirt.
3. Arouse people with what they want, not what you want.
No one cares what you want. They only care about what they want. Just like you primarily care about what you want. See how that works? The best way to get someone to see your perspective is to think about what’s in it for them.
For example, often we’re briefing creatives based on tests we’ve run on what creative elements perform best in a certain kind of ad. Instead of giving creative guidelines based on testing just because they perform well (anticipated response: if our ad is good enough, it will defy tests and people will watch it anyways. That’s what they pay us for!), try to show the creative opportunity in different ad units. Work that leverages unique functionality in an innovative way will win awards. What’s the creative opportunity and what will it get them?
6 Easy Ways to Get People to Like You: Be Like Your Dog
- Make other people feel important
- Show genuine interest
- Encourage people to talk about themselves
- Talk about their interests
- Smile
- Call people by their names
Do you see a trend? People are craving to talk about themselves and feel like what they say and do matters to others. Think about your dog. Your dog is always happy to see you, always there to listen to you, and always seems to care about your life.
According to Carnegie, you can make infinitely more friends being interested in other people than you can getting other people interested in you. This phenomenon absolutely applies to the workplace. Think of the people you enjoy working with most. They are probably the people that make you feel important and competent. Everyone wants to feel that way, and making people feel valued for their work, even when you’re frustrated, will go a long way.
How to Win People to Your Way of Thinking
Now this section is probably the bulk of what you’re looking for, but it’s important not to forget about the first two, because they’ll set you up to be a good place for people to listen to your perspective when you do need to change opinions.
You Can’t Win an Argument
If you lose the argument, you lose. If you win the argument, the other person is agitated with you and doesn’t want to accept your perspective after you’ve spend so much energy proving them wrong.
Never Say You’re Wrong
Your first thought might be, “what if they are wrong?” It doesn’t matter. Once you tell someone they’re wrong, they will take it as a challenge and get defensive. Instead say something like, “I could be wrong. I often am. Let’s look at the facts and evaluate next steps.” Now they’re much more open to listening to your point.
When You’re Wrong, Admit It
Often, our first instinct after making a mistake is to defend it, but that tends to make people react more strongly to your mistake, especially if you push the blame to someone else. Go out of your way to take responsibility for any and all mistakes, no matter how small. If you own your mistakes, apologize for them, and offer solutions, people will almost always tell you it’s no big deal. If you give them a 5 minute explanation as to why it wasn’t your fault, they will probably get annoyed with your defensiveness and tell you that it was your job to figure it out either way.
Begin in a Friendly Way
This one’s easy, but also easy to forget. If you anticipate a tense meeting, start it off by asking everyone how their weekend was.
Get the Other Person Saying Yes
Set a tone of agreement, even if that results in you stating facts that you can both know to be true.
Let the other person think it’s their idea
The goal isn’t credit, it’s to get across what you need to. Once you start to get the other person agreeing, try to guide them towards your perspective. If they think it’s their idea, that’s ideal. Let them think that. Credit doesn’t matter.
Let the Other Person Talk
No one listens once they’ve been interrupted. If they have more to say, they won’t listen to you, they’ll be thinking about their next thought. Actually listen to the other person and let them get their thoughts out before you disagree with them.
Honestly Try to See Their POV
It’s not enough to just let them finish talking. Try to understand what they’re actually saying and where it’s coming from.
Be Sympathetic to Their Ideas
Why do they want what they want or think what they think? Most likely, it’s based on something valid.
Dramatize Your Stories
Make your point of view a full story that’s relatable. For instance, if you’re trying to explain best practices for banner ads, don’t just say “based on research, this is how we should make banners.”
Instead, say something like “imagine you’re reading an article online and there’s a banner ad on the side of the page. You probably don’t notice it. If you do notice it, you might not be paying much attention, because your focus is on an article that you want to read. Most people see these for a maximum of 3 seconds, so it’s important to get branding in every frame of the banner so that the person who only sees the banner for a split second will still attribute it to our brand.” See how that’s more interesting?
Appeal to the Nobler Motives
This one’s my favorite because it’s easy to lose sight of in a disagreement. But we’re all working towards the same thing. We want to make great creative that drive business results for our clients. Sometimes reminding yourself and those around you that you’re all on the same team can go a long way.
Throw Down a Challenge
People have an innate desire to achieve. Challenge them to try something a different way, just to see how it works.
How to Facilitate Change Diplomatically
You might be thinking, “this is all fluffy and great, but how do I actually change someone’s mind?” Let’s talk about how to go about it.
Begin with Praise
If you must call out a fault or mistake, start with praise. Ex. “I love what you did with this…”
Call Out Mistakes Indirectly
Replace “but” with “and”. If you say “This work is great but…” the “but” counters the initial compliment. Work on saying “I love x, y, and z about this work. And how to do you feel about trying to incorporate a, b, and c? It might tie this work even closer to the client’s objectives.”
Talk About Your Mistakes
Explain what you could’ve done differently. Ex. “I definitely should’ve explained this in more detail earlier, so that’s on me…”
Ask Questions
Instead of giving orders. A good way in might be: “Do you think it would be beneficial to try it this way?”
Let the Other Person Save Face
Don’t hurt someone’s dignity. Don’t blame them and don’t shame what they’ve done. Even if you’re frustrated beyond belief and you know it’s 100% their fault. Remember that your goal is to get them to listen to you. It’s not to point the finger.
Praise Every Slight Improvement
Help people realize their full potential. The more positive feedback they get, the better they’ll feel about their work.
Give Them a Reputation to Live Up To
This one is interesting, but after testing it with my roommates I’m sold. Give someone a reputation they feel the need to uphold. Tell someone “I appreciate how you’ve always been so easy to work with,” even if they haven’t been. Level with them as if they’ve always been reasonable and easy to work with, and it will help getthem to live up to the reputation you’ve given them.
Make the Fault Seem Easy to Fix
Encourage the other person with “I think just a little reordering might make a big difference”
Make the Other Person Happy to Do What You Suggested
Offer incentive, a reason the person wants to do what you want them to, praise, something you appreciate about them, and authority, assert that they’re the perfect person for this job.
If you take it to heart, Carnegie’s book helps you approach a conflict with an open mind and get the other person to be open-minded as well. Too often we go into conversations already pitted against each other, but at the end of the day, no matter how right you are, that attitude will be counterproductive.
