HOW TO

TALK ABOUT YOUR OWN MISTAKES FIRST

MY NIECE, JOSEPHINE Carnegie, had come to New York to be my secretary.

She was nineteen, had graduated from high school three years previously,

and her business experience was a trifle more than zero. She became one of

the most proficient secretaries west of Suez, but in the beginning, she was –

well, susceptible to improvement. One day when I started to criticise her, I

said to myself: ‘Just a minute, Dale Carnegie; just a minute. You are twice

as old as Josephine. You have had ten thousand times as much business

experience. How can you possibly expect her to have your viewpoint, your

judgement, your initiative – mediocre though they may be? And just a

minute, Dale, what were you doing at nineteen? Remember the asinine

mistakes and blunders you made? Remember the time you did this . . . and

that . . . ?’

After thinking the matter over, honestly and impartially, I concluded

that Josephine’s batting average at nineteen was better than mine had been –

and that, I’m sorry to confess, isn’t paying Josephine much of a

compliment.

So after that, when I wanted to call Josephine’s attention to a mistake, I

used to begin by saying, ‘You have made a mistake, Josephine, but the Lord

knows, it’s no worse than many I have made. You were not born with

judgement. That comes only with experience, and you are better than I was

at your age. I have been guilty of so many stupid, silly things myself, I have

very little inclination to criticise you or anyone. But don’t you think it

would have been wiser if you had done so and so?’

It isn’t nearly so difficult to listen to a recital of your faults if the

person criticising begins by humbly admitting that he, too, is far from

impeccable.

E.G. Dillistone, an engineer in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada, was

having problems with his new secretary. Letters he dictated were coming to

his desk for signature with two or three spelling mistakes per page. Mr.

Dillistone reported how he handled this:

‘Like many engineers, I have not been noted for my excellent English

or spelling. For years I have kept a little black thumb-index book for words

I had trouble spelling. When it became apparent that merely pointing out

the errors was not going to cause my secretary to do more proofreading and

dictionary work, I resolved to take another approach. When the next letter

came to my attention that had errors in it, I sat down with the typist and

said:

‘“Somehow this word doesn’t look right. It’s one of the words I always

have had trouble with. That’s the reason I started this spelling book of mine.

[I opened the book to the appropriate page.] Yes, here it is. I’m very

conscious of my spelling now because people do judge us by our letters and

misspellings make us look less professional.”

‘I don’t know whether she copied my system or not, but since that

conversation, her frequency of spelling errors has been significantly

reduced.’

The polished Prince Bernhard von Bülow learned the sharp necessity

of doing this back in 1909. Von Bülow was then the Imperial Chancellor of

Germany, and on the throne sat Wilhelm II – Wilhelm, the haughty;

Wilhelm, the arrogant; Wilhelm, the last of the German Kaisers, building an

army and navy that he boasted could whip their weight in wildcats.

Then an astonishing thing happened. The Kaiser said things, incredible

things, things that rocked the continent and started a series of explosions

heard around the world. To make matters infinitely worse, the Kaiser made

silly, egotistical, absurd announcements in public, he made them while he

was a guest in England, and he gave his royal permission to have them

printed in the Daily Telegraph. For example, he declared that he was the

only German who felt friendly toward the English; that he was constructing

a navy against the menace of Japan; that he, and he alone, had saved

England from being humbled in the dust by Russia and France; that it had

been his campaign plan that enabled England’s Lord Roberts to defeat the

Boers in South Africa; and so on and on.

No other such amazing words had ever fallen from the lips of a

European king in peacetime within a hundred years. The entire continent

buzzed with the fury of a hornet’s nest. England was incensed. German

statesmen were aghast. And in the midst of all this consternation, the Kaiser

became panicky and suggested to Prince von Bülow, the Imperial

Chancellor, that he take the blame. Yes, he wanted von Bülow to announce

that it was all his responsibility, that he had advised his monarch to say

these incredible things.

‘But Your Majesty,’ von Bülow protested, ‘it seems to me utterly

impossible that anybody either in Germany or England could suppose me

capable of having advised Your Majesty to say any such thing.’

The moment those words were out of von Bülow’s mouth, he realised

he had made a grave mistake. The Kaiser blew up.

‘You consider me a donkey,’ he shouted, ‘capable of blunders you

yourself could never have committed!’

Von Bülow knew that he ought to have praised before he condemned;

but since that was too late, he did the next best thing. He praised after he

had criticised. And it worked a miracle.

‘I’m far from suggesting that,’ he answered respectfully. ‘Your

Majesty surpasses me in many respects; not only, of course, in naval and

military knowledge, but above all, in natural science. I have often listened

in admiration when Your Majesty explained the barometer, or wireless

telegraphy, or the Roentgen rays. I am shamefully ignorant of all branches

of natural science, have no notion of chemistry or physics, and am quite

incapable of explaining the simplest of natural phenomena. But,’ von

Bülow continued, ‘in compensation, I possess some historical knowledge

and perhaps certain qualities useful in politics, especially in diplomacy.’

The Kaiser beamed. Von Bülow had praised him. Von Bülow had

exalted him and humbled himself. The Kaiser could forgive anything after

that. ‘Haven’t I always told you,’ he exclaimed with enthusiasm, ‘that we

complete one another famously? We should stick together, and we will!’

He shook hands with von Bülow, not once, but several times. And later

in the day he waxed so enthusiastic that he exclaimed with doubled fists, ‘If

anyone says anything to me against Prince von Bülow, I shall punch him in

the nose.’

Von Bülow saved himself in time – but, canny diplomat that he was, he

nevertheless had made one error: he should have begun by talking about his

own shortcomings and Wilhelm’s superiority – not by intimating that the

Kaiser was a half-wit in need of a guardian.

If a few sentences humbling oneself and praising the other party can

turn a haughty, insulted Kaiser into a staunch friend, imagine what humility and praise can do for you and me in our daily contacts. Rightfully used,

they will work veritable miracles in human relations.

Admitting one’s own mistakes – even when one hasn’t corrected them

– can help convince somebody to change his behaviour. This was illustrated

more recently by Clarence Zerhusen of Timonium, Maryland, when he

discovered his fifteen-year-old son was experimenting with cigarettes.

‘Naturally, I didn’t want David to smoke,’ Mr. Zerhusen told us, ‘but

his mother and I smoked cigarettes; we were giving him a bad example all

the time. I explained to Dave how I started smoking at about his age and

how the nicotine had gotten the best of me and now it was nearly

impossible for me to stop. I reminded him how irritating my cough was and

how he had been after me to give up cigarettes not many years before.

‘I didn’t exhort him to stop or make threats or warn him about their

dangers. All I did was point out how I was hooked on cigarettes and what it

had meant to me.

‘He thought about it for a while and decided he wouldn’t smoke until

he had graduated from high school. As the years went by David never did

start smoking and has no intention of ever doing so.

‘As a result of that conversation I made the decision to stop smoking

cigarettes myself, and with the support of my family, I have succeeded.’