Skill With People by Les Giblin Book Review: Rules, No Padding
Skill With People by Les Giblin is a 1968 booklet of fifteen short chapters, and almost every one is a numbered list of rules for dealing with people. No stories. No case studies. Barely any theory. Kevin Trudeau lists it at number 14 on his recommended reading. Les Giblin sold door to door for the Sheaffer Pen Company from 1946 and was twice named national Salesman of the Year, so the book reads like field notes rather than research. Buy it if you already own the thick people skills books and cannot recall a single rule from any of them.
As an Amazon Associate, KevinTrudeau.com earns from qualifying purchases. This does not change the price you pay.
Fifteen chapters. One sitting. You will use it on Monday.
What Skill With People Actually Teaches
Les Giblin was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 1912. He served in the military, took a sales job with Sheaffer Pen in 1946, and spent the following years on doorsteps watching what worked. Two national Salesman of the Year titles came out of that. He wrote this book in 1968 and went on to run seminars for Mobil, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson and Caterpillar. His own publisher's site claims the book has sold millions, more than four million copies, and been translated into more than twenty languages.
The single premise about human communication that carries all fifteen chapters
The first chapter, "Understanding People and Human Nature," sets the premise every other chapter hangs off. People are interested in themselves first. Giblin does not moralise about that or apologise for it. He treats it as a property of the material you are working with, the way a carpenter treats grain direction, and then derives fourteen chapters of procedure from it.
Take that seriously and most advice on human communication inverts itself. You do not become interesting. You become interested. Every rule in the book acts on that one assumption about human nature, which is why the fifteen chapters hold together instead of reading as a grab bag of tips.
The format is the argument. Chapters run a few pages. Most hand you a numbered list and stop. No discussion section, no research, no anecdote to soften the instruction. It is the most practical people skills book on the shelf and the least willing to teach you why any of it should work.
The rule sets that carry the book
Chapter 3, making people feel important, gives seven: listen, compliment when it is deserved, use their names, pause before you answer, say "you" and "your" instead of "I" and "me", acknowledge the people who are waiting, and pay attention to everybody in a group rather than the one person you came to talk to.
Chapter 5, listening, gives five: look at the person talking, lean toward them and listen as though it matters, ask questions, stay on their subject rather than steering back to yours, and use their words. That last one is the rule most people skip and it is the one that does the work.
Chapter 4, agreeing, gives six, and one is blunter than anything in the modern equivalents: do not tell people you disagree unless it is genuinely necessary. The rest are to be agreeable by disposition, say so out loud when you agree, admit it fast when you are wrong, refuse to argue, and handle people who want a fight without giving them one.
Chapter 10, praise. Be generous with it. Mean it. Praise the act rather than the person. Make it specific. He attaches a daily habit to this, which he calls a happiness formula: say one kind thing to three different people every day.
Chapter 11, criticism, is the seven musts, and it is the single most useful page in the book if you manage anyone. Do it in absolute privacy. Open with a kind word. Aim at the act, never the person. Supply the right way to do it. Ask for cooperation rather than demanding it. One criticism per offence. Finish friendly.
Chapter 12, thanking, gives five: mean it, say it clearly rather than mumbling it, look at the person, use their name, and go looking for chances to do it instead of waiting for one.
Chapter 13, first impressions, gives five: be sincere, be enthusiastic, do not look over-anxious, do not build yourself up by knocking others, and do not knock anybody or anything. Chapter 14, giving a talk, gives five more: know what you want to say, say it and sit down, look at the audience, talk about what they want to hear, and be natural rather than oratorical.
Three shorter chapters in the middle compress to a line each. Influence people by finding out what they want before you open your mouth. Convince them with third-party evidence rather than your own assertion. Set the mood with a real smile. Chapter 15, "Some Final Thoughts For You," closes it out.
The chapter you should read with your guard up
Chapter 8, "How To Skillfully Make Up Peoples' Minds," is a sales close wearing a people skills jacket. Four methods: give reasons framed around what the other person gets, ask questions that produce a yes, offer a choice between two options you are happy with, and expect the yes visibly enough that they feel it. A closing sequence, written by a man who closed for a living, and Giblin makes no attempt to dress it as anything else.
Skill With People at a Glance
| Chapter | Rule set | The one-line version |
|---|---|---|
| 3. Making people feel important | 7 techniques | Names, pauses, "you" instead of "I", and attention to the whole room. |
| 4. Agreeing | 6 components | Say it when you agree. Stay quiet when you do not, unless it matters. |
| 5. Listening | 5 rules | Their subject, their words, your eyes on them. |
| 8. Making up minds | 4 methods | A closing sequence. Useful, and worth naming as what it is. |
| 10. Praise | 4 principles plus a daily habit | Praise the act, be specific, mean it. Three people a day. |
| 11. Criticism | The seven musts | Private, prefaced, impersonal, once, and finished friendly. |
| 12. Thanking | 5 principles | Clearly, by name, looking at them, and on purpose. |
| 13. First impressions | 5 approaches | Sincere and enthusiastic, never at somebody else's expense. |
| 14. Giving a talk | 5 rules | Know it, say it, sit down. |
Skill With People vs Giblin's Longer Book on Dealing With People
Buyers confuse these two constantly. Les Giblin wrote How to Have Confidence and Power in Dealing With People first, in 1956, published by Prentice-Hall. Skill With People came twelve years later. Same author, same territory, two different objects.
