92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships (22 page)

The word
we
fosters togetherness. It makes the listener feel connected. It gives a subliminal feeling of “you and me against the cold, cold world.” When you prematurely say
we
or
us
, even to strangers, it subconsciously brings them closer. It subliminally hints you are already friends. At a party, you might say to someone standing behind you at the buffet line, “Hey, this looks great. They really laid out a nice spread for
us
.” Or, “Uh-oh,
we’re
going to get fat if we let ourselves enjoy all of this.”

Technique #49

The Premature WE

Create the sensation of intimacy with someone even if

you’ve met just moments before. Scramble the signals

in their psyche by skipping conversational levels one

and two and cutting right to levels three and four.

Elicit intimate feelings by using the magic words
we
,
us
, and
our
.

Well, we have just explored how to copy our conversation partners’ movements with Be a Copyclass, echo their words, evoke Potent Images from their world, create a bond through their primary sense with Anatomically Correct Empathizers, and establish subliminal friendship with words like
we
.

What else do friends, lovers, and close associates have in common? A history. The final technique in this section is a device to give a fairly new acquaintance the warm and fuzzy feeling the two of you have been together for a long, long time.

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50
How to Create a

Friendly “Private Joke”

with Them

Lovers whisper phrases in each others’ ears that mean nothing to anyone but themselves. Friends crack up over a few words that sound like gobbledygook to anyone overhearing them. Close business associates chuckle about shared experiences. One company I’ve worked with has seen reengineering, empowerment, TQM, and team building come and go in one decade. At company parties, the employees never fail to crack up over the time when the whole company—managers to mail-room clerks—scrambled up a twenty-nine-foot pole together all in the name of team building. The CEO slipped down the pole and broke his big toe. At the next weekly meeting, the CEO shook his crutch and caustically announced, “No more team exercises!”

Thus, the death of team building—and the birth of a private joke. Out of shared experiences like this, a company culture grows. These employees have a history and a language to go with it. To this day, whenever they want to put an abrupt end to any idea, they say, “Let’s shake a crutch at it” or “Let’s slide that one down the flagpole.” They all smile. Nobody knows what they mean except fellow employees.

The playwright Neil Simon, sometimes with a single word, can make an entire Broadway audience understand two perform
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How to Talk to Anyone

ers onstage are either married or longtime friends. The actor simply says something to the actress that makes no sense to the audience. Then both of them laugh uproariously. Everybody gets the message: these two people are an item.

Every time my friend Daryl and I meet, we don’t say “Hello.”

We say “Quack.” Why? We met at a party five years ago and, in our first conversation, Daryl told me he grew up on a duck farm. When I told him I’d never seen a duck farm, he performed the best human imitation of a duck I’d ever seen. He flipped his head side to side looking at me first out of one eye, then the other, all the while flapping his arms and quacking. I got such a laugh out of his performance that it inspired him to do a full flat-footed duck waddle for me. It was contagious. Together we waddled around the room flapping and quacking. We made absolute fools of ourselves that evening.
Technique #50

Instant History

When you meet a stranger you’d like to make less a

stranger, search for some special moment you shared

during your first encounter. Then find a few words that reprieve the laugh, the warm smile, the good feelings

the two of you felt. Now, just like old friends, you have a history together, an Instant History.

With anyone you’d like to make part of your

personal or professional future, look for special

moments together. Then make them a refrain.

The next day, my phone rang. I picked up the receiver to hear, not “Hello, this is Daryl,” but simply, “Quack.” I’m sure that’s 05 (171-198B) part five 8/14/03 9:18 AM Page 197

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what started our friendship. To this day, every time I hear his

“Quack” on the phone, it floods me with happy, if a tad embarrassing, memories. It recalls our history and renews our friendship no matter how long it’s been since we last quacked at each other.
Now What’s Left?

Chemistry, charisma, and confidence are three characteristics shared by big winners in all walks of life. Part One helped us make a dynamic, confident, and charismatic first impression with body language. In Part Two, we put smooth small-talk lyrics to our body ballet. Then in Part Three, we seized hints from the big boys and big girls so we’re contenders for life’s big league. Part Four rescued us from being tongue-tied with folks with whom we have very little in common. And in Part Five, we learned techniques to create instant chemistry, instant intimacy, instant rapport.

