How To Give And Receive Compliments
Last week when I was in Chicago, I had dinner with Liz Strauss. She gave me a compliment and I started to do my usual (get embarrassed, deflect it). She gave me some great advice, the best way to receive a compliment is to smile and say thank you. I'm taking that to heart, Liz and trying to learn how to do that. This morning while browsing the social media how-to videos over at video jug, I stumbled onto the one above that covers giving and receiving compliments and certainly there is a connection to social media.
But first, I want to say thank you and give a smile back to Alex Steed for awesome compliment on his blog, Four Netroots Gurus We(No-So-Secretly) Have a Crush On.
It is impossible to describe Kanter accurately without wholly offending a large bloc of people, but here goes: Beth is God. There. We said it. Beth Kanter is God. Dare you you disagree? Have you ever seen this woman at a conference? Faced with her, you’re rendered awkward, graced, and feeling somewhat irrelevant by comparison of accomplishments. Back up a little bit and observe those around you; they’re all trying to figure out how to get involved in a conversation with her, how to somehow connect with her. In [the extremely approachable] Kanter’s 25+ years of involvement in web-based organization, she has seen it all and she graciously shares slivers of her brain on her blog every single day.
Liz recently wrote a post the other day called "Lasting Relationships and 15-Second Friends." Liz points to a study that explains the nature of relationships from Maki. Liz points out that lasting relationships share a number of factors in common, but the most important is reciprocity.
It’s a simple thing. When someone calls, writes, comments, links, or asks for help, do we respond or do we let it ride? Lasting relationships last because we are persistent in nurturing them.
Rachel Happe wrote a blog post back in February called "Relationship is development process and technology can help (sometimes)." Rachel lays out a framework of how relationships evolve between individuals:
- Encounter: You encounter someone online or face-to-face.
- Recognition: This happens when both individuals can put a name/face with a context. The fastest way to get to the recognition stage is to have an interaction that is highly relevant and has something to offer - an idea, a perspective, an experience.
- Relationship development Once two parties recognize each other they can move into building a relationship. To build a meaningful relationship there must be a joint initiative.
- Friendship; Represents a degree of trust above that of colleagues. People often lose sight of this stage of a relationship in business. We get wrapped up in getting to the end goal and think that friendship is ancillary to the process - and depending on the project or goal, it may not be necessary. However, for certain business relationships which are strategically important, friendship is incredibly useful and it allows initiatives to proceed more quickly than if people are not friends above and beyond the work relationship. A true friendship will allow two people, ironically, to operate more autonomously because they trust each other and the decisions they will make so constant re-calibration and discussion is not needed - and that saves a lot of time. Additionally, successful people usually have more than enough work and projects to choose from and because they have to choose, they will prioritize projects with friends more highly because they are more enjoyable, easier, and faster.
Liz Strauss points out that social media and networking gives us the ability to connect with more people faster, but to develop lasting relationships you need time to nurture. "Is there a numerical cap on how many friends we can have?" (or more to the point, develop relationships with). I'm referring to the Dunbar number - 150 - the ceiling on the number of personal contacts a human has the capacity to maintain. The article says that new research suggests that social networking sites will help humans surpass this limit. I'm not so sure ...
Maybe we're getting stuck in the encounter stage. As Liz notes in the comments of this post, "All I know is that more time than ever is spent saying “hello,” and less time is spent actually talking." So, how do you resist the fast friends or friend collecting and get to know people when you don't have huge amounts of time?
Wow! What a compliment this post is. Thank you. It feels good to have you take my thoughts on this so seriously.
I'm glad you shined the light on the compliment Alex Steed wrote about you, Beth. You worked lots of years to earn the esteem he wrote into that.
Also thanks for sharing Rachel's post with the fabulous title. I'd missed that one, but I know it now.
Yeah!
Posted by: Liz Strauss | June 18, 2008 at 05:03 PM
Beth,
When we do happen to be at the same conference, I will be one of those waiting in line to meet you face-to-face. I have learned a tremendous amount of valuable information from your blog and actions. You have made me a better and more effective person in support of nonprofits. The compliments you received are well deserved. Thank you.
Posted by: Roger Carr | June 19, 2008 at 05:27 AM
Nice post Beth. I have a similar problem with compliments - and have received similar advice - still working on that one.
I've been at two conferences recently where I've met a large number of people that I had only talked to online and it has been a rich experience because they are people I may have never otherwise walked up to out of the blue but because there had been a shared context we immediately had something to discuss. Interestingly, for me it means I say less 'hello' and more of 'tell me more about x...'
Posted by: Rachel | June 19, 2008 at 05:05 PM