Be Frank, Even When You Don’t Mean It.

With life as well as with management, it’s important to have an ‘appreciative’ approach. Focus on what’s going right, not on what’s going wrong. In order to be positive, dealing with positive feedback is an important skill.

Here’s a few things that can go wrong when receiving a compliment:

Trivializing

Reacting as if what you did was easy and not important; “Oh, it wasn’t that big a deal!” Or if someone compliments you on something you’re wearing; “Oh, this is really old…”

Generalizing

When being complimented on an achievement, people often start naming all the other people that contributed; “Thank you, but we wouldn’t have been anywhere if it weren’t for …!”

By reacting this way, you ‘disqualify’ the appreciation that people show for you. This doesn’t only disencourage people from being positive to you in the future, but it also makes it harder to use positive feedback constructively.