When is the last time you went out of your way to compliment someone? Someone in your family? A complete stranger you were just passing by? Was there something stopping you when you thought about it, but didn’t?
We’ve all been there, having thoughts about trying to be more outgoing and making the effort to commend others, but when it actually comes down to it, we get in our heads.
Will they think I’m weird? What if they don’t acknowledge my compliment, or worse, actually laugh? What if the people around us laugh?
As someone who is a human, and thus has had his own share of insecurities, it can be immensely paralyzing when you genuinely want to compliment others but can’t. It’s even worse if you think of the world around you as only competition and don’t want anyone else to feel good if there isn’t something in it for you.
Behavioral Models
I don’t like making other feel good 👿
This seems to be a very popular thought among people who don’t like to give out compliments. The thought process usually revolves around not wanting to increase competition or allow others to reach their full potential.
Myth
Giving a compliment would acknowledge the other person’s ability. By doing this we reveal our own insecurities and allow the other person to believe that they are better than us.
Situation:
Either the other person wins or we win, but not both.
Strategy Used:
We think everyone else behaves competitively, and that we need to make sure we minimize the maximum success/superiority we give to someone else.
Reality
Compliment, and by that I mean genuine compliments, don’t actually take anything away from you. Not giving one and the world continues. Giving one acknowledges your emotional intelligence while elating the other person without expecting anything in return.
Situation:
Depending on what each person does, there can be varying levels of total happiness. If you give a compliment, you make the other person happy without loss to you. If they acknowledge it, you get happier too.
Strategy Used:
When we can make people around us happier, without any loss to us, why shouldn’t we? Always give genuine compliments when you can
The “What if they think I’m creepy?”
I think this situation is very prevalent as well. It stems from our insecurities, thinking that what we do or say doesn’t really matter to most people. In the worst case, our best intentions may be perceived as negative.
A large part of this is also based on social norms of the culture and the setting in which you are making the compliment, as well as the beliefs others might have of you based on those norms.
For example, in a country where sexual harassment is rampant, complementing someone from the harassed category as someone from a privileged category, can be difficult, even if your intentions are pure.
Intentions don't matter, beliefs of intentions matter.
Okay maybe intentions do matter, but the assumption here is that if you’re reading this, then you already have good intentions 👋🏾.
Of the many compliance strategies that have been discussed in the literature, perhaps no strategy seems more intuitively compelling than the use of compliments …. “Flattery is the infantry of negotiation”
Exploring the Efficacy of Compliments as a Tactic for Securing Compliance
Those people who know this, whether through research, or by being victims of such flattery with ulterior motivations, are right to be wary.
The idea is to not to make those people less wary, but to change how your actions and compliments are shown to ensure your intentions are conveyed very clearly.
When approaching a stranger to compliment, one way to convey your intentions would be to not linger around for any feedback or response. Your goal is to give the compliment, not to expect something back.
In the workplace, especially ones with a highly competitive culture, compliments can be very scarce, both because of a belief of zero-sum environment, as well as the belief that others will think you have an ulterior motive to get something from them.
Here, a valid strategy would be to be a genuine person in your dealings with others. In this situation, the default is that people flatter one another. Therefore it becomes extremely important to ensure compliments are relevant to the situation, and never excessive. They should also be given to everyone, not just those who are potentially in a places of power.
Doing this consistently enables a longer term strategy of reshaping the belief of others, about you, away from the general population.
Too many compliments is one too many
We have a tendency to think that we have very little influence because everyone else has already done or already said everything of importance.
Even in virtual life, where we are coming off an especially insightful podcast, and we want to comment how fantastic it was! Only to see how many other people have already commented what you might have wanted to say.
Another belief is that we think if we compliment people too much, we devalue our own compliments! Sounds very similar to “The boy who cried wolf” type of story but when you make that comparison, it actually sounds insane 😵.
An apt comparison to that story would be someone who freely flatters without giving much thought about how genuine they are being. It easily becomes off-putting to the surrounding people and even strangers will think there is an ulterior motive behind it.
When we do give out meaningful compliments, the effect is actually the opposite. Quality over quantity yes, but if you constrain yourself to only producing high quality, then an increase in quantity is actually appreciated.
Scarcity is not the way to make people like your compliments more. It works for baseball cards and SUPREME products, but it doesn’t work in relationships with others.
Why does it even matter?
I won’t go too much into this as there are plenty of articles everywhere talking about the benefits of giving compliments, but a good way to understand the importance is to think about how you react.
When someone goes out of their way to genuinely compliment you, at work, on the sidewalk on a busy day, or even at home, how does it change your perception of them?
Most likely you associate that person with positivity. Even if you brush it off sarcastically, in no way does the compliment giver come off worse than before.