How to Influence Other People

Lyndon Johnson kept the following rules on his desk on how to influence people around him.

1. Learn to remember names. Inefficiency at this point may indicate that your interest is no sufficiently outgoing.
2. Be a comfortable person so there is no strain in being with you. Be an old-shoe, old-hat kind of individual.
3. Acquire the quality of relaxed easy-going so that things do not ruffle you.
4. Don't be egotistical. Guard against the impression that you know it all.
5. Cultivate the quality of being interesting so people will get something of value from their association with you.
6. Study to get the "scratchy" elements out of your eprsonality, even those of which you may be unconscious.
7. Sincerely attempt to heal, on a honest Christian bsis, every misunderstanding you ahve had or now have. Drain off your grievances.
8. Practice liking people until you learn to do it genuinely.
9. Never miss an opportunity to say a word of congratulation upon any one's achievment or express sympathy in sorrow or disappointment.
10. Give spiritual strength to people and they will give genuine affection to you.

These rules may seem trite. But Johnson's ability to persuade came out of the relationships he formed with peers, and it took great self-discipline to keep his ego in check and control his own passions. It was this self-discipline that gave Johnson his intellectual flexibility and allowed him to be an effective politican.