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Thanks for your e-mails. Here’s one we received from Brad in New York:

“I manage some very insecure people that are constantly looking to me for direction and compliments. I compliment as much good work as I can, but sometimes I feel like I am just feeding mammoth egos. How may one go about positively reinforcing insecure people without ego-feeding? When does a compliment turn into ego-helium?”

Thanks Brad. My reply is:

Compliments are supposed to feed egos – and that’s good. Everyone craves appreciation. We want to be valuable. We want to matter. But if you feel you are over-feeding their egos, than you might be using compliment giving as a manipulation tool. Your compliments could sound conniving.

I think what you really want for is for your people to become more self-assured.  People gain solid self-assurance not from compliments but from accomplishment.  We all love the satisfaction of getting worthwhile things accomplished. As their leader, create more wins for your team so they can experience more accomplishment. Set clear team goals, such as 10% more outgoing client calls for the week, 100 days without an accident, or earn the “cleanest restaurant” award in your company. It’s natural to enjoy participating in accomplishing something worthwhile.

Also, instead of spray-painting them with half-hearted compliments to re-fresh their energy, work with them as a coach to help each one reach personal goals, such as over-coming reluctance to calling clients. Then sincerely compliment their efforts. The results you get will earn high and sincere praise for you.

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Tags: Compliment Accomplishment

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 5:30 am and is filed under Podcast. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.