Dale Carnegie

Dale Carnegie

Dale Carnegie (originally Carnegey) (November 24 1888 - November 1 1955) was an American writer and the developer of famous courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training, public speaking and interpersonal skills. Born in poverty on a farm in Missouri, he was the author of How to Win Friends and Influence People, first published in 1936, a massive bestseller that remains popular today. He also wrote a biography of Abraham Lincoln, titled Lincoln the Unknown, as well as several other books.

One of the core ideas in his books is that it is possible to change other people's behavior by changing one's reaction to them.

—Edwin Pierson 21:44, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Biography

Born in 1888 in Maryville, Missouri, Carnegie was a poor farmer's boy, the second son of James William and Amanda Elizabeth Carnegie. In his teens, though still having to get up at 4 a.m. every day to milk his parents' cows, he managed to get educated at the State Teacher's College in Warrensburg. His first job after college was selling correspondence courses to ranchers; then he moved on to selling bacon, soap and lard for Armour & Company. He was successful to the point of making his sales territory, southern Omaha, the national leader for the firm.[1]

Perhaps one of Dale Carnegie’s most successful marketing moves was to change the spelling of his last name from “Carnegey” to Carnegie, at a time when Andrew Carnegie was a widely revered and recognized name.

Carnegie's first marriage ended in divorce in 1931. On November 5, 1944, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, he married Dorothy Price Vanderpool, who also had been divorced. Carnegie had two daughters; Rosemary, from his first marriage, and Donna Dale from his second marriage.

It has been rumored, that Dale Carnegie committed suicide [2],[3], but the official statement from Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc. is that he died of Hodgkin's lymphoma on November 1, 1955.[4] He is buried in the Belton, Cass County, Missouri cemetery.

—Edwin Pierson 21:29, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

The Dale Carnegie Course

The Dale Carnegie Course is a self-improvement program conducted using a standardized curriculum by franchised trainers throughout the world. Several variations on the course exist, including a sales course, a high impact presentation course and a course intended for people who manage others.

The basic course consists of twelve evening sessions lasting three and a half hours each. Courses are scheduled in the evening, one night per week. Typically there are 20-35 participants in a course. Unpaid assistants, who are "graduates" of the course (and who are often seeking to meet the experience requirements for becoming instructors), are on hand to assist participants between classes to prepare for the next class, assist with classroom logistics and work with small groups.

Instructors are college graduates with a variety of professional experience who must attend rigorous training which culminates in certification to teach the course. They must annually attend refresher courses to maintain their certification.

Much of the content of the course is based on Dale Carnegie's teachings over the years which started in 1912 as a public speaking course and then grew into controlling worry & stress. He compiled his thoughts in three books which form the basis for much of the program. They are: How to Win Friends and Influence People, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, and The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking. Participants are given reading assignments from these books, as homework, over the twelve weeks.

A good deal of the time each evening is spent in short presentations given by each of the participants to the rest of the attendees. Though the format varies from week to week, usually about 2/3 of the available time is spent listening to short talks by participants related to each session's objectives. The experience of speaking to a group serves to improve the participants’ self-confidence, and it allows them to share their personal insights and experiences in a positive, highly supportive environment. Presentations are always based on personal experience rather than a topic that has been researched.

The remainder of each session is spent in lecture and small group exercises. Lecture topics cover memory techniques and techniques for remembering names, conversational techniques, handling disagreements in a positive way, problem resolution and small group skills.

The Dale Carnegie Course has achieved a high rate of success for a number of reasons. One reason is that the course is self-customizing, in that participants are asked to evaluate their own personal and professional opportunities for improvement, to write a vision statement of what their lives will look like when those improvements are made and to make a commitment to work towards making their vision statement a reality. Each session of the course includes steps towards achieving that vision.

The course is built around five objectives (course drivers), these are: developing improved (1) self-confidence, (2) communication skills, (3) people skills, (4) leadership skills, and (5) skills for controlling stress. Each session of the course addresses improvement in each of these five areas.

