If you could be anywhere, be anywhere, do anything, this very minute . . .
No problems, no repercussions, no harm to anyone or anything,
Where would you be?
Why there? Has the answer changed in the last few years?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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It was a one-person project and one you fell in love with. You put your heart in it and delivered beyond expectations. The project was elegant. Every minute you worked meant every detail came together with the highest quality.
This morning you presented it to the executive team. Just now, the president of the company came up to you in front of your coworkers and said, “Congratulations, your project and your presentation were outstanding.”
Suddenly it seems as if all eyes are looking at you. What do you say?
You’re pretty sure that saying, “Damn right, it was!” is probably not the right thing.
How do you answer a compliment without denying it or looking like a self-centered idiot?
The idea of accepting a compliment has come up in conversations with Ann Michael, Phil Gerbyshak, and Allan Cox this week. The discussion with each of them centered on the dynamic of why people have a problem accepting a compliment and how to handle the self-conscious feeling that is often attached to the attention a compliment brings.
Receiving a compliment with grace and feeling good about it is easy if you remember to do three things.
Compliment: “Your presentation was outstanding.”
A compliment is conversation. A speaker tells a offers a listener information about his or her opinion in the form of praise. The content of a compliment — even when it’s personal in nature such as You’re a wonderful human being. — is simply a statement of a point of view. Keep yourself out of the response.
The speaker has offered a personal thought in your favor. To deny it or discount it is to say that the speaker has made a mistake in judgment. Value the speaker’s words in your response.
Focus on the speaker and the value of the speaker’s words. That guarantees your response will be graceful, respectful, and not about you.
That sentence in Step 3 was my default answer for the first few tries. Now I no longer freeze when I hear a compliment coming toward me. So I listen, focus, and respond even more thoughtfully. I enjoy compliments now that I no longer make them about me.
It’s not a hard habit to develop these three steps in receiving a compliment. Try them once and you’ll most likely be ready to put them to use every time. The exchange that occurs is so much more natural. It’s normal conversation without the “spotlight” glaring in our eyes.
It’s nice to let someone know that you heard and value their compliment. Sometimes it even allows you a chance to offer an authentic compliment in return.
You’re irresistible. Thank you for stopping by.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
In the world of business, it takes an action to make something happen. Watching rarely gets anything done. A conversation is a great place to make things happen. Yet, many of us seem to be missing out.
Where do you fit in the conversation? Are you a lurker, a listener, or a participant?
If you’re a lurker, you’re getting the value of the information.
If you’re a listener, you’re also finding out who knows what and who’s a pretender. Listeners soon find out who’s connected to whom.
If you’re a participant, you’re making an impression. People are also finding out about you.
But this is only stage one.
Where the conversation occurs makes a difference. Are you only talking to the people you already know? When you move into a new network do you move down to the level of a lurker? I know that I used to do just that. Then I realized something important.
If we only talk to the same group of people, we’ll always be in that same group talking about the same things on and on.
Want to know, want to grow? You need to expand where you have your conversations.
In our circle of friends, we usually agree on the same ideas.
When we move out to a network of colleagues and acquaintances, we can share in new ideas and new thoughts.
If we want to move up and out, if we want to grow and become more, we have to get to know the folks who know what we need to know. That means reaching out of our personal network to explore many more networks — the networks to which those people belong — and letting those who need a hand up into our own.
Being part of a conversation is a step in the right direction. Using the conversation to reach out raises the bar. Are you taking the conversation as far as you might to grow?
–ME ‘Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
Ask a blogger why he or she started blogging and it’s likely you’ll hear that it had to do with sharing a wealth of knowledge and finding an audience to teach. I enjoyed a conversation last night with a blogger who had been blogging for 5 years and she told me that she started for every same reasons. It’s information sharing that gets us here. But it’s the conversation with real people that keeps us engaged and building communities — for our businesses and as part of our lives.
Though we participate in the conversations on our blogs and others, two of our own Successful and Outstanding Bloggers were extending the conversation to the folks who don’t necessarily do that.
Look there’s Leah Jones, above the fold on the front page of the Business Section of the Chicago Tribune!
Leah Jones, Conversation Analyst for Edelman in Chicago and Jeremiah Owyang, Senior Analyst for Social Computing at Forrester Research were featured in a piece called, “You talk, they hear on web.” by Tribune staff reporter, Eric Benderoff.
Here’s a virtual article base on what these two prominent bloggers had to say. The questions are mine. The answers are from the article text. [Please note: These quotes are presented dynamically with an eye to maintaining the speakers’ original intent, despite this new context. My hope is to offer a closer glimpse of the blogger behind the words. The original, must-read article carries the full story.]
Leah, what does a conversation analyst really do?
“I pay attention to what people say online,” said Leah Jones. . . “My job is research and education,” Jones said. “I do a lot of small group training on social media.”
So, do you talk as well as listen?
“To get a true sense of what people are saying on blogs or in forums, we don’t get involved in the conversations,” Jones said. . . . “If I e-mail a blogger, I tell them ‘I’m Leah, I work at Edelman and I’m writing you because … ,’ ” she said.
So what are you looking to do with and for your clients?
“When we look at 2008, we’re asking, ‘What’s our news? What’s our online strategy? What are our conversation strategies?'” Jones said.
Jeremiah spoke on social media strategies as well.
Jeremiah, what’s the key to social media strategy?
“If you have a social media strategy, you need the right people,” said Jeremiah Owyang.
Why did you say 2008 will be an important year for social media?
“For the first time, you will start to see budgets set aside for social media strategies and processes,” he said. . . . Later he added that “As customers get more involved, expect their feedback to shape new products.”
Both of these bloggers are genuine and engaging conversationalists, who set aside their own thoughts to listen in to what we are saying, to learn where the conversation will go.
Leah and Jeremiah, you are B.A.D. Bloggers! Thanks for taking the conversation to the world of print.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Want to be a B.A.D. Blogger see the. . . a B.A.D. blogger page
Here’s how it works.
It’s like any rambling conversation. Don’t try to read it all. Jump in whenever you get here. Just go to the end and start talking. EVERYONE is WELCOME.
The rules are simple — be nice.
There are always first timers and new things to talk about. It’s sort of half “Cheers” part “Friends” and part video game. You don’t know how much fun it is until you try it.
We might talk about:
And, whatever else comes up, including THE EVER POPULAR, Basil the code-writing donkey . . . and flamenco dancing (because we always get off topic, anyway.)
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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We might talk about gifts we gave, gifts we got, gifts we had to take back, gifts we wish we never got, and gifts we re-gifted.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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