Dale Carnegie

Dale Carnegie

Dale Breckenridge Carnegie (originally Carnegey) (November 24 1888 - November 1 1955) was an American writer and the developer of famous courses in self-help/self-improvement, salesmanship, training and development, 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.

The Dale Carnegie Course, a distillation of his varied experiences with public speaking, marketing, method acting, and particularly, personal salesmanship is his lasting legacy.

Biography

Born 1888 in Harmony Church, Missouri, Carnegie was a poor farmer's boy, the second son of James William Carnagey and Amanda Elizabeth Harbison.

Although born Dale Carnagey, Dale's father, [James] William, claimed a remote link to Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnate and great philanthropist. No connection has ever been proven and is therefore, unlikely. Dale himself never claimed, publicly or privately, any such connection. The change in spelling of his last name from “Carnegey” to Carnegie, thus, was primarily for business purposes.

From Poverty

In his teens and getting up at 4 a.m. every day to feed the pigs and milk his parents' cows, he somehow managed to get an education at Central Missouri State College in Warrensburg, Missouri. For his classes at Central Missouri State (or Warrensburg State Teachers College as it was called then), Carnegie scarcely had clothes that fit to wear. Out of a student population of eight hundred, he was one of four so poor that they lived at home and rode to school on horseback. A first job after college(1908)was selling correspondence courses to ranchers. He then moved on to selling bacon, soap and lard for Armour & Company. He was successful to the point of making his sales territory, southern Omaha and the badlands of South Dakota, the national leader for the firm.

Defying his midwestern roots and his mother's wishes for him to be a missionary, he headed east to study speech and drama, turning down a promotion offer from Armour & Company.

The Actor's Life

Upon deciding on New York City, in 1910, he headed to the AADA (American Academy of Dramatic Arts) based mostly upon the recommendation of a Reverend Russell, whom he had met on one of his train rides across the badlands of South Dakota. The school's statement of principles, especially appealed to him: "To create an accent on naturalism accompanied by emotional recall in order to achieve a deeper more essential 'truth' in performance."

In his audition into the AADA as later reported by a journalist, Carnegie was commanded to imitate a chair. He passed and was admitted on the spot. The hefty fee of $400 for the 6 months course virtually depleted his savings. Upon graduation, he played the role of Dr. Hartley in a road show of Polly and the Circus. Although not a starring role, it did certainly teach Carnegie more about life on the road. Rooming with Howard Lindsay, who later rose to fame as the co-writer of such classic hits as Arsenic and Old Lace, The Sound of Music, and Life With Father, he would make pocket money selling suitcases and ties.

Later, finding no work as a Broadway actor, weary of the touring circuit, and living at the YMCA on 125th Street, Carnegie persuaded the manager there to allow him to instruct a public speaking class in return for 80% of the net proceeds. By 1912, drawing from all his personal, on the road successes, failures, and challenges, the outline of a broader vision and course had begun to form.

Other Influences

In 1925, a book Influencing Human Behavior by Harry Overstreet, a professor at the College of the City of New York was published. Professor Overstreet espoused a very basic principle: "First, arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way."

As one of the first popular books based on applied psychology, it formed the basis for at least some of the impetus behind what was to become Carnegie's own magnum opus, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Professor Overstreet saw the advertiser as continually appealing to certain fundamental human wants, declaring him a "pioneer in psychological technique." Dale Carnegie saw the same principle at work in sales, finally popularizing the professor's words into the now famous salesman's maxim: "Arouse in the other person an eager want."

Other contemporaries who greatly influenced Carnegie (and often vice versa) include Norman Vincent Peale, Orison Marden,Emile Coué, as well as best-selling author, psychologist of the day, Henry Link.

By the 1930s, Dale Carnegie was recruiting others to teach the principles and methods born of all his years of experience across the United States. He called it simply,The Dale Carnegie Course.

