Dale Carnegie, 31 Years Later

As a 17 year old in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I had the opportunity through Junior Achievement (JA) to take a Dale Carnegie course. I won a scholarship and took the course downtown at the William Penn Hotel with other area high school graduates. It was one of many good experiences I was fortunate enough to have through my involvement in Junior Achievement and in Distributive Education Clubs of America (DECA). Looking back I can say that my work in those two clubs shaped the entire rest of my professional career and life.

I learned about leadership. True, I’m still learning about leadership in  my 13th year as a school administrator—but the lessons I learned through my Dale Carnegie course have stayed with me and are as relevant today as they were then. I’m reminded of those lessons as I subscribe to their Twitter feed.

Here are my top ten lessons learned through Dale Carnegie at 17 years old that still matter to me today–and I’m putting them into my own words as I’ve remembered them all of these years. For direct from the source information go to their website.

1. In Public Speaking–speak about what you know and use personal experiences and stories to make your point. I am as comfortable speaking to a room of 500 as I am speaking to an administrative team of 5 because of this lesson.

2. Instead of worrying about things you can’t control, put them into airtight containers and stop thinking about them. This one I’m not so good at even after 31 years of practice, but I still remember the lesson.

3. When considering a risk or a worry, consider what’s the worst thing that can happen. Reconcile yourself to that outcome and then move forward.

4. No one else controls your happiness, you own it through your own thoughts and decisions. I totally live by this one.

5. Think about everyone on your team and what motivates each of them. I’m often analyzing everyone who works in our District. I want to figure out what makes each member of our team tick and what’s important to him or her. I want to be a leader who makes others want to be their best. This is the same with our best teachers and their students.

6. Listen more than you speak. My advice to my daughter when she started dating was to ask the boy lots of questions to get him talking. She said that worked for getting conversation going and that the first boy who actually asked her questions back, she’d marry. Which she did.

7. Own your mistakes.

8. Don’t worry about what people say about you. Work in a way that makes a difference to them.

9. Instead of giving orders, get buy-in.

10. And of course there was an entire word association technique to remember information and people’s names that I don’t quite remember but wish that I did.

Has to be some strong content to stick with me all of these years–I’m grateful to those teachers and fellow classmates from 1981.