Taking a Compliment

I don’t take compliments well.

Sometimes that’s because I don’t agree with the compliment; in my honest opinion, I don’t warrant praise that’s being given, because it’s trivial, or I didn’t do as well as I should have, or whatever. Sometimes it’s because I do agree with the compliment, but am mortified at being thought of as egotistical, swell-headed, narcissistic, feeling entitled to praise, etc.

So compliments hit me and I go into a polite nod, a self-deprecating smile, a pleasant “Aw, pshaw” kind of thing. Sometimes I’ll offer up a genuine and sincere “Thank you, thank you very much.” It’s taken a while for me to get even that far.

Last week, as the final activity of our offsite business meetings, we broke up into groups and, in an organized fashion, write down nice, complementary, positive things to say about each other. It was meant to help us see how receiving compliments is good, and giving compliments to someone can also be an enriching thing for the compliment-giver.  The idea, of course, being that we’d go home and start giving (appropriate) encouragement and positive feedback to people on our teams, to colleagues, etc.

One interesting thing about the exercise was that we rotated through each person in the room to receive the compliments from everyone else. While we did so, that person had to actually go and sit in a chair facing the corner, and not respond to anything that was said. Which sounds weird, but, again, the idea was to get people to listen to compliments without immediately reacting … especially the kinds of reactions I have.

It was a very neat experience, if somewhat daunting. Not being allowed to respond was a plus for me, as embarrassment, surprise, and false modesty could be laid aside.

So now I have this stack of compliments, and I’m sorely tempted to post them because … well, in part, because they’re an interesting insight for me into what others think of me (at least positive things they think), and so I want to share that. On the other hand, I’m (really) not fishing for “Oh, yes, Dave, that really nice thing they just said is just what we all think of you” kind of compliments. Nor is it meant to be boasting, though that would be an obvious interpretation of taking such accolades and, well, making them public.

This blog is also my journal, so it’s sort of my place to record these things for my own memory other than keeping the little 3×5 cards they are written on. Which I’ll probably do anyway, but …

So — compliments, gathered like to like, and (to give this some more useful purpose) my reactions (which I’ll try not to make too self-deprecating, except where warranted):

1. Not afraid to take risks. [Not sure which Dave Hill this person was reviewing.]
2. Organized. [This person has never seen my desk. Maybe because I tended to be the note-taker, -distiller, and team presenter in various break-out sessions.]
3. Vast array of experience that brings great value. [Okay, so at least the first part is true, and I hope the latter is.]
4. Good orator. Excellent language skills. Great communication. Speaks clearly. Well-spoken. Eloquent. [This was the near-universal, and I’ll concede it’s something I do well.]
5. Easy going. [Not sure where this comes from, aside from my sometimes wearing Hawaiian shirt to these affairs.]
6. Dedicated. [I try to be.]
7. Funny. Humor. [I try to be.]
8. Smart. Brings great ideas to the table.  Superb analytical and rational skills. Analytical. Can be counted on to give a balanced and rational opinion when ideas and decisions bounced off him. [I’ll take that compliment.]
9. Compassionate. [True, I hope, but not something I usually think comes up in my professional interactions, so this was a surprise.]
10. Great eyewear. [Okay, that one was the biggest surprise of all.]

So … not to have too much of a Sally Field moment …

… but that’s pretty neat.

Giving complements is hard.  There aren’t a lot of appropriate moments for it in our normal society, except for specific acts at specific times. Coming up with ways of letting people know your positive regard for them, or about strengths they may not be aware of, or general positive comments about them, without seeming insincere or truckling or manipulative … is not easy.

But if giving complements is hard, accepting them with neither reflexive denial nor unwonted preening is … also hard.  But it’s necessary, for feedback into how we are perceived, whether what we are projecting is what’s being received, and to gain others’ perspective on us. We get plenty of criticisms, specific and general, day in and day out; it’s nice to let yourself be open for an occasional plaudit, to hear that someone thinks well of you in some defined ways, that we’re not another faceless drone or screw-up, but that we have positive attributes that we might not even be aware of.

Or, as Robert Burns put it (though he was speaking more of false pride):

O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion ….

I’m tempted to turn comments off on this post, just to prove I’m not fishing for compliments, but I’ll leave them on anyway, so you can .