Family

Dale Carnegie had one sibling, an older brother, Clifton. Often not very close, Dale would remain frustrated by his brother's lack of success and ambition despite several efforts to motivate and support him. In later years when brother Dale was building himself a national reputation and base, Clifton had, in fact, moved back in with his aging parents, unable to make it in the world on his own.

Carnegie's first marriage to Lolita Baucaire 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. He was 63 when Donna Dale was born.

Dorothy Carnegie was installed as vice president of Carnegie & Associates when it was created in 1945 and went on to help launch the Dorothy Carnegie Course in Personal Development for Women in 1948. After her husband's death, she wrote and edited while carrying on the legacy of her husband's work becoming chairman of the parent company, Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc., in Garden City, N.Y.

Death

Asked to give a speech upon receiving an honorary degree from the institution where his education began (Central Missouri State College), Carnegie, in failing health and despite weeks of preparation, had to read it. "No," he said, "I didn't quite graduate, and I'm glad I've forgotten everything connected with Latin. Learning isn't so important, it's what kind of man you make out of yourself while you're learning that counts." Three months later Dale Carnegie died.

The diagnosis ran the gamut from uremia, a blood disease, to arteriosclerosis; both often misdiagnosed in those days. It has lately been rumored, that Carnegie committed suicide. However, the official statement from Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc. is that he died of Hodgkin's lymphoma on November 1, 1955. He is buried in the Belton, Cass County, Missouri cemetery. A small marker upon his grave reads: Dale Carnegie, 1888-1955.

The Dale Carnegie Course

The Basics

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 public speaking course, 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.

Course Success and Objectives

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.

Application of Skills

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

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.

With thousands of enrollees and instructors as well as millions of graduates worldwide, The Dale Carnegie Course continues challenging and enriching the lives of people from all walks of life to this day.

Quotes

• "Act enthusiastic and you will be enthusiastic!"

• "Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving."

"Applause is a receipt, not a bill."

"Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours."

"Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success."

"Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves."

"Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it... that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear."

"Don't be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves."

"Each nation feels superior to other nations. That breeds patriotism - and wars."

"Fear not those who argue but those who dodge."

"Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success."

"Happiness doesn't depend on any external conditions, it is governed by our mental attitude."

"If you can't sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It's the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep."

"If you want to be enthusiastic, act enthusiastic!"

"If you want to gather honey, don't kick over the beehive."

"Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy."

"Keep on raging - to stop the aging."

"Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all."

"Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed possible."

"You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world's happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime."

"You never achieve success unless you like what you are doing."

"Your purpose is to make your audience see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt. Relevant detail, couched in concrete, colorful language, is the best way to recreate the incident as it happened and to picture it for the audience."

Books

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

Influencing Human Behavior by Harry Overstreet. (First edition 1925) Kessinger Publishing.(June 2003)

Public Speaking and Influencing Men In Business Kessinger Publishing.

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

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

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.

Carnegie, The Man Who Influenced Millions by Giles Kemp and Edward Claflin. An interesting account of Carnegie the man and of his teaching. St Martins Press; First edition (August 1989).

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Dale Carnegie, The Man Who Influenced Millions by Giles Kemp and Edward Claflin ISBN-10: 0312028962

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

• The Giants of Sales: What Dale Carnegie, John Patterson, Elmer Wheeler, And Joe Girard Can Teach You About Real Sales Success by Tom Sant ISBN-10: 0814472915

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"
• The Ancestry of Dale Carnegie
• Dale Carnegie on findagrave.com
• New York Times Obituary, November 2, 1955
• Kingsley 2.0 (A Blog) Did Dale Carnegie commit suicide?
• Living Life Fully™ (An inspirational and motivational website)
• Shelokhonov, Steve. Biography for Dale Carnegie at imdb.com
• Dale Carnegie Quotes
• The Magic of Dale Carnegie

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Dale_Carnegie (February 8, 2007) history

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