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Personal Growth - Success
get the other person’s point of view and see things
from that person’s angle as well as from your own.”
That is so good, I want to repeat it: "If there is any one
secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other
person's point of view and see things from that person’s
angle as well as from your own.”
That is so simple, so obvious, that anyone ought to see
the truth of it at a glance; yet 90 percent of the people
on this earth ignore it 90 percent of the time.
An example? Look at the letters that come across your
desk tomorrow morning, and you will find that most of
them violate this important canon of common sense.
Take this one, a letter written by the head of the radio
department of an advertising agency with offices scattered
across the continent. This letter was sent to the
managers of local radio stations throughout the country.
(I have set down, in brackets, my reactions to each paragraph.)
Mr. John Blank,
Blankville,
Indiana
Dear Mr. Blank:
The ------ company desires to retain its position in advertising
agency leadership in the radio field.
[Who cares what your company desires? I am worried
about my own problems. The bank is foreclosing the
mortage on my house, the bugs are destroying the hollyhocks,
the stock market tumbled yesterday. I missed
the eight-fifteen this morning, I wasn’t invited to the
Jones’s dance last night, the doctor tells me I have high
blood pressure and neuritis and dandruff. And then what
happens? I come down to the office this morning worried,
open my mail and here is some little whippersnapper
off in New York yapping about what his company
wants. Bah! If he only realized what sort of impression
his letter makes, he would get out of the advertising
business and start manufacturing sheep dip.]
This agency’s national advertising accounts were the
bulwark of the network. Our subsequent clearances of
station time have kept us at the top of agencies year after
year.
[You are big and rich and right at the top, are you? So
what? I don’t give two whoops in Hades if you are as big
as General Motors and General Electric and the General
Staff of the U.S. Army all combined. If you had as much
sense as a half-witted hummingbird, you would realize
that I am interested in how big I am - not how big you
are. All this talk about your enormous success makes me
feel small and unimportant.]
We desire to service our accounts with the last word on
radio station information .
[You desire! You desire. You unmitigated ass. I’m not
interested in what you desire or what the President of
the United States desires. Let me tell you once and for
all that I am interested in what I desire - and you
haven’t said a word about that yet in this absurd letter of
yours .]
Will you, therefore, put the ---------- company on your
preferred list for weekly station information - every single
detail that will be useful to an agency in intelligently booking
time.
[“Preferred list.” You have your nerve! You make me
feel insignificant by your big talk about your company
- nd then you ask me to put you on a “preferred” list,
and you don’t even say “please” when you ask it.]
A prompt acknowledgment of this letter, giving us your
latest “doings,” will be mutually helpful.
[You fool! You mail me a cheap form letter - a letter
scattered far and wide like the autumn leaves - and you
have the gall to ask me, when I am worried about the
mortgage and the hollyhocks and my blood pressure, to
sit down and dictate a personal note acknowledging your
form letter - and you ask me to do it “promptly.” What
do you mean, “promptly”.? Don’t you know I am just as
busy as you are - or, at least, I like to think I am. And
while we are on the subject, who gave you the lordly
right to order me around? . . . You say it will be “mutually
helpful.” At last, at last, you have begun to see
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Jillian Hart
J. Minter
Paolo Hewitt
Stephanie Peters
Stanley Elkin
Mason Lee
David Kearns
Marie Bostwick
Agatha Christie