9 What Everybody Wants

Wouldn’t you like to have a magic phrase that would stop arguments, eliminate ill feeling, create goodwill, and make the other person listen attentively?

Yes? All right. Here it is: “I don’t blame you one iota for feeling as you do. If I were you, I would undoubtedly feel just as you do.”

An answer like that will soften the most cantankerous old cuss alive. And you can say that and be 100 percent sincere, because if you were the other person you, of course, would feel just as he does. Take Al Capone, for example. Suppose you had inherited the same body and temperament and mind that Al Capone had. Suppose you had had his environment and experiences. You would then be precisely what he was—and where he was. For it is those things—and only those things—that made him what he was. The only reason, for example, that you are not a rattlesnake is that your mother and father weren’t rattlesnakes. The only reason you don’t worship crocodiles is because you weren’t born in ancient Egypt in the days of the pharaohs. And if you lived in Yap, a remote island in the western Pacific, you might be buying a goat using a large rock as currency.

You deserve very little credit for being what you are—and remember, the people who come to you irritated, bigoted, and unreasoning deserve very little discredit for being what they are. Feel sorry for the poor devils. Pity them. Sympathize with them. Say to yourself: “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

Three-fourths of the people you will ever meet are hungering and thirsting for sympathy. Give it to them, and they will love you.

I once gave a broadcast about the author of Little Women, Louisa May Alcott. Naturally, I knew she had lived and written her immortal books in Concord, Massachusetts. But, without thinking what I was saying, I spoke of visiting her old home in Concord, New Hampshire. If I had said New Hampshire only once, it might have been forgiven. But, alas and alack! I said it twice. I was deluged with letters and telegrams, stinging messages that swirled around my defenseless head like a swarm of hornets. Many were indignant. A few insulting. One Mayflower descendant, who had been reared in Concord, Massachusetts, and who was then living in Philadelphia, vented her scorching wrath upon me. She couldn’t have been much more bitter if I had accused Miss Alcott of being a cannibal from New Guinea. As I read the letter, I said to myself, “Thank God, I am not married to this woman.” I felt like writing and telling her that although I had made a mistake in geography, she had made a far greater mistake in common courtesy. That was to be just my opening sentence. Then I was going to roll up my sleeves and tell her what I really thought.

But I didn’t. I controlled myself. I realized that any hotheaded fool could do that—and that most fools would do just that.

I wanted to be above fools. So I resolved to try to turn her hostility into friendliness. It would be a challenge, a sort of game I could play. I said to myself, “After all, if I were she, I would probably feel just as she does.” So I determined to sympathize with her viewpoint. The next time I was in Philadelphia, I called her on the telephone. The conversation went something like this:

So, because I had apologized and sympathized with her point of view, she began apologizing and sympathizing with my point of view. I had the satisfaction of controlling my temper, the satisfaction of returning kindness for an insult. I got infinitely more real gratification out of making her like me than I could ever have gotten out of telling her to go and take a jump in the Schuylkill River.

Every individual who occupies the White House is faced almost daily with thorny problems in human relations. President Taft was no exception, and he learned from experience the enormous chemical value of sympathy in neutralizing the acid of hard feelings. In his book Ethics in Service, Taft gives a rather amusing illustration of how he softened the ire of a disappointed and ambitious mother.

“A lady in Washington,” wrote Taft, “whose husband had some political influence, came and labored with me for six weeks or more to appoint her son to a position. She secured the aid of Senators and Congressmen in formidable number and came with them to see that they spoke with emphasis. The position was one requiring technical qualification, and following the recommendation of the head of the Bureau, I appointed somebody else. I then received a letter from the mother, saying that I was most ungrateful, since I declined to make her a happy woman as I could have done by a turn of my hand. She complained further that she had labored with her state delegation and got all the votes for an administration bill in which I was especially interested and this was the way I had rewarded her.

