The instructions are correct. The materials are ready. Yet, the team isn't moving. Conversely, there are bosses who people follow despite having messy logic.
This is a scene found in every company.
"Moving people is about authority and correctness." Many managers believe this, clarifying instructions, increasing meetings, and piling up "correctness."
However, when you look at a 90-year-old classic with 30 million copies sold alongside the latest management research, a completely different landscape emerges.
The true nature of the power to move people is neither authority nor eloquence. It is the skill of distributing a "sense of importance."
To be clear, this isn't about "flattering subordinates to keep them happy." Flattery and a sense of importance are different things. I will explain this in section ③ with research data.
I wrote this article from the perspective of both those who manage and those who are managed. This is because the same principles apply to business owners whose employees won't move and to frontline workers whose bosses won't move.
I have narrowed it down to five of Dale Carnegie's (author of "How to Win Friends and Influence People") claims that can be backed by modern research data.
By the time you finish reading, your perception of the phrase "that person has charisma" should change.
① The Skill of Moving People Was Systematized 90 Years Ago
First, a premise: the power to move people is not an innate charisma. It is a learnable skill.
The proof lies in the origin of the book "How to Win Friends and Influence People."
Starting in 1912, Carnegie held courses for working professionals in New York. The students were salespeople, engineers, and managers—ordinary working people who couldn't speak in public or didn't get along with their subordinates.
The book "How to Win Friends and Influence People," published in 1936, was a compilation of those lectures recorded by a stenographer.
The first edition was only 5,000 copies. It sold 250,000 copies in three months and was reprinted 17 times in its first year alone. Global cumulative sales have exceeded 30 million copies, and it continues to sell over 250,000 copies annually.
What's noteworthy is not the number of copies, but the fact that this book is a "lecture transcript."
It has been read for 90 years not because it contains the flashes of a genius, but because it is a reproducible skill that ordinary professionals could acquire by attending the course.
Charisma looks like talent. Skill is something you can practice starting today.
▶ Practice Method
・Name one person you think is "good at moving people" and write down three actions they took yesterday. Anything you can break down into actions rather than personality traits can be imitated.
・Use sections ② to ⑤ of this article as a checklist for that breakdown.
② 70% of Subordinate Motivation is Determined by the Relationship with the Boss
The first thing managers must face is the magnitude of their own influence.
"That person has no motivation," we think of motivation as part of their personality. However, the data points to the opposite.
In the "State of the American Manager" report by Gallup, which analyzed data from 27 million employees and over 2.5 million teams, at least 70% of the variance in team engagement (enthusiasm/immersion in work) was explained by differences in the manager.
It's not salary, industry, or company size. It's the direct supervisor.
The same Gallup survey has another striking figure: one in two people have left a company at some point in their career "to get away from their boss."
In other words, when a subordinate's motivation drops, the first variable to suspect is not their personality, but their relationship with you.
For those being managed, this number is also a relief. It is highly likely that your lack of enthusiasm in your current workplace is not a proof of your weakness.
People join companies and leave bosses.
▶ Practice Method
・(Manager side) Name one subordinate you feel "has no motivation" and recall the most recent date you spoke with them one-on-one. If it has been more than two weeks, the candidate for the cause is almost narrowed down.
・(Managed side) If you want to quit, write down your "dissatisfaction with the company" and "dissatisfaction with the relationship with your boss" separately on paper. The solution changes completely depending on which is greater.
③ People Move for a "Sense of Importance," Not "Correctness"
The concept Carnegie placed at the backbone of his book is the "sense of importance." Humans act on the desire to feel like an important existence.
In his book, he introduces the words of Charles Schwab, a manager hired by steel magnate Andrew Carnegie for an annual salary of $1 million: "I have the ability to arouse enthusiasm among people. This is my greatest asset."
One million dollars was paid not for knowledge of steel, but for the power to arouse enthusiasm.
This didn't end as 90-year-old spiritualism. It has been confirmed by experiments.
In a study published in the American scientific journal PLoS ONE in 2012 by Professor Norihiro Sadato and others at the National Institute for Physiological Sciences, 48 adults were asked to perform a task of tapping a specific sequence on a keyboard as fast as possible for 30 seconds, and were divided into three groups.
A group that was praised by an evaluator.
A group that watched others being praised.
A group that only saw their own results on a graph.
When tested on the same task the next day, the group that was praised showed the greatest improvement in performance.
Praise is not a decoration to make someone feel good. It acted as a reward for the brain to consolidate skills, boosting the results of the practice itself.
