chapter7.1

Some time ago, I attended a bridge party.

I don’t play bridge—and there was a woman there who didn’t play bridge either.

She had discovered that I had once been Lowell Thomas’ manager before he went on the radio and that I had traveled in Europe a great deal while helping him prepare the illustrated travel talks he was then delivering.

So she said: “Oh, Mr. Carnegie, I do want you to tell me about all the wonderful places you have visited and the sights you have seen.”

As we sat down on the sofa, she remarked that she and her husband had recently returned from a trip to Africa.

“Africa!” I exclaimed.

“How interesting! I’ve always wanted to see Africa, but I never got there except for a twenty-four-hour stay once in Algiers.

Tell me, did you visit the big-game country?

Yes? How fortunate. I envy you.

Do tell me about Africa.”

That kept her talking for forty-five minutes.

She never again asked me where I had been or what I had seen.

She didn’t want to hear me talk about my travels.

All she wanted was an interested listener, so she could expand her ego and tell about where she had been.

Was she unusual? No.

Many people are like that.

For example, I met a distinguished botanist at a dinner party given by a New York book publisher.

I had never talked with a botanist before, and I found him fascinating.

I literally sat on the edge of my chair and listened while he spoke of exotic plants and experiments in developing new forms of plant life and indoor gardens (and even told me astonishing facts about the humble potato).

I had a small indoor garden of my own—and he was good enough to tell me how to solve some of my problems.

As I said, we were at a dinner party.

There must have been a dozen other guests, but I violated all the canons of courtesy, ignored everyone else, and talked for hours to the botanist.

Midnight came, I said good night to everyone and departed.

The botanist then turned to our host and paid me several flattering compliments.

I was “most stimulating.”

I was this and I was that, and he ended by saying I was a “most interesting conversationalist.”

An interesting conversationalist?

Why, I had said hardly anything at all.

I couldn’t have said anything if I had wanted to without changing the subject, for I didn’t know any more about botany than I knew about the anatomy of a penguin.

But I had done this: I had listened intently.

I had listened because I was genuinely interested.

And he felt it.

Naturally that pleased him. That kind of listening is one of the highest compliments we can pay anyone.

“Few human beings,” wrote Jack Woodford in Strangers in Love, “few human beings are proof against the implied flattery of rapt attention.”

I went even further than giving him rapt attention.

I was “hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise.”

I told him that I had been immensely entertained and instructed—and I had.

I told him I wished I had his knowledge—and I did.

I told him that I should love to wander the fields with him—and I have.

I told him I must see him again—and I did.

And so I had him thinking of me as a good conversationalist when, in reality, I had been merely a good listener and had encouraged him to talk.

What is the secret, the mystery, of a successful business interview?

Well, according to former Harvard president Charles W. Eliot, “There is no mystery about successful business intercourse.

Exclusive attention to the person who is speaking to you is very important.

Nothing else is so flattering as that.”

Eliot himself was a past master of the art of listening.

Henry James, one of America’s first great novelists, recalled: “Dr. Eliot’s listening was not mere silence, but a form of activity.

Sitting very erect on the end of his spine with hands joined in his lap, making no movement except that he revolved his thumbs around each other faster or slower,

he faced his interlocutor and seemed to be hearing with his eyes as well as his ears.

He listened with his mind and attentively considered what you had to say while you said it. …

At the end of an interview the person who had talked to him felt that he had had his say.”

Self-evident, isn’t it?

You don’t have to study for four years in Harvard to discover that.

Yet I know and you know department store owners who will rent expensive space, buy their goods economically, dress their windows appealingly,

spend thousands of dollars in advertising and then hire clerks who haven’t the sense to be good listeners—clerks who interrupt customers, contradict them, irritate them, and all but drive them from the store.

A department store in Chicago almost lost a regular customer who spent several thousand dollars each year in that store because a sales clerk wouldn’t listen.

Mrs. Henrietta Douglas, who took our course in Chicago, had purchased a coat at a special sale.

After she had brought it home she noticed that there was a tear in the lining.

She came back the next day and asked the sales clerk to exchange it.

The clerk refused even to listen to her complaint.

“You bought this at a special sale,” she said.

She pointed to a sign on the wall.

“Read that,” she exclaimed. “‘All sales are final.’

Once you bought it, you have to keep it.

Sew up the lining yourself.”

“But this was damaged merchandise,” Mrs. Douglas complained.

“Makes no difference,” the clerk interrupted. “Final’s final.”

Mrs. Douglas was about to walk out indignantly, swearing never to return to that store ever, when she was greeted by the department manager, who knew her from her many years of patronage.

Mrs. Douglas told her what had happened.

The manager listened attentively to the whole story, examined the coat and then said: “Special sales are ‘final’ so we can dispose of merchandise at the end of the season.

But this ‘no return’ policy does not apply to damaged goods.

We will certainly repair or replace the lining, or if you prefer, give you your money back.”

What a difference in treatment!

If that manager had not come along and listened to the Customer, a long-term patron of that store could have been lost forever.

Listening is just as important in one’s home life as in the world of business.

Millie Esposito of Croton-on-Hudson, New York, made it her business to listen carefully when one of her children wanted to speak with her.

One evening she was sitting in the kitchen with her son, Robert, and after a brief discussion of something that was on his mind, Robert said: “Mom, I know that you love me very much.”

Mrs. Esposito was touched and said: “Of course I love you very much.

Did you doubt it?”

Robert responded: “No, but I really know you love me because whenever I want to talk to you about something you stop whatever you are doing and listen to me.”