Andrew Knowles – business copywriter

by Dale Carnegie & associates, with Brent Cole

Years ago, my boss sent me on a Dale Carnegie course. Over the weeks, I saw many of my fellow delegates transformed.

Hesitant presenters acquired the confidence to address a room packed with strangers. The inarticulate found a coherent voice. The quiet and shy became more outspoken. And it was all achieved in an atmosphere of mutual respect and support.

The constructive, upbeat tone of that course, and the training methods of Dale Carnegie, continues into this valuable adaptation of his original book ‘How to win friends and influence people’.

Words like ‘relationship’, ‘engagement’, ‘connecting’ and ‘social’ are at the heart of today’s digital communication revolution. They are also words that Carnegie understood and promoted as he empowered others. He discovered, a long time ago, that ‘the secret to all interpersonal progress is adding value, and doing so with regularity’.

This book is a gentle reminder of why, and how, to keep adding value in all your relationships. Family, friends, colleagues, customers and competitors are all within its scope. The advice is generously lubricated with real-life, often very contemporary, stories, and many are connected to the digital media, such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

This is probably a book best read in small chunks. A single chapter should provide enough inspiration, and food for thought, for each day. I found it difficult to read more than three or four chapters in a sitting, as there was usually at least one thought or idea on every page that set me thinking.

There is no secret formula or magic trick inside this book. Instead, it contains a timeless recipe for success which, as I, and many others, know from personal experience, works. It’s a recipe which transfers easily from the slower days of the 1930s to the frenetic, instantaneous world of today’s unsleeping digital networks.

The success of this book, as with Carnegie’s original training and publications, is that it appeals to our better nature. It prompts us to do those things that we instinctively know we should, but at the same time frequently neglect. We’re encouraged to treat others in ways we would like to be treated ourselves, because in so doing, we build strong networks of trust, and it’s on those that our own success is built.

‘How to win friends and influence people in the digital age’ is published by Simon & Schuster in January 2012.