This is the dividing line from flattery. People can see through groundless lifting. What works is recognizing specific actions the other person actually chose to take.
Correctness reaches the head. A sense of importance moves the body.
▶ Practice Method
・(Manager side) When praising, point to the "action the person chose themselves" rather than the result. Instead of "Sales are great," say "Your decision to call the client first was good." It becomes a sense of importance only when their choice is recognized.
・(Managed side) A sense of importance also works on bosses. If an instruction works well, give specific feedback like, "It was helpful to receive instructions in that order." The quality of instructions coming to you will change.
④ People Are Not Moved by Expertise
Promoting the "person who can do the job best" often causes the organization to sink. This phenomenon can also be explained by data.
In 2009, Google conducted an internal study called "Project Oxygen" to identify the "conditions of a good boss." They analyzed over 10,000 observation data points across more than 100 variables, such as performance evaluations and employee surveys, and extracted eight behaviors common to excellent managers.
When those eight were ranked in order of importance, "having technical skills to advise the team" was at the bottom.
At the top were: being a good coach, not micromanaging, and showing interest in the success and lives of subordinates. Almost all were interpersonal behaviors.
Even at Google, a paradise for engineers, technical skill was eighth.
The "Oxygen" in the project name refers to oxygen. Management is like oxygen. While there is enough, no one notices its existence, but the moment it runs out, the team quietly suffocates.
In other words, the power to outperform others as a player and the power to move people are different skills. A top salesperson isn't necessarily a great manager. Conversely, you can be on the side that moves people even if you aren't the best at the practical work.
Expertise is the power to move yourself. Management is the power to create a situation where others want to move.
▶ Practice Method
・(Manager side) In fields where you are more knowledgeable than your subordinates, ask "How do you plan to proceed?" before teaching. Aim to count this three times a week. The sense of importance for the subordinate increases by the number of times you let go of the pleasure of teaching.
・(Managed side) Develop one field you are more knowledgeable in than your boss and be ready to explain it in three minutes if asked. Expertise won't be a tool to move people, but it is an entry ticket for trust.
⑤ You Can Move Your Boss Even Without Authority
The final chapter is for those being managed. The tool is an unexpected one: a "request."
Benjamin Franklin (one of the Founding Fathers of the U.S.) wrote in his autobiography about how he turned a hostile legislator into an ally. It wasn't through a gift or persuasion. He asked to "borrow" a rare book the legislator owned.
The legislator sent the book immediately. When Franklin expressed his gratitude, the legislator spoke to him for the first time in the assembly, and the two became lifelong friends.
This paradox was confirmed by an experiment 200 years later.
In an experiment conducted by psychologists Jecker and Landy in 1969, participants took part in a contest with prize money and were divided into three conditions after it ended. The researcher himself asked for the return of the prize money because "his research funds had run out." A secretary asked for the return administratively. No request was made.
The group that liked the researcher the most was the one asked directly by him. The group asked administratively had the lowest liking.
People come to like those they have helped. This is because the brain rewrites emotions to match actions, thinking, "I helped this person because they are an important existence."
In other words, a request is not an act of taking someone's time, but a down payment on a sense of importance. I see this pattern almost every week while running a community for business owners. The people who settle into the place are not those who were taught a lot, but those who were specifically asked, "I want to hear your opinion."
Orders require authority. Requests do not.
Summary
The method of moving people can be summarized into five facts:
・The skill of moving people can be learned — The true nature of the 30-million-copy classic was a lecture transcript for ordinary professionals.
・70% of motivation is determined by the boss — And one in two people quit to get away from their boss.
・People move for a sense of importance — Only the group that was praised improved further the next day.
・Expertise is at the bottom — In Google's 8 conditions, technical skill was 8th.
・A request is a down payment on a sense of importance — The person asked directly liked the other person the most.
Did you notice? Not one of these five requires authority.
The side that manages gets used to people "obeying" without distributing a sense of importance because they have authority. The side that is managed gives up on moving others from the start because they lack authority. Both are simply not using the same single skill.
The conclusion Carnegie taught in his lectures 90 years ago almost exactly matched the conclusion Gallup and Google reached with data from tens of millions of people.
Orders make people obey.
A sense of importance moves people.
Authority is not guaranteed tomorrow.
A sense of importance can be distributed starting today.
Finally
Thank you for reading to the end.
I usually share the essence of "people, organizations, and learning" seen from the front lines of running a community for business owners.
If you don't want to miss out, please follow me and check the pinned post on my profile.
