Hi there! My name is Ashley and I work in the Human Resource department at Taylor Made Marketing. I've been getting asked to guest blog for a few months now and finally had some inspiration on what to talk about! So bare with me because I'm not the best writer in the world, but hopefully you'll at least like the topic :).
This weekend I was running around doing errands, taking advantage of the long weekend, and looked up and realized that not only had I not been smiled at all day, but I hadn’t actively smiled at anyone either. This really bugged me because for anyone who knows me, knows that I have a smile on my face at all times. It makes me feel good to smile at someone and have them smile back at me. So I thought it’d be a good time to get a refresher from one of my favorite books, Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends & Influence People.”
I reread Chapter 2, “A Simple Way to Make a Good First Impression” where Carnegie introduces his 2nd main principle, Smile, and figured I’d share some of my takeaways from reading it.
The first page of the chapter starts off with Carnegie saying, “…the expression one wears on their face is far more important than the clothes one wears on one’s back.” Coming from a person in Human Resources this part is SO true. Ranging from current employees to interviews to future clients, you can tell in a second how the interaction is going to go just by looking at the person’s face. Just that simple look can change my entire interaction with them. If they have a frown on their face, I’m already dreading the conversation before it starts, but if they’re smiling and look happy I’m automatically excited and happy to see and talk to them. I want people to want to be excited to talk to me.
Another part of the chapter talks about a study being done that found, “people who smile tend to manage, teach and sell more effectively. There’s far more information in a smile than a frown.” I definitely think this is true, people do not want to listen to people who are glum or have a frown on the face, but a smile is infectious and changes the entire mood of the conversation. In our industry this is essential while we are representing out clients, managing their accounts, handling their sales and training others all at the same time. If we don’t do this with a smile, we’re not going to be very effective in what we do.
Later Carnegie says, “people rarely succeed at anything unless they have fun doing it.” I agree, not many people are good at things that they hate doing. One of the biggest things I love about my job is how much fun we have. Granted, there are some things I like doing over other things, however the fact that there’s always a fun environment around me makes me so much more productive!
One of my favorite parts of the chapter is what I call his “fake it till you make it” part. He talks about if you don’t feel like smiling do it anyway, force it on your face, and before you know it you will actually be happy and smiling for real.
“Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.”
I could go on and on about that chapter and all of the awesome advice it has, but I just wanted to remind everyone of the importance of SMILING! So I’ll leave you with this last quote, “You’re smile is a messenger of your good will. Your smile brightens the lives of all who see it. To someone who has seen a dozen people frown, scowl or turn their faces away, your smile is like the sun breaking through the clouds.”
P.S. I went around the office and asked some of the team to give me a BIG smile check out our Facebook and FLICKR to see some of the shots I got! Here's a sneak peak!
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