The risk in giving a compliment face-to-face is, of course, that the
distrustful recipient will assume you are indulging in shameless,
obsequious pandering to achieve your own greedy goals.
It's a sad reality about compliments. If you lay a big one out
of the blue on your boss, your prospect, or your sweetie, the recipient will probably think you're brownnosing. Your main squeeze
will assume you're suffering guilt over something you've done. So
what's the solution? Hold back your sincere esteem?
No, simply deliver it through the grapevine. The grapevine
has long been a trusted means of communication. From the days
when Catskills comics insisted the best ways to spread news were
"telephone, telegraph, and tell-a-woman," we have known it works.
Unfortunately the grapevine is most often associated with bad
news, the kind that goes in one ear and over the back fence. But
the grapevine need not be laden only with scuttlebutt and sour
grapes. Good news can travel through the same filament. And
when it arrives in the recipient's ear, it is all the more delectable.
This is not a new discovery. Back in 1732, Thomas Fuller wrote,
"He's my friend that speaks well of me behind my back." We're
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How to Compliment
Someone (Without
Sounding Like You're
Brownnosing)
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Copyright 2003 by Leil Lowndes. Click Here for Terms of Use.
more apt to trust someone who says nice things about us when we
aren't listening than someone who flatters us to our face.
No-Risk Praise (Do It Behind Their Back)
Instead of telling someone directly of your admiration, tell someone who is close to the person you wish to compliment. For
instance, suppose you want to be in the good graces of Jane Smith.
Don't directly compliment Jane. Go to her close associate Diane
Doe and say, "You know, Jane is a very dynamic woman. She said
something so brilliant in the meeting the other day. Someday she'll
be running this company." I place ten-to-one odds your comment
will get back to Jane via the grapevine in twenty-four hours. Diane
will tell her friend, "You should hear what so 'n' so said about you
the other day."
When you gave Grapevine Glory to Jane, Diane became the
carrier pigeon of that compliment. Which leads us to the next
technique where you become the carrier pigeon of other people's
compliments.Technique #51
Grapevine Glory
A compliment one hears is never as exciting as the one
he overhears. A priceless way to praise is not by
telephone, not by telegraph, but by tell-a-friend. This
way you escape possible suspicion that you are an
apple-polishing, bootlicking, egg-sucking, backscratching sycophant trying to win brownie points. You
also leave recipients with the happy fantasy that you are
telling the whole world about their greatness.