Part One – Fundamental Techniques In Handling People
Principle 1: “If You Want To Gather Honey, Don’t Kick Over The Beehive
1. “I have spent the best years of my life giving people the lighter pleasures, helping them have a good time, and all I get is abuse, the existence of a hunted man.” – Al Capone, the most notorious America public enemy
2. Al Capone didn’t blame himself for the criminals, instead he justify. Most of the criminals didn’t blame themselves but they will justify what good they have done to the public when they were caught and criticized.
3. Criticisms will put a person under defensive and will strive to justify himself, thus hurt his sense of importance and created resentment. This also will not create lasting changes.
4. Resentment will demoralize employees, their family and colleagues, without correcting the condemned situations.
5. When a superior told /scold his subordinates with a lot of authority, he will receive sullen acceptance.
6. Instead of scolding superior should remind their subordinates for any mistake been done using pleasant tone of voice and ask why he made the mistake and made him agree to ensure the mistake was not repeated .
7. People will accept and change if :
a. they were asked why they do this and didn’t follow instruction and
b. Reprimanded or reminded with a pleasant tone from superior.
8. When we are tempted to criticized, think that it was like home pigeon, which it will return to us. The person who we criticized for correcting will condemn us in return without any improvement or change.
9. As a young Abraham Lincoln, he criticized politicians through letter and poem which he dropped on the country road which sure to be found. This had caused resentment of a young politician named James Shield, who confronted him to fight till death. Due to this, Abraham Lincoln never wrote any insulting letters again. Lincoln’s remark: : “Don’t criticize them; they are just what we would be under similar circumstances .”
10. Hasty remarks or letter will only relieve sender feeling, but will make the receiver condemn him, arouse hard feeling and impairing his usefulness in future.
11. When dealing with people, let us remember that we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.
12. One gesture that could be used when we want to criticized, is to put our arm on his shoulders and advised him on what we want him to improve/ rectify.
13. When we want to improve and change someone, begin with our self, it is more profitable than trying to improve others.
14.”A great man shows his greatness; by the way he treats little men.”
15. Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be under-standing and forgiving.
16. Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do. That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness. “To know all is to forgive all.”
17. Often parents are tempted to criticize their children, and this is what we do daily. However, before we criticized our children please look at the Classic literature of Americans Journalism “ Father Forgets” which had been reproduced many many time.
Principle 1 – Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.
FATHER FORGETS
BY W. Livingston Larned
Listen, son: I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me.
Guiltily I came to your bedside.
There are the things I was thinking, son: I had been cross to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when you threw some of your things on the floor.
At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table. You spread butter too thick on your bread. And as you started off to play and I made for my train, you turned and waved a hand and called, “Goodbye, Daddy!” and I frowned, and said in reply, “Hold your shoulders back!”
Then it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I came up the road I spied you, down on your knees, playing marbles. There were holes in your stockings. I humiliated you before your boyfriends by marching you ahead of me to the house. Stockings were expensive and if you had to buy them you would be more careful! Imagine that, son, from a father!
Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library, how you came in timidly, with a sort of hurt look in your eyes? When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption, you hesitated at the door. “What is it you want?” I snapped.
You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous plunge, and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, and your small arms tightened with an affection that God had set blooming in your heart and which even neglect could not wither. And then you were gone, pattering up the stairs.
Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding fault, of reprimanding – this was my reward to you for being a boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too much of youth. I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years.
And there was so much that was good and fine and true in your character. The little heart of you was as big as the dawn itself over the wide hills. This was shown by your spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me good night. Nothing else matters tonight, son. I have come to your bed-side in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed!
It is a feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours. But tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: “He is nothing but a boy – a little boy!”
I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother’s arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much.
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