Stroking egos: the only way to succeed

Whether we admit it or not, we all have egos.  The most popular people around us, and the most successful, are those who excel at stroking egos.  

Look at just about any Chief Executive Officer, and the president is a perfect example here, and you will see someone who excels at stroking egos. They stroked egos all the way to the top.  

Les Giblon, in his book "How to Have Confidence and Power in Dealing with People," said that the central person in everyone is "YOU!"  When you feel good about yourself, it's because you have an ego.  You love it when someone makes you feel better.  Those who make you feel better are the people you want to hang around with.  You love it when someone strokes your ego. 

In other words, all people have an innate desire for acceptance.  The people who make us feel accepted are the people we want to be associated with. 

He said this works because the most important person in your life is YOU. And YOU have an ego whether you want to admit it or not. And YOU love it when someone strokes your ego. In other words, all we humans have an innate desire for acceptance.

So the best way to succeed in life is to become good at building up the egos -- stroking egos -- of those around you.  Nearly all great salespeople are those who excel at stroking egos.  

Some sales people may excel at speaking, although others do not.  So it is not the gift of speaking that determines success, it's what the salesperson says and does. Those who succeed say and do things that make other people feel good about themselves.  

Giblon said that if you want to succeed, you must understand some basic facts about people.  

1.  All people are all egoists

2.  All people are are more interested in themselves than anything else

3.  All people want to feel important and to 'amount to something'

4.  All people crave approval from others so they can approve of themselves

So whether you are loquacious, taciturn, or somewhere in between, you have the skills necessary to life egos and succeed, according to Giblon.  

Giblon provides us with an example.  

Say you walk into a hotel on the eveing of the 4th of July and you are in a hurry. You have just enough time to check into your room and get to the fireworks.  Yet the desk clerk says the hotel is full.

Now, easily you could become irritated here and start yelling obscenities at the clerk, but the expert ego stroking will have another technique.  He would say something like, "I know your hotel is full, but I bet if there is anyone in the world who can find me a room tonight it is you."

Some people succeed based on technical skills.  Some people succeed simply because of intelligence.  Yet even people with limited technical and intellectual skills make it to the top, and the reason is because they "have a way" with people.

He said:

There are millions of people today who are self-conscious, shy, timid, ill at ease in social situations, who feel inferior and never realize that their real problem is a human relations problem. It never seems to get across to them that their failure as a personality is really a failure in learning to deal successfully with other poeple."

Of course there are people on the other end of the spectrum too, those who are talkative, confident and "bossy."  No one wants to be around these people because they make people feel bad about themselves.  They do not boost egos other than their own.

Regardless of how hard they try, they cannot get people to listen to them, appreciate them, and cooperate with them.  In fact, these people usually have to force people to comply with their wishes.

Yet while they can force people to comply with their wishes, they cannot force people to like them.  They never really get what they want because they have never mastered the art of dealing with other people.

He said that when people have to force compliance it's because they have no confidence in their ability to deal with people.  Lack of confidence therefore results in a low self esteem, and a "low self esteem results in friction and trouble."

Thus, the best way of dealing with trouble makers is to help them like themselves better. They need to have their egos stroked, or they need to be fed ego.  So when you become the person to stroke their egos, you in turn become the person they like to be around.  They will treat you better than they treat anyone else.  

Give that person a reason to like you. Give him a personal reason to give you what you want. 

Bottom line:  Regardless of your personality, the way to succeed is to stroke egos. The way to stroke egos is to make other people feel better about themselves.  So get started!  Go stroke some egos today!