Self Help

There are many known elements which, when combined, are immediately transformed from harmless into deadly poisonous substances. Stated differently, many well known poisonous elements are neutralized and rendered harmless when combined with certain other elements.

Just as the combining of certain elements changes their entire nature, the combining of certain minds changes the nature of those minds, producing either a certain degree of what has been called a Master Mind, or its opposite, which is highly destructive. Any man who has found his mother-in-law to be incompatible has experienced the negative application of the principle known as a Master Mind.

For some reason as yet unknown to investigators in the field of mind behavior, the majority of mothers-in-law appear to affect their daughters' husbands in a highly negative manner, the meeting of their minds with those of their sons-in-law creating a highly antagonistic influence instead of a Master Mind.

This fact is too well known as a truth to make extended comment necessary. Some minds will not be harmonized and cannot be blended into a Master Mind, a fact, which all leaders of men will do well to remember. It is the leader's responsibility so to group his men that those who have been placed at the most strategic points in his organization are made up of individuals whose minds CAN and WILL BE blended in a spirit of friendliness and harmony.

Ability so to group men is the chief outstanding quality of leadership. In Lesson Two of this course the student will discover that this ability was the main source of both the power and fortune accumulated by the late Andrew Carnegie. Knowing nothing whatsoever of the technical end of the steel business, Carnegie so combined and grouped the men of which his Master Mind was composed that he built the most successful steel industry known to the world during his life-time.

Henry Ford's gigantic success may be traced to the successful application of this selfsame principle. With all the self-reliance a man could have, Ford, nevertheless, did not depend upon himself for the knowledge necessary in the successful development of his industries. Like Carnegie, he surrounded himself with men who supplied the knowledge which he, himself, did not and could not possess.

Moreover, Ford picked men who could and did harmonize in group effort. The most effective alliances, which have resulted in the creation of the principle known as the Master Mind, have been those developed out of the blending of the minds of men and women.