A timid, sensitive man should not attempt to domi nate others or to control them thru fear; lie can win others over to his policy only thru patient and tactful suggestion. Some successful managers are as silent as the sphinx, their immobile faces arousing fear as well as curiosity. Others are genial and friendly, winning the hearts of their employes. Still others reason everything out with great care and accuracy and delight in graphic charts for the instruction of their men. It is certainly- wise for a man to know the type of his personality and to direct his conduct in conformity with it.
15. Appeal in relation to the in stincts and the reason both impel us to actiOn, it is im portant to note that the instincts are much the swifter in action. It takes time to analyze a proposition, to scrutinize arguments and to weigh facts and condi tions to the satisfaction of the reason. Hence if im mediate action is wanted, the instincts must be ap pealed to. Religious revivals, financial panics, foot ball games, lynching mobs, all show how the conta gious instinctive appeal is able to make them outdo themselves in acts, both good and bad.
But the effects of the instinctive appeal are not al ways lasting, for they not always stand the test of reason. Reason works slowly and painfully, but it carries a man safely along a straight road and he has no thought of turning back.
16. mind of a man refuses to pay I heed or to give thought to anything in which it is not interested. If you wish to capture a man's mind, you
must first of all get his attention, and you cannot do that unless you stir his interest. You must make him feel that your message is one of great interest to him, one of importance to his welfare, something that be cannot afford to miss. He is more interested in himself than in anybody else. Hence you must appeal to his self-interest if you wish him to attend to you. If Ile bas had experience, you cannot capture him with commonplace phrases or with form letters. The commonplaces he does not hear, the letters he throws into his wastebasket. To capture him you must use a new phrase or write a new letter.
The mind does not easily give long and concentrated attention to any topic. Men are very much the slaves of memory and imagination and like best to wander away from the business immediately in hand. It is difficult for most men to understand how Archimedes could have been so absorbed in his mathematics as not to know that the City of Syracuse was falling, or how Horace Greeley could sit on a Broadway doorstep and write a masterful editorial for the Tribune. That is because the average man, not being absorbed in any one interest, cannot shut his ears and be deaf to the jargon of sounds in his environment. Yet this fac ulty of attention and concentration is one that the business man must cultivate, and he must master the art of rousing and holding attention in others.