The More You Get Out of This Book, the More You’ll Get Out of life!

party can turn a haughty, insulted Kaiser into a staunch friend, 
imagine what humility and praise can do for you and me in our 
daily contacts. Rightfully used, they will work veritable miracles 
in human relations.
Admitting one’s own mistakes—even when one hasn’t corrected 
them— can help convince somebody to change his behavior. This 
was illustrated more recently by Clarence Zerhusen of Timonium, 
Maryland, when he discovered his fifteen-year-old son was experi­
menting with cigarettes.
“Naturally, I didn’t want David to smoke,” Mr. Zerhusen told 
us, “but his mother and I smoked cigarettes; we were giving him 
a bad example all the time. I explained to Dave how I started 
smoking at about his age and how the nicotine had gotten the
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Be a Leader
best of me and now it was nearly impossible for me to stop. I 
reminded him how irritating my cough was and how he had been 
after me to give up cigarettes not many years before.
“I didn’t exhort him to stop or make threats or warn him about 
their dangers. All I did was point out how I was hooked on ciga­
rettes and what it had meant to me.
“He thought about it for a while and decided he wouldn’t 
smoke until he had graduated from high school. As the years went 
by David never did start smoking and has no intention of ever 
doing so.
“As a result of that conversation I made the decision to stop 
smoking cigarettes myself, and with the support of my family, I 
have succeeded.”
A good leader follows this principle:
P
r in c iple
3
Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the 
other person.
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