The 1956 book argues the case at length, which is what you want if you need convincing before you will apply anything. The 1968 booklet assumes you are already convinced and skips straight to the rule.
| Skill With People (1968) | How to Have Confidence and Power in Dealing With People (1956) | |
|---|---|---|
| Shape | Numbered rules, fifteen short chapters | An argument, worked out at book length |
| Best for | A reference you keep in a drawer | A reader who wants the reasoning first |
| Weak point | Gives you no reason to trust any rule | Slower to turn into practice |
If you only buy one: readers who already believe communication is a learnable skill should start with the booklet. Sceptics who suspect it is really personality should start with the 1956 book, because the rules will not survive contact with somebody who has not been argued into them.
Why Kevin Trudeau Recommends Skill With People
The connection is not the subject matter. It is the shape of the claim.
Trudeau's position is that success is procedural: a system somebody worked out, wrote down, and then kept quiet about, which is the premise behind his account of the wealth rituals he says a private society taught him. Giblin makes the identical claim about human relations and reaches it from the opposite direction. He was not initiated into anything. He knocked on doors for years, kept a tally of what worked, numbered it, and sold it for pocket money. Same assertion, that this is procedure rather than personality, from two men with nothing in common except a conviction that it can be written down.
Both came out of selling rather than out of a laboratory, and it shows. Trudeau built his name in direct-response television. Les Giblin came off a sales route. Neither man's rules were tested the way a researcher would test them, so hold both at arm's length. What they offer is a large sample of real conversations and a strong incentive to notice what moved people.
Then there is a gap in Giblin that Trudeau's catalogue fills exactly. Chapter 3 tells you to use people's names. Chapter 12 tells you to thank them by name. Giblin gives no method for remembering a name you heard once at a door, and the rule collapses without one. Trudeau's Mega Memory is a name-and-face system built on visual association rather than repetition, which is the missing half of Giblin's most-repeated instruction.
One more thing, unusual for a book of this type. Giblin knew technique alone would not hold, and rather than build a theory about it he wrote the qualifier straight into the rules. Praise must be sincere. Thanks must be meant. The first item under making a good impression is simply "be sincere." He refuses to let you run the procedure hollow, in a book that otherwise reads like a manual for a machine. For where books like this sit in the lineage Trudeau came out of, his place in the self-help industry covers the ground.
Who Skill With People Actually Works For
The booklet is aimed at anybody whose work is mostly conversations. The fastest way to use it is to read the chapter your job needs first rather than starting at page one.
| If you are | Read this chapter first | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| A new manager | 11, criticism | The seven musts stop a single piece of feedback from cooling a working relationship for a month. |
| In sales or dealing with customers | 6 and 7, influence and convincing | Find out what the customer wants before you speak, and let third-party evidence carry the claim. |
| Quiet in groups | 5, listening | Five rules that let you connect without performing. Their subject, their words, your eyes on them. |
| Trying to build trust with a team | 10 and 12, praise and thanks | Specific praise aimed at the act, and thanks delivered clearly and by name. |
Turning the rules into practice in one week
The rules are simple enough that reading them changes nothing on its own. Professionals who get results from this booklet treat it as a drill rather than a read.
- Monday. Pick one rule. One. Chapter 5's instruction to listen using the speaker's own words is the quick one to master and the fastest to show an effect.
- Tuesday to Thursday. Follow that single rule in every conversation you have and notice where it fails. Giblin gives you no theory to fall back on, so the failures are your only feedback.
- Friday. Add a second rule. Chapter 3's instruction to pause before answering is a good next step, because it costs nothing and people notice it.
- The week after. Reread chapter 11 before any conversation where you have to criticise somebody. The seven musts are the rules most likely to improve a working relationship and the ones most likely to be forgotten under pressure.
Four rules practised beat fifteen rules read. That is the difference between owning this people skills book and using it.
Notice what is missing. No row for a difficult family relationship, and no row for the reader who knows every rule here and still does not use them. Giblin works on what you say next. He has nothing on why you keep not saying it, which is the gap Trudeau's Teachability Index was built to score.
Where Skill With People Sits Next to the Global Information Network
Trudeau founded the Global Information Network in 2009 as a private success club, with members he says spread across more than 160 countries. It is structured as a progression: tiers, sequenced material, events. Giblin's booklet is the least private object on the personal development shelf. No membership, no tier, no follow-on course inside the covers, and fifteen chapters that give away everything they have on first read.
