Everyone feels the desire to be important.

This idea is initially mentioned in Part One, Chapter 2 but appears throughout the book. Carnegie argues that one of the primary motivations for a person, in addition to food, shelter and sleep, is the need to feel important. By discovering how people define their own importance, one can use this to make someone feel appreciated. It can also help when trying to motivate others, as they will be more likely to strive for improvement if it somehow glorifies how they define themselves. Carnegie advises that the reader should keep in mind that people make decisions based on their need to feel important and questioning such decisions might result in negative feelings or confrontation.

People are driven by emotion, not logic.

Throughout the book, Carnegie states that individuals make decisions that focus on themselves, and often those decisions are not ideal. Keeping people happy is just as important as the information itself. Carnegie states that most people will take personal offense if they are told that they are incorrect. Their actions, decisions, and opinions are closely attached to their pride, and to have them challenged makes someone want to fight back. Throughout the book, Carnegie describes many different tools for managers, spouses, parents, or teachers to use when dealing with someone that disagrees. The tools are almost all designed to minimize the animosity that the other person will feel. Later parts of the book specifically deal with correcting others, especially employees. Carnegie offers further tools that are designed to reduce the amount of resentment the other person feels.

People respond better if their managers appear humble and fallible.

Throughout several chapters, Carnegie talks about the need for business professionals to appear humble. When a supervisor needs to confront an employee that has made a mistake, the supervisor should start by talking about his or her own mistakes in the past. When dealing with an angry client or customer, the salesperson should admit that mistakes might have been made, even when he or she knows that the client is at fault. Carnegie states that most people believe that they are correct (as opposed to being willfully deceptive). Since they believe that they are correct, one should strive to figure out why the other person believes what he or she does. This can also be extended to parents and teachers. If they admit that they are not perfect when correcting a child’s behavior, Carnegie argues that the child will be more open to the information.

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