How to Compliment Someone (Without Sounding Like You’re Brownnosing)

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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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.

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