I think the Carnegie book isn’t that great, because it’s easy to misinterpret the <i>rules</i>. An often mentioned strategy is to be a good listener. This gets repeated ad nauseam, but is it actually true? I found that people become more open if you put a story on the table first. It’s like an investment. You open yourself a little bit and tell something about yourself, whereas a question about the other person asks them to trust you first.