…And You Believed Them?

The fictional Dr. House’s adage is a good rule of thumb: everybody lies.

Specifically, when it comes to hearing compliments about yourself in business (…and otherwise) you should be deeply skeptical.

Your suppliers, of course, will compliment you because they rely on you for their business. Your subordinates will compliment you because what else are they going to do?

For your supervisor a compliment is an easy way to give nothing of particular value.

Even your customers’ compliments should be treated with deep suspicion. After all – they selected you. It’s in their interest to convince their team members (and perhaps even themselves) that they made the right decision. Or perhaps they’re hoping for a discount. Maybe they’re practicing some version of networking. Possibly they’re hoping you’ll someday hire them. Maybe they just want you to go away.

What if it’s not their motives that are suspect but their character? Is the person giving the compliment someone whose judgment you trust? Should you?

Perhaps it is someone who you trust deeply which raises its own set of problems. As Milton Mayer wrote so articulately in They Thought They Were Free: “…your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.”

All of this suggests a deep cynicism on my part but it’s not really. I’m not a cynical person. I don’t at all, for example, think that the motivation behind all or most compliments is nefarious or strategic. Indeed, in the moment, the person giving the compliment can believe it with all their heart. You should still be skeptical though.

We’ve all probably had the experience of making a commitment – perhaps to see someone again, or to send them an email, or to wish them a happy birthday – that we truly intended to honour at the time. But as time passes by the version of you that made that commitment can seem a little alien. The date that you set a reminder for arrives and you realize it’d feel a little awkward to reach out to them now – even though your past self was so sure at the time you would.

Maybe you’ve made or have been given such romantic vows.

It’s a story that Khaled Hosseini also tells in And the Mountains Echoed. In it there’s a character Idris who, during a visit to Afghanistan, makes a promise to help a girl named Roshi get important medical treatment. The reader can feel that Idris was genuine in his commitment, but once he returns to the United States, and life catches up to him, and he thinks about the complexity of trying to pursue what he has promised, he begins to procrastinate and ultimately doesn’t fulfil his commitment. This failure haunts him for decades.

All this is to say that it’s possible for a compliment to be completely pure in its intention and motives at the time it was given – and to still be meaningless. This is just a reality of the human condition. The opening sentence of this post is a little disingenuous because I don’t actually think of it as a “lie” per se. That particular version of the person may well have genuinely meant what they sent in that specific moment of time. But it’s a snappy phrase that sums up how compliments should be treated.

Which is why I judge those in business who talk up all the compliments they’ve received. The best possible interpretation is that they’re simply providing testimonials because that can be an important marketing technique (something I can respect). More often than not however, the pride with which they repeat those compliments, makes me fear that they actually believe what they’ve been told. They should know better. It says a lot about them that they don’t.

How then to know you’re doing a good job? I don’t have a great answer. Ultimately I mostly measure myself against my own standards – not those of others. I know I’m doing a good job if I feel I’m doing a good job.

Importantly, none of this is true for criticisms. Those you should take very seriously and examine closely, whatever the source. Not all criticism are justified. But unlike compliments, all criticisms should at least be thoroughly evaluated.

This quote from Terry Pratchett summarizes well – or at least echoes – my perspective on compliments and criticisms: “The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it.”