How to influence men : the use of psychology in business / by Edgar James Swift.

  • Swift, Edgar James, 1860-1932.
Date:
1927
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: How to influence men : the use of psychology in business / by Edgar James Swift. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    much provincialism, and the particular fur or skin that suits his habitat. When you wish to win a man to do what you want him to do, you take along a few well-estab- lished facts, some reasoning, and such like, but you take along also three or four or five parts of human nature— kindliness, courtesy, and such things—sympathy and human touch.” Managing men is not a machine-made job, and no ma- chine man need apply. Rules are of little use. They as- sume that men and conditions are alike, though a little ob- servation will show that people and situations are never the same. Every one has personal peculiarities which business relations, as well as social intercourse, must take into account. It is these peculiarities that make up in- dividuality. One device for reaching the best results is to postpone action. Delaying the decision, when immediate action is not imperative, gives the cerebral processes a chance to do their share in clearing up the perplexities of a problem. Captain Marryat, now an undeservedly forgotten author, makes an observation in The King’s Own which has a much wider application than discipline covers, though it is to this that he applies it. The story is one of Marryat’s fa- mous tales of the sea, and the following incident shows how fully the author understood human nature as well as the psychology of managing men. “But with all his severity, so determined was Captain M. to be just, that he never would exercise his power without due reflection. On one occasion, when the conduct of a sailor had been very offensive, the first lieutenant remarked that summary punishment would have a very beneficial effect upon the ships’ company in general. ‘Perhaps it might’ [replied the captain], ‘but it is against a rule which I have laid down, and from which I never deviate. Irri- tated as I am at this moment with the man’s conduct, I may perhaps consider it in a more heinous light than it