People skills in "soft skills" and interpersonal skills of employees. In organizations, improving people skills became a specialized role of the corporate trainer. By the mid-1930s, Dale Carnegie popularized people skills in "How to Win Friends and Influence People" and "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living" worldwide. In the 1960s, US schools introduced people-skills topics and methods—often as a way to promote better self-esteem, communication and social interaction. These encompassed psychologist Thomas Gordon's "Effectiveness Training" variations as well as many other training programs. The first documented use of the phrase "people skills" was around 1970. The SCANS report states that business,
How to Win Friends and Influence People lack of attention in academic circles, "How to Win Friends and Influence People" was written for a popular audience and Carnegie successfully captured the attention of his target. The book experienced mass consumption and appeared in many popular periodicals, including garnering 10 pages in the January 1937 edition of "Reader's Digest". The book continued to remain at the top of best-seller lists and was even noted in the New York Times to have been extremely successful in Nazi Germany, much to the writer's bewilderment. He wrote that Carnegie would rate "butter higher than guns as a means of winning friends"