During the first few weeks of the twelve week course, participants are asked to focus on themselves, to look at the things they’ve done that have gone well (their achievements) and the things they’ve done that haven’t gone well (their lessons learned). Much of the course is built around these two life extremes. When we do something that goes as planned, we learn what works and the related behaviors we want to repeat and improve upon. When we try something, and we don’t succeed, we learn what doesn’t work and where we need to do things differently. The course uses these two extremes as a model for self-improvement and in coaching for improvement in others.

In applying relationship skills, participants are asked to first focus on existing relationships that are working well, that could work better. Participants identify a relationship they’d like to improve, the benefits to them and to the other person in the relationship of making the improvement, steps they will take to make that happen and obstacles they expect in carrying out their plan. In a later session, participants are asked to share the goals they set for improving this relationship, how successful they were in achieving their goals, what they learned and what advice they have for others, based on their experience. Wrapping that all together helps people work on all five of the course drivers. Participants develop self-confidence from setting a goal and achieving progress towards it, communication skills in sharing their experience with the class, people skills in setting a goal to improve a relationship and making progress towards that, leadership skills in taking charge of their lives, and reducing stress by improving areas of a relationship that were probably causing stress.

As the course progresses, participants are asked to work on greater relationship challenges, including those relationships where they need enthusiastic cooperation from others and the relationships where they need to change someone’s viewpoint. The same format is followed of identifying a goal, developing a plan, making a commitment and sharing the results.

This approach for identifying and solving issues is a lesson in how to deal with life. The goal of the course is not only for participants to have a successful experience during the time they’re in class, it’s to improve the life they lead in between class sessions and after they have completed the course.

Accountability is one the chief course elements that helps participants achieve success. By developing a vision for improvement, a plan to achieve that vision and sharing that plan with others, they have established their goals, a path for getting to their goals and accountability for carrying out their plan.

In addition to working on improved relationships, the course also works on improving enthusiasm for those things we don’t have a natural enthusiasm for, and it asks participants to focus specifically on areas of their lives where they need to deal with stress and encourages them to set goals, develop plans and make commitments for using the course ideas to improve these areas.

Books

Public Speaking and Influencing Men In Business. Association Press.

How to Win Friends and Influence People. A self-help book about interpersonal relations. Simon and Schuster.

How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. A self-help book about stress management. Simon & Schuster.

Lincoln the Unknown by Dale Carnegie. A biography of Abraham Lincoln. Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc.

The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking. Principles and practical implementation of expressing oneself before groups of people. Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc.

The Dale Carnegie Scrapbook edited by Dorothy Carnegie. A collection of quotations that Dale Carnegie found inspirational interspersed with excerpts from his own writings. Simon and Schuster.

How To Develop Self-Confidence and Influence Others Through Public Speaking.

Managing Through People. The application of Dale Carnegie's principles of good human relations to effective management. Simon and Schuster.

Enrich Your Life, The Dale Carnegie Way by Arthur R. Pell. A book describing how a variety of people have applied the principles that Dale Carnegie and his successors have taught. Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

[1] How To Win Friends And Influence People, by Dale Carnegie, Introduction by Lowell Thomas, p. 9, Copyright 1964 ISBN-13:978-0091906818 [[1]]

[2] Kingsley 2.0 (A Blog) Did Dale Carnegie commit suicide? [2]

[3] Living Life Fully™ (An inspirational and motivational website) [3]

[4] Shelokhonov, Steve. Biography for Dale Carnegie at imdb.com [4]

—Edwin Pierson 21:48, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

External links

• Dale Carnegie Website with listings and excerpts from his books
• Dale Carnegie Training
• A&E Biography classroom study guide for "Dale Carnegie: Man of Influence"
• Dale Carnegie on findagrave.com
• New York Times Obituary, November 2, 1955

Initial content was copied from the following Wikipedia article:

Dale_Carnegie (February 8, 2007) history

All credit for producing the original text goes to the WikiMedia Foundation and its selfless team of volunteer contributors. It was copied here in compliance with the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). Any changes made to the original text since then create a derivative work which is also GFDL licensed. Please note the current version here and at Wikipedia are liable to diverge over time. Check the edit history for details. —Edwin Pierson 21:38, 16 July 2007 (UTC)