Healthy Influence Blog

USA Today noodles over the perennial conflict:  Being nice to the Boss.  Should you or shouldn’t you?  Won’t you look like you’re sucking up, brown-nosing, fawning, and polishing the proverbial apple?  But, isn’t it polite, if not smart, to be nice?

Let persuasion principles ride to your rescue.

Consider the ELM and dual process.  Any communication can function as a WAC:  WATTage, Argument, or Cue.  Consider the communication of “praising” the Boss in each function.

WATTage:  Your compliments can serve to activate alertness with your Boss.  She’s just sitting there running the meeting when you start talking nice.  That could easily turn her High WATT and make her pay careful attention to what you then say or do.  And, this High WATT switch could be either Objective (follow the facts to a conclusion) or Biased (make the facts fit a conclusion).  In either event, she thinking carefully about what you continue to say and do.  Here, your praise does not directly change your Boss’s attitude, but just affects the processing state of High or Low WATTage.

Argument:  Your compliment provides crucial information to your Boss about her performance and she then thinks carefully about your claims, elaborates upon them, and engages in that “long conversation in the head.”  If your claims generate a favorable conversation, your Boss will feel good about herself.  If your claims generate an unfavorable conversation, the Boss will be unhappy about herself and probably you, too.  And, she’ll remember this.  Note, that the quality of the Argument depends upon your Boss’s point of view, not yours.  What does your Boss believe to be compelling information about her work on the job?

Cue:  Your Boss is Low WATT when you deliver your praise and she feels a momentary burst of pleasure, satisfaction, or approval about herself and by extension, you.  It doesn’t last long.  As soon as the Next Thing arises, she forgets the compliment, loses her good feelings about herself and you, and moves on.  Here, your praise functions as the Liking Cue from CLARCCS.

The crucial element here, as always, is your receiver.  Remember the Rule:  It’s about the Other Guy, Stupid.  Your praise can hit your Boss as WATTage, Argument, or Cue.  It depends on her current situation (Rule:  All Persuasion Is Local).

If you want to make your praise function effectively from a persuasion perspective you need to worry about two things:

1.  Is the Boss High WATT or Low WATT?

2.  Is the praise a strong Argument from the Boss’s perspective?

If you deliver a compliment that is accurate, appropriate, and truly a compliment to a High WATT Boss, you will tend to communicate effectively.  Your Boss may be mildly skeptical, but if you are accurate with the praise, it should work out.

Now, of course, outside observers who watch you with the Boss may likely fall into the actor-observer problem from Attribution Theory and view you as a suck up when you are not.  You might handle this by not praising the Boss in public situations.  Just avoid looking like a brown-noser with your others by not praising the Boss in front of them.  Anytime you communicate toward one person while others are watching, the persuasion context is always more complicated than if it was just the two of you.  Simplify things.

Compliments are such an obvious persuasion ploy that most of us soon learn to be wary of them, especially with people you see frequently and in highly role bound situations.  The best persuasion advice is to just keep it simple and direct.  Save it for face-to-face with no observers.  Make the praise accurate and appropriate which means make it about the business.  For example, praising personal appearance is usually off-key unless personal appearance is a crucial part of the job.  Most of the time it isn’t.  But factors related to performance – great leadership skill, strong business sense, facile problem solving– are in the ballpark.

Have no doubt.  Compliments are highly effective persuasion tactics.  Properly done, they generate positive feelings, strengthen relationship commitment, and do not harm performance.  The persuasion nuance here is not the praise itself, but the persuasion of praise.  Or not what you say, but how you say it.