That is why it works as a companion rather than a foundation. Trudeau's material runs inward, toward belief and subconscious programming. Giblin never goes near the interior. He works the visible layer: what you say, where you look, who you name, when you shut up. A checklist for the outside, and not one word on why you keep breaking your own rules at family dinners. For where Trudeau's own titles fall alongside outside recommendations, the complete guide to his books and reading order lays out the sequence.
Common Criticisms of Skill With People
The book has held up better than most of its shelf, and it has four real problems.
Nothing is demonstrated
Giblin hands down verdicts. No study, no citation, no reasoning you can inspect. His authority is a sales route and two Salesman of the Year titles, which is a large sample of real conversations and is not the same thing as evidence. The rules mostly ring true, and ringing true is how a wrong rule survives sixty years.
Chapter 8 is a close, not a people skill
"How To Skillfully Make Up Peoples' Minds" gives four methods for moving someone toward yes. Read as technique it is useful. Read as ethics it will bother you, and readers who bought a book about building relationships are entitled to be annoyed at finding a close inside it.
Editions vary to a comical degree
One ebook listing runs 23 pages. A paperback printing runs 76. Buy on the table of contents, not the page count.
Almost none of it is original
Dale Carnegie got there first and Zig Ziglar worked the same ground from the same profession. What Les Giblin contributed is compression, not discovery. Readers who already know this material will learn nothing new and may still get the most useful hour of their week, because knowing a rule and having it on one page in a drawer are different states.
Who Should Read Skill With People, and Who Should Skip It
Read it if you want a checklist you can carry around. Chapter 11 earns the cover price for anybody who has ever criticised a colleague badly and watched the relationship cool for a month afterwards.
Skip it if you want to understand why any of it works. Giblin hands down verdicts and offers no reasoning at all. If you want the case argued at length, that book exists and Trudeau lists it too. Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People makes the argument; Giblin gives you the summary sheet. Carnegie first and Giblin second is the sensible order. The other way round works too, and takes an hour less.
Know what you are buying, which means the four criticisms above. What is original here is the compression: Giblin cut everything that was not the rule itself, which is presumably why readers rate it 4.28 out of 5 on Goodreads across roughly 2,400 ratings while much longer books on the subject score lower. For a shorter book that pulls the same trick on a different subject, The Go-Getter does it in a parable and It Works does it in 28 pages.
Skill With People: Frequently Asked Questions
What is Skill With People about?
It is a set of numbered rules for dealing with other people, arranged in fifteen short chapters covering talking, listening, agreeing, influencing, praising, criticising, thanking, first impressions and giving a talk. Les Giblin wrote this people skills classic in 1968, drawing on his years in door-to-door sales.
How many chapters are in Skill With People?
Fifteen. The first sets out Giblin's premise that people are interested in themselves before anything else. The last, "Some Final Thoughts For You," closes the book. The thirteen in between are almost all numbered rule sets.
What are the seven musts of criticism in Skill With People?
Criticise in absolute privacy. Preface the criticism with a kind word. Make it impersonal by aiming at the act rather than the person. Supply the right way to do it. Ask for cooperation instead of demanding it. Only one criticism per offence. Finish on a friendly note.
Is Skill With People the same as How to Win Friends and Influence People?
No, though they cover overlapping ground and both appear on Kevin Trudeau's recommended list. Carnegie argues his case at length with stories and examples. Giblin skips the argument and gives you the rules as a list. If you want to be persuaded, read Carnegie. If you want something to keep in a drawer, read Giblin.
Who was Les Giblin?
An American salesman turned human relations trainer, born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 1912. He joined the Sheaffer Pen Company in 1946 after military service, was twice named national Salesman of the Year, and later ran seminars for companies including Mobil, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson and Caterpillar.
What is the difference between Skill With People and How to Have Confidence and Power in Dealing With People?
Les Giblin wrote both. How to Have Confidence and Power in Dealing With People came first, in 1956 from Prentice-Hall, and argues the case at book length. Skill With People followed in 1968 and skips the argument, handing you numbered rules instead. Read the 1956 book to be convinced, the 1968 booklet to apply something this week.
How long does it take to read Skill With People?
About an hour. Editions vary from roughly 23 pages in one ebook listing to 76 in a paperback printing, so judge by the fifteen chapters rather than the page count.
Is Skill With People still worth reading?
Yes, with one caution. The rules have held up, the compression is still unmatched, and it costs you an hour. Chapter 8 is a sales-closing sequence presented as a people skill, so read that one knowing what it is.
Further reading: How to Win Friends and Influence People on Wikipedia, the book Giblin is most often compared with, and active listening on Wikipedia, which covers the ground of his fifth chapter in more detail than he does.