Managing Through People by Dale Carnegie and Associates

Managing Through People by Dale Carnegie and Associates

This book, entitled Managing Through People by Dale Carnegie and Associates, is a classic textbook for organizational management behavior. It makes the case that a manager is a leader, even if that manager is a leader of people. It uses the acronym PLORDICOCO as the first two letters of words that describe the components of managing people (planning, organizing, directing, coordinating, and controlling). The parts of the book are then divided into chapters to address each of these components. 

The book addresses many of the “nuts and bolts” associated with the workings of the church, but not necessarily the spiritual ministry of the church. If one compared the church to a business, then these insights would be very useful. As people who come together in business meetings, I found the tips for long-range (53-57) useful. For pastors who do not know the first steps to planning, chapter four would be very helpful. The rules about brainstorming are definitely helpful for a church council who need to get creative (77). 

I also found the chapter about communication insightful. While I have read the barriers to communication in other books, he does a good job illustrating how this barrier between the sender and the receiver happens (184-195).

The charts and graphs used in the book were the most insightful. For example, “illustrating the planning process” (83), “the continuum of leadership behavior” (209), as well as other charts (219, 227, 244-245) were very helpful.

This is clearly a secular management book. As such, I did not find a biblical hermeneutical foundation in the book. This book has been widely used by businesses for years. However, Carnegie makes no statement about his belief or is understanding of leadership, except to say that you can manage human behavior in organizations. 

In principle, this is a management book, and not a leadership book. Carnegie will state that this type of management of an organization is just “hume agement” or human management (17). However, I disagree with the premise. You can manage things, but you lead people. Management is a subset of leadership. Management are a set of skills that are used in leadership. Carnegie perhaps acknowledges this idea, although he is concerned with management that gets results. Leadership skills bring out the best in people (207). 

Carnegie addresses another premise of the book at the very end (335). He encourages the use of participative management. He acknowledges that in authoritarian management approaches, the capabilities of the people are never used. So he suggests that managers should give the people the freedom to make decisions on their own and then to help them develop long-range and short-range goals. In stating this, he acknowledges that leadership (which is influence) is different than management.

I believe that we manage the affairs of an organization, but we lead the people who are in that organization. To put it another way, you can’t treat people like a business. You have to develop people and that takes another set of skills. To use the analogy of another book (Survival Tactics in the Parish), you can be a task leader or a social leader. However, while I may disagree with the premise, I would say that could be useful for some church leaders. A pastor who is not a task leader could find this book to be very helpful.

For church planters, this book would be useful for planning purposes. The first part of the book does an excellent job of laying out planning and organizing principles for an organization. In the beginning stages of a church plant, for a pastor who is not very task-oriented like me, this book would be a tremendous help. This book would compliment another task-oriented book I have read like Purpose-Driven Church, by Rick Warren.