A good friend of mine has waded into the online dating world. He hasn’t dated for a long time, and when he last did so, things were different.
The commodification and gatekeeping of the dating sites, applying the tactics of marketing persuasion and advertising psychology to the humans using the services to meet others, is breathtaking.
He sent me this promotion that he got from one of the sites. You can buy “compliments” and send them to your prospective matches, in hopes of increasing the odds that they’ll pay attention to you. And compliments were on sale — for a limited time, of course.
This is absurd, of course. But there’s an element of truth in it. We like to hear compliments. We like the people who like us. We listen to them with more attentiveness.
Stanford Business School Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer writes about power in organizations, and I’ve always remembered one of his main points about flattery — we may recognize it as sucking up, but it NEVER stops working. (In lieu of hunting down the exact citation, I’ll send you to this blog post by Ed Batista trusting that it’s a faithful quote). Even if flattery appears insincere, the recipient likes the flatterer more.
But I’m not asking you to be insincere in order to strengthen a relationship. I don’t want you kissing up to someone (who maybe isn’t that discerning) unless we have a very clear end in mind. And still, we’d aim to find ways to build trust and rapport that don’t require inauthenticity.
Instead, I’m asking you to do something much easier. Give sincere compliments, whenever you can. Don’t withhold the positive things you think about others. Reach out to people you genuinely admire, those who do an especially good job on something or who regularly exhibit a trait you appreciate. Tell them what you notice, and why it makes you think positively about them. Reach out some times to people you haven’t talked to, old mentors or former colleagues you miss.
It should feel good to you. And it will feel great to them. And if you start doing it regularly, your relationships will be healthier for it. Doing it when you don’t need anything in particular, to people who don’t have power over you, is even more generous.
And unless you are in the particularly bizarre world of online dating, this is entirely free. And there’s no limited time offer, or shortage of the supply of compliments you can give out.
