Give Objective Compliments

On praising... make an I statement, don't be judgemental.

What if you are in the position to judge? --

Nobody is in a position to objectively judge the value of another person. I statements provide an accurate way of stating your opinion while taking responsibility for it. If you further restrict yourself to stating your opinion of a particular behavior, quality, or accomplishment your praise will be more effective. For instance when praising a child: "Wow, this room is very well organized, you must have been very persistent to have done all of this." is very effective while "good girl" is actually counterproductive. There is a book called "PunishedByRewards??" that goes deeply into this topic. -- PhilGoodwin

Another excellent book is HowToWinFriendsAndInfluencePeople. If you haven't tried it, do!, you'll like it. -- RobHarwood

Phil, I was going to write that I disagree mildly with what you wrote above, but I noted that your example doesn't follow your advice.... it follows my advice ;-) I have found it more powerful to state praises in the objective view, and criticism in the subjective view. E.g, as you did, objective view: "This room is well organized." For criticism, the subjective: "I am not comfortable with ..." The personal/subjective phrasing weakens the impact, because it only applies to one person, ergo, better for criticizing, while objective phrasing sounds like it is agreed upon and settled, ergo, better for praising. Cheers.

That's a good observation. However, I think that narrowing the scope by being subjective can also serve to make a message more personal and therefore more powerful: "That was very courageous. I really admire courage." I also think that labeling the particular attribute is more powerful than labeling the whole person because it is more focused and therefore serves to more directly drive a particular behavior. -- PhilGoodwin

Right. Good example again. "That was courageous." stated in absolute terms indicating the universe would provide consensus. I don't think the "I admire courage" part adds much, because the listener already has their internal opinion as to whether courage is strive-worthy or not. If it is, the "I admire" part is redundant, if it is not, that part is conflicting.

The exact same reasoning applies to criticism: "That wasn't courageous" is stronger than "I didn't think that was very courageous." In criticism, we like the weakened version, so the person won't think the universe is about to hammer them.

I developed these ideas by watching a guy speak, who was tremendously ineffective at these things. He always went to the trouble to make his compliments personal instead of objective, and I could virtually see that water down the compliment. I later read an excellent book about raising children called HowToTalkSoKidsWillListen, which introduced the notion that compliments are a bad thing. It all had to do with that internal opinion I was alluding to. Ergo, replace "You are a good girl, you tidied this room." with, "My, this room sure is tidy!" - - the "good girl" comes with her internal dialog. etc.

I'm sorry if it seems we are in disagreement, I think we are in close agreement. cheers