“When you get a letter like that, the first thing you do is to think how you can be severe with a person who has committed an impropriety, or even been a little impertinent. Then you may compose an answer. Then if you are wise, you will put the letter in a drawer and lock the drawer. Take it out in the course of two days—such communications will always bear two days’ delay in answering—and when you take it out after that interval, you will not send it. That is just the course I took. After that, I sat down and wrote her just as polite a letter as I could, telling her I realized a mother’s disappointment under such circumstances, but that really the appointment was not left to my mere personal preference, that I had to select a man with technical qualifications, and had, therefore, to follow the recommendations of the head of the Bureau. I expressed the hope that her son would go on to accomplish what she had hoped for him in the position which he then had. That letter completely mollified her. She wrote me a note saying she was sorry she had written as she had.”

What if you found yourself in the unenviable position of informing the manager of a leading hotel in town that he had to shut down the escalator for an entire day, risking the wrath of guests who expected—and paid plenty for—all the conveniences of a fine establishment? That was the problem faced by Jay Mangum, whose elevator-escalator maintenance company had the contract for one of the leading hotels in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Jay knew it would be a bear to get their stalled escalator running again even if everything went as planned. The hotel manager insisted that two hours was the maximum amount of time he would inconvenience his guests. Jay knew it would take at least eight hours to complete the repair since his company did not always have a specially qualified mechanic available at the convenience of the hotel.

When Jay was able to schedule a top-flight mechanic for the job, he telephoned the hotel manager but instead of arguing with him to give him the necessary time, he said: “Rick, I know your hotel is quite busy and you would like to keep the escalator shutdown time to a minimum. I understand your concern about this, and we want to do everything possible to accommodate you. However, our diagnosis of the situation shows that if we do not do a complete job now, your escalator may suffer more serious damage and that would cause a much longer shutdown. I know you would not want your guests without an escalator for several days.”

The manager had to agree that an eight-hour shutdown was more desirable than “several days.” By sympathizing with the manager’s desire to keep his patrons happy, Jay was able, easily and without rancor, to win the man to his way of thinking.

Sol Hurok was probably America’s number one impresario. For almost half a century he handled artists—such world-famous ones as Chaliapin, Isadora Duncan, and Pavlova. Mr. Hurok told me that one of the first lessons he had learned in dealing with his temperamental stars was the necessity for sympathy, sympathy, and more sympathy for their idiosyncrasies.

For three years, he was impresario for Feodor Chaliapin—one of the greatest bassos who ever thrilled the ritzy boxholders at the Metropolitan. Yet Chaliapin was a constant problem. He carried on like a spoiled child. To put it in Mr. Hurok’s own inimitable phrase: “He was a hell of a fellow in every way.”

For example, Chaliapin would call up Mr. Hurok about noon of the day he was going to sing and say, “Sol, I feel terrible. My throat is like raw hamburger. It is impossible for me to sing tonight.” Did Mr. Hurok argue with him? Oh, no. He knew that an entrepreneur could not handle artists that way. So he would rush over to Chaliapin’s hotel, dripping with sympathy. “What a pity,” he would mourn. “What a pity! My poor fellow. Of course, you cannot sing. I will cancel the engagement at once. It will only cost you a couple of thousand dollars, but that is nothing in comparison to your reputation.”

Then Chaliapin would sigh and say, “Perhaps you had better come over later in the day. Come at five and see how I feel then.”

At five o’clock, Mr. Hurok would again rush to his hotel, dripping with sympathy. Again he would insist on canceling the engagement and again Chaliapin would sigh and say, “Well, maybe you had better come to see me later. I may be better then.”

At seven-thirty the great basso would consent to sing, only with the understanding that Mr. Hurok would walk out on the stage of the Metropolitan and announce that Chaliapin had a very bad cold and was not in good voice. Mr. Hurok would lie and say he would do it, for he knew that was the only way to get the basso out on the stage.

Dr. Arthur I. Gates said in his splendid book Educational Psychology: “Sympathy the human species universally craves. The child eagerly displays his injury; or even inflicts a cut or bruise in order to reap abundant sympathy. For the same purpose adults… show their bruises, relate their accidents, illness, especially details of surgical operations. ‘Self-pity’ for misfortunes real or imaginary is, in some measure, practically a universal practice.”

So, if you want to win people to your way of thinking, put in practice…

PRINCIPLE 9

Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires.