Self help messiah, p.36
Self-help Messiah, page 36
For Alexander, the importance attached to this trifling trophy captured the course’s essential appeal to bedraggled, untutored, emotionally shallow people who paraded before their classmates to stammer out a few words as they desperately searched for confidence and upward mobility. There was the nervous sportswear salesman who had trouble closing sales who reported, “I—uh—came here tonight to see if I couldn’t be helped.” There was a “squat man” who sold vegetables in Brooklyn and wanted to make a stronger appeal to his customers. He explained, “I think if I can come here and make a little speech, I can maybe—maybe I can …” before trailing off. There was the “middle-aged woman with the whimpering voice” who had applied unsuccessfully for a loan from a local bank and then enrolled to see if “Dale Carnegie could show me how to get the three thousand dollars.” There was the “great lump of a man” from Indiana who confessed that, years earlier, “something terrible got hold of me—an inferiority complex” but now “when I read about Dale Carnegie, I said to myself, ‘Maybe he’s got something there.’ Well, here I am.” These rambling, skittish confessions brought an exhortation from the instructor: “a Dale Carnegie course [is valuable] not only in teaching people to speak in public but in improving them in other ways … They get a mental stimulation, don’t you know. And what is public speaking but selling—selling yourself.” In Alexander’s view, the Carnegie course, with its agenda of confidence-boosting and a formula for “Making the Other Person Happy About Doing the Thing You Suggest,” aimed at this gallery of needy, rather dim types.10
Despite its condescending, sometimes sneering, tone, The New Yorker article captured an essential truth: the Carnegie Course was, indeed, the engine propelling the founder’s operation, and by the late 1930s it was humming along on all cylinders. Ordinary people, eager to overcome their problems and find success, were flocking to enroll in ever-larger numbers. In fact, this popularity overwhelmed the original structure of the course established in the 1910s, where Carnegie had presented the course with the assistance of a few colleagues and guest lecturers. Now he began to build a more extensive, complex organization. Encouraged by the growing crowds of students, and bolstered by abundant funds from his best-selling book, Carnegie extended his reach with more offerings and a larger staff of teachers.
He had renamed his operation the Carnegie Institute of Effective Speaking and Human Relations in 1935, and the immense success of How to Win Friends prompted him to add “Dale” to its title to set it apart from projects endowed by Andrew Carnegie. As The New Yorker put it, “The friends-winning movement has grown so fast that Carnegie has been unable to keep up with it. He has had to give up conducting classes himself in order to devote his time to duties of administration.” The last point was only partly true. While the growth of the course forced more administrative duties on Carnegie, he never abandoned teaching; he still loved to step in and conduct a session at every opportunity. As his close friend Homer Croy pointed out, “The success of the book does not mean much to him, for privately he regards it as a fluke. His real interest is in the classes.”11
The famous course underwent other changes as well. Because the broad success message of How to Win Friends transcended public speaking, the author altered the course’s title to the Dale Carnegie Leadership Course. “If you can get on your feet and make a speech which will impress other people, you will get ahead much faster than if you are a tongue-tied seatwarmer,” a journalist described of its success ethos. Carnegie also broadened the base by granting sponsorships to individuals around the United States. They were licensed to begin offering the Carnegie courses in their region with instructors who had successfully completed training. In addition, sponsors were allowed to procure enrollments through direct-selling initiatives as well as demonstration meetings.12
With such modifications, the Carnegie Course thrived as never before. Croy, who attended a class in New York and wrote a long article for Esquire, noted that there were twenty-two colleges and universities in the city offering public-speaking courses, but that Carnegie had more students than all of these institutions combined. He described the course as a “success factory” where “students were handled with machine-like precision.” A newspaper story listed some of the typical course sessions—Overcoming Fear, Developing Courage, Acquiring Ease and Confidence, How to Improve Your Personal Appearance, Personality Improvement—and described how the instructor encouraged everyone to give a “rousing, rip-snorting speech.” It noted that students addressed a wide variety of topics: bar examinations, chicken incubation, flood relief, life insurance, deep-sea fishing, photography, investment banking, the problems facing a minister, and the problem of syphilis, the last of which caused the instructor to lean over and whisper, “Gee willikers.”13
For the first time, the Carnegie Institute also branched out to offer a special sales course. For several years, Carnegie had been deluged with requests from salesmen around the country to offer a class specifically tailored to their needs. In 1939, he finally succumbed. Working with Abbie Connell and several teaching associates, he created a five-night course that moved from city to city, combining his human relations principles with specific instruction on sales tips and techniques. “On Monday night our school would begin. I would lecture for an hour on How to Win Friends, and my associates would lecture on selling for another hour,” Carnegie described. “Then I’d come back with more human relations for another hour, and then the last hour would be on selling. Monday through Friday, and then on to the next city.”14
The Carnegie Course had become everything its creator envisioned—popular, influential, profitable, and effective in conveying his human relations principles. Then its founder received an enormous shock. In 1941, he discovered that all was not well; in fact, the institute was teetering on the edge of financial collapse. “I was making a lot of money. Royalties from the book were still pouring in, money from the sponsors was coming in regularly, and the money from the sales schools was good. But my New York manager was constantly needing money for expenses. What expenses? I learned that he had hired assistants to the assistants to the assistants,” he related. “I returned to New York to find that my business was almost in bankruptcy.” So Carnegie and Abbie Connell spent several days at his home poring over the books and spreadsheets for his company. He discovered that the central office, which he intended to house a handful of employees, had swollen to include thirty-seven in “the penthouse offices” and another ten in the publishing and distribution operation. They had run up overhead expenses that were sapping nearly all of the institute’s profits.15
In truth, Carnegie had played a larger role in this crisis than he ever admitted. Swept away by the profits rolling in from his expanding courses and sales from How to Win Friends, he purchased an uptown building in New York and spent a large amount of money putting in air conditioning and classrooms. Then he sank even more funds into advertising and promotion to fill the space. It was a classic mistake of overexpansion, and the building proved to be a costly drain. “When it went bankrupt all of that money went down,” wrote an institute insider. “I was on the Board [of Directors] when we voted to let it go.” Carnegie referred to this situation only obliquely, noting several years later,
I let more than three hundred thousand dollars slip through my fingers without making a penny’s profit … I launched a large-scale enterprise in adult education, opened branches in various cities, and spent money lavishly in overhead and advertising. I was so busy with teaching that I had neither the time nor the desire to look after finances. I was too naïve to realize that I needed an astute business manager to watch expenses.16
But whatever the causes of his business troubles, Carnegie decided on a drastic remedy. He informed his manager at the central office in New York that the entire institute staff needed to be let go. Henceforth, the operation would be run out of his home, with publishing supplies stored in his basement while Carnegie himself, along with Connell and his niece, Josephine, fulfilled the administrative duties. This move, of course, dramatically slashed expenses and allowed the Dale Carnegie Institute of Effective Speaking and Human Relations to regain its financial footing. Three years of operation with this skeletal organization revived the enterprise’s fortunes, and the founder cautiously looked to expand once again.17
On October 1, 1944, Carnegie solidified the organization’s structure by incorporating as Dale Carnegie Courses, Inc. Under this arrangement, the sponsors of the course around the United States became legally licensed franchises that were responsible to Carnegie. The following year, he established a parent company for all of his endeavors called Dale Carnegie and Associates, Inc., a private-stock company with himself as president. The company opened its first distribution center for printed material and in 1945 held its first national convention, a gathering that was a combined sales meeting and “instructor refresher.”18
This process of corporate consolidation continued throughout the 1940s. In 1947, Carnegie published the first in-house manual for training instructors of the Carnegie Course. He also continued to expand the network of licensed sponsors, and by 1948 he supervised licensed sponsors in 168 cities, collecting a royalty fee for each of the 16,000 students taking the courses every year. Carnegie also tinkered with the structure of the course, varying the number of sessions from fifteen to twenty-one. Percy Whiting emerged as a key player in this process. Alexander, in his New Yorker piece, caught something of his personal dynamism, describing Whiting as “a well-groomed, white-haired man with a facile smile … [and] a slightly aggressive fatherliness,” who could be, in quick succession, jovial, self-deprecating, enthusiastic, and inspirational. In 1947 Whiting wrote The Five Great Rules of Selling, which would serve as the textbook for the sales course for the next fifty years. Other longtime Carnegie associates—Frank Bettger, Richard C. Borden, Charles A. Dwyer—remained part of the teaching team while the national organization took on a number of people who would become mainstays in teaching the course over the next three decades, including Brick Brickell, Arthur Secord, Stewart McClelland, Pat Evans, Harry Hamm, Wes Westrom, and Ormond Drake.19
Despite its expanding bureaucratic form and national focus, the Carnegie Course continued to derive most of its energy and focus from Dale Carnegie himself. He cherished the educational undertaking he had inaugurated thirty years earlier and, indeed, made it a key part of his identity. Traveling around the country on a regular basis, he visited classes, consulted with instructors, and labored to maintain a high standard of training to effectively impart the principles in which he deeply believed. His impact was indelible.
When talking with reporters, Carnegie loved to tell stories about his teaching experiences. He passed along a wisecrack he often shared with students: “Y’know, the real disadvantage of this course is that you’ll never again be able to hear a public speaker without thinking how lousy he is.” He recounted how he overcame daunting challenges, as when a frightened young man tried to make a speech but crumbled to the ground in a dead faint. As he fell, Carnegie grabbed his limp body, supported it, and announced dramatically to the class, “One month from today this man will make a speech from this platform!” And he did. He told the tale of the new chairman of a large company who, frantic at the prospect of speaking to shareholders, rushed to Carnegie and promised that if his course would cure his fright he would give him half of his earthly possessions. Several weeks later, Carnegie reported triumphantly, the man spoke successfully before an audience of four thousand. When asked if he laid claim to the earthly possessions, Carnegie replied with a smile, “You’ll go to your grave wondering.”20
In a long interview for the magazine Your Life, Carnegie related how a prominent Wall Street broker enrolled in the course but was so terrified that he fled from the first session. He then sheepishly returned after accepting the offer of an ambassadorship, a position that demanded regular public speeches. He was soon giving successful talks to his fellow students, and grew so enamored of public speaking that one Sunday morning he awoke and asked his wife if there was any place in New York where he could make a talk that day. When reminded that anyone could speak at a Quaker Meeting House, he found one in Brooklyn and rose to offer some remarks on how to prevent war. There was the head of a business who shrank from public speeches, but noticed one day that his accountant, usually a timid man, now entered the office with head held high, a confident look, and a booming “good morning.” When the businessman asked, “Who has been feeding you meat?” the accountant replied that he had completed the Carnegie Course. So the boss took the training and four months later, according to Carnegie, “he talked to a mass meeting and was tireless. Asked to talk for three minutes, he talked nine; and if the chairman hadn’t shut him up he would have talked ninety.”21
Carnegie’s teaching prowess became legendary. A host of course instructors testified to the founder’s profound influence and inspiration in the years after the enormous success of How to Win Friends. His attention to detail was conspicuous. An instructor in Birmingham, Alabama, who arrived a few minutes before class, was startled to find the visiting Carnegie lying on a table. When the anxious young teacher asked if he was feeling all right, Carnegie replied that “he was just resting a bit, after coming down to check on how the room had been set up.” Imagine, recalled the teacher, “he owned the course, but he checked on such small details.” Another time, Carnegie demonstrated the wisdom of his experience. He observed a young woman in a class who was struggling with her talk as mounting fear caused her to lower her voice until she could barely be heard. Carnegie quietly went to the front of the room, tactfully asked the instructor to step aside, stopped the woman, and then placed two chairs facing each other a few feet apart. In an earnest and interested manner, after they both took a seat, he began to ask her questions about the topic of her talk. As he drew her out, she started to relax and gain confidence, spoke animatedly, and ended up having “a successful experience during the two-minute talk.”22
Carnegie supporting a nervous student as she struggles to speak publicly into a microphone.