What’s left? You guessed it—making people feel really good about themselves. But compliments are a dangerous weapon in today’s world. One mishandling and you can butcher the relationship. Let us now explore the power of praise, the folly of flattery, and how you can use these potent tools effectively.
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✰PARTSIX

How to Differentiate

the Power of P raise

from the Folly of

Flat tery

Kids are experts at getting what they want. Perched on Papa’s knee,

“Oh Daddy, you’re so wunnerful. I know you’ll buy me that new doll.” The next morning, with Mama in the supermarket, “Oh Mommy, I love you. You’re the most bestest mommy in the world. I know you’ll buy me that chocolate munchie.”

From the hungry infant’s instinctive cooing as Mommy approaches the crib to the car salesman’s calculated praise as the prospect walks into the showroom, compliments come naturally to people when they want something from somebody. In fact, compliments are the most widely used and thoroughly endorsed of all getting-what-you-want techniques. When Dale Carnegie wrote “Begin with praise,” fifteen million readers took it to heart. Most of us still think praise is the path to extracting what we want from someone.

And yes, if it’s as simple as dolls from daddy and munchies from mommy, it may be. But the business world has changed
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dramatically since Dale Carnegie’s day. In today’s world, not every smiling flatterer has the power to procure through praise.
The Malaise of Unskilled Praise

You give someone a compliment. You smile, waiting to see the warm feelings engulf the recipient. You may have to wait a long time.

If he or she has a speck of suspicion your praise is self-serving, it has the opposite effect. If your compliment is insincere or unskilled, it can wreck your chances of ever being trusted by that person again. It can abort a potential relationship before it ever gets off the runway.

However, skilled praise is a different story. When done well, it gives the relationship immediate liftoff. It can make a sale, win a new friend, or rejuvenate a marriage on a golden anniversary. What is the difference between praise that lifts and flattery that flattens? Many factors enter the equation. They include your sincerity, timing, motivation, and wording. They also involve the recipient’s self-image, professional position, experience with compliments, and judgment of your powers of perception. Of course it entails the relationship between the two of you and how long you have known each other. If you’re complimenting someone by phone, E-mail, or snail mail, it even involves subtleties such as whether you’ve ever seen his or face, either in person or a photograph.

Mind boggling, isn’t it? Sociologists’ research shows: 1) a compliment from a new person is more potent than from someone you already know, 2) your compliment has more credibility when given to an unattractive person or an attractive person whose face you’ve never seen, 3) you are taken more seriously if you preface your comments by some self-effacing remark—but only if your listener perceives you as higher on the totem pole. If you’re lower, your 06 (199-228B) part six 8/14/03 9:18 AM Page 201

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tiate the Power of Praise from the Folly of Flattery
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self-effacing remark reduces your credibility. Complicated, this complimenting stuff.

Rather than dizzying ourselves with the surfeit of specific studies, let’s just put some terrific techniques in our little bag of tricks. Each of the following meets all the criteria of social scientists’ findings. Here are nine effective ways to praise in the new millennium.

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51
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) 203

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.”

Technique #51

Grape vine 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.

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.

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52
How to Be a

“Carrier Pigeon” of

Good Feelings

Carrier pigeons have a long and valiant history. The dauntless winged messengers, often maimed by shellfire and dying after delivering their messages, have saved the lives of thousands. One tenacious little bird named Cher Ami is credited with saving two hundred lives during the Battle of the Argonne in World War I. The brave one-legged little birdie, one of his wings shot through, carried a message dangling from his remaining ligament. The blood-smeared little ball of feathers arrived just in time to warn that the Germans were about to bomb the city.

Stumpy Joe, another plucky pigeon, had such a heroic battlescarred career that his fans stuffed him, mounted him, and put him on display in the National Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio. And millions of other brave birds have brought joyful messages to racing-pigeon enthusiasts around the world. In that fine tradition, I present the complimenting technique I call “Carrier Pigeon Kudos.”

Whenever you hear a laudatory comment about someone, don’t let it end there. You don’t need to write it, roll it up in a capsule, strap it to your leg like Stumpy Joe, and fly it to the recipient. Nevertheless, you can remember the kudo and verbally carry it to the person who will get the most pleasure—the person who was complimented.

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Keep your ears open for good things people say about each other. If your colleague Carl says something nice about another colleague, Sam, pass it on. “You know, Sam, Carl said the nicest thing about you the other day.”