Lifting others up does not push you down

“That was an awesome idea!”, “I love your thought process.”, “Jamie did an amazing job on the project and has been an incredible partner.”, “You are amazingly talented, I can see your dedication and hard work.”, “I value you.”

Cultures within our businesses are often geared toward focusing on our shortcomings, rather than our strengths. “Constructive criticism” is a term that we have learned to use as a means to show others that we are open to their critical feedback, but it is often said in a contrived manner. Professionally filtered criticism is easy to come by. Genuine criticism is snickered behind our backs.

But what about genuine compliments?

When it comes to thinking about compliments, I have much to say. When it comes to issuing compliments, I know I personally tend to freeze up.

Convinced it was not just me, I issued a cathartic challenge in the remaining days of study to a cohort of immersive students at the academy I teach for. The students are adult learners, career resetting into the field of software engineering. We’ve spent the past 20 weeks, 40+ hours each week together. We all know each other deeply, as immersive education has a way of bringing people together. Years later, we still get together to catch up over beer and tater tots.

The challenge was seemingly simple. Write down one compliment for each person in the room. The activity was much harder. One person at a time, we went around the room and each person read their compliment for the person of focus. That was an exceptionally powerful two hours of my life. The thing that was plain to see, was that both issuing compliments and receiving them are difficult. Not that it was done poorly or in an awkward fashion, more so that it was unpracticed and unnatural.

It’s odd to me, that we can quickly absorb and discard praise on the internet. To simplify the process, we even introduced scoring. It becomes much more of a numbers game. How many claps/likes/retweets did I get? The more the better. Not enough and we beat ourselves up. We try to beat our last high score to derive our value and self-worth.

But in that room, having people listen to what others think best about them, I could see that those 20 compliments received were impactful for life. I asked the students what they thought afterwards, they all agreed it was a wonderful experience, but very difficult. Writing the compliment was easy. Delivering it was hard. Being the person receiving the compliment was arguably the most difficult.

In some follow-up conversations, it became clear that there are people who are attuned to issuing compliments and those who are not. I started to dive a little deeper into those who were not wired for it, perhaps to understand myself better, as I fall into the latter camp. What surfaced was that there was a point of pride that was evident.

My degree is actually in Video Game Design and Development. It’s an odd degree for someone who was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Especially because I never intended on moving out of state. While I love Minnesota, the game design scene and prospects for rewarding careers in the game industry were never something that would be realized there at the time. After college, I set out to see if I could change all of that via the indie route. Some friends and I created a game development studio and worked on our own titles in the days where the iPhone was just released and we were just seeing this new-crazy ‘droid’ come out. We released seven titles over our two years of operation, but never really made enough money for any of us to quit our day jobs. We shuttered only because the experience gave people a way to secure real game, or otherwise normal, development jobs. However, what persisted as the doors closed, was a desire in me to still create some of my passion projects. Naturally, I gravitated toward others working in this space.

As my career drifted more and more into education, I still kept my ‘game friends’. Friends who were actually taking their titles to completion. Full releases on to platforms like Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation. Even though I traded in my game pursuit for what has been an incredibly rewarding career in niche education, I would be lying if I said I was not a little envious. Their work is awesome. The games are beautiful, engaging, and fun. While I absolutely am in love with helping people get to where they want to be, there is a small piece of me that would love to bring people into the worlds I create.

To be clear, I am not going anywhere. I love my gig. I love talking about learning and growth with anyone who will listen. But this article benefits from me putting the spotlight on a small piece of my own pride.

But this is exactly the trap we fall into. What do I lose by lifting my friends and colleagues up? Supporting their passions while chasing my own. There is enough success available in this world for us all to share. Advocating for others does not take away from my own accomplishments.

When we carry this idea over to where we started, with compliments, it begs the question:

Common sense says “of course not”. But pride can convince us the practice is too great a price to pay to actually execute. Pride says “if they are successful, you can’t possibly be”. “If they come up with a great idea, you never can”. “If they are great at something, you cannot be great at your thing”. It does its absolute best to fabricate a world of competition in our minds, where it is better to hold your positive thought in than to share it with the deserving. Additionally, pride persuades us into believing that others must first become flawless before being worthy of our praise, reaching for petty critiques to construct barriers.

Pride has left us unpracticed in the art of complementing. Delivering authentic praise is clunky for most of us. It is absolutely the right time to change that, but it comes with practice.

I have a challenge for you. When you leave this article, find another article and leave the author a message. Find something that was inspiring, smart, witty, or hilarious and take a moment to encourage them and lift them up. Not just a clap, but a sincere, authentic piece of praise. Be descriptive and precise as possible. I promise you it will make a world of difference to the author and will cost you absolutely nothing.

Then bring it into the real world. Make it a point to lift someone up once a day. Become practised in the art of encouragement.

Finally, if you are looking for something to play, I have a couple of recommendations!