Carnegie’s prowess in helping students overcome their fears impressed all who witnessed it. Years of experience had provided him a variety of techniques that he shared willingly. Encountering a timid student during one of his class visits, Carnegie loosened things up by asking him “to skip to the candy store with him, and they skipped completely around the room.” The image of the distinguished founder of the course romping about in his tweed suit engulfed the entire class in laughter and lightened the environment so that the tongue-tied student could speak comfortably.23
Carnegie once aided a student paralyzed with fear because of his foreign accent. After listening to his disjointed, fumbling talk to the class, Carnegie said simply, “You should get down on your knees every morning and thank God that you are different. Your accent adds color and emphasis to what you say. It gives you a power possessed by no one else in this room.” His words had an almost miraculous impact. “This comment and the manner in which it was made had an instant and transforming effect,” reported the instructor. “The man seemed to stand taller. His eyes glowed with new hope. His desperation was changed to aspiration.” Such interventions awed instructors and students alike.24
As Carnegie monitored his course and encouraged his instructors, he insisted upon the importance of “enthusiasm.” In training sessions for instructors, he listened closely and evaluated their performances, often taking notes on a yellow legal pad. Ken Bowton, who would have a long career with the Carnegie Institute, never forgot how his boss critiqued one of his early teaching efforts. “He mentioned a couple of things I had done well, and then said, ‘Ken, you were about as enthusiastic tonight as the turnstile down at the subway—when it’s not turning.’ ” Bowton, hearing this comment delivered in a jovial, friendly manner, “considered this to be a challenge. I needed to relax and teach with excitement. Since that time I have realized that when instructing the class I had better turn up the level of excitement.” Another time, however, Carnegie’s demand for enthusiasm brought comical results. Sitting in on a class taught by Brick Brickell, he pushed the instructor to generate a higher level of enthusiasm among his students. So Brickell urged on a female student, who proved somewhat volatile during her speech. She “became so excited and angry that she took off her shoe and pounded on the table,” the instructor reported. “I continued to heckle her and she started striking out at me with her shoe. In fact, she ran me down the aisle and all but out of the room. I felt I had completely failed but Mr. Carnegie thought it was great because the lady had truly come out of her shell and enthusiastically so.”25
For all his seriousness, however, Carnegie allowed no pretense in his course. At a postwar course meeting where he was sitting in, a veteran “gave a talk about his memory of seeing natives eating garbage on an island in the Pacific.” The instructor, a professor of speech at Notre Dame, remarked that the talk would have been better if he had used the word “refuse” instead of “garbage.” But Carnegie jumped to his feet and said emphatically, “In the Dale Carnegie Course, garbage is garbage!” In Kansas City, he attended a special instructor-training course established by the local sponsor at the federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas. Carnegie was enthusiastic about seeing the class, and was monitoring the proceedings when one of the students, a mobster, gave a talk on an experience that had changed his life. “He was telling of the gun battle that caused his incarceration. Just as he and a rival gangster were in a narrow alley, head to head with one another, they drew their pistols simultaneously and … the bell rang” to cut off the talk, reported the instructor. “Dale Carnegie jumped to his feet and said, ‘I have to hear the rest of that story. Go ahead and finish it, take five more minutes if you need it.’ ” The audience was gratified, of course, but thereafter the prisoner-students badgered their teachers at every session and demanded five extra minutes since Carnegie had done it for the mobster.26
