#Deflection January 24

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Receiving compliments or praise often causes many to utilize the art of DEFLECTION.

For leaders and quite frankly all of us we need to realize that consistently blowing off a compliment is not doing our mental health a lot of good. It seems we have a default setting to not believe the compliment or worse yet view it as an attempt to manipulate us.

Researching for this post I discovered two resources I want to share. First is an article in Harvard Business Review by Christopher Littlefield. The author in that article shares some resources we all can apply. He also shows us we are not alone. In a study he conducted of more than 400 people, nearly 70% of people associated feelings of embarrassment or discomfort with receiving a compliment.

Books can be a good resource to learning how to improve. Thanks to Mr. Littlefield I discovered such a book.

Surprise: Embrace the Unpredictable and Engineer the Unexpected dives in the feelings we encounter with praise. This book was written by Tania Luna and LeeAnn Renninger

Dealing With Surprise

Many researchers will say that a cause of deflecting a compliment stem from someone’s low self-esteem. Yes, that can happen to many but there are people with healthy self-image that still feel inadequate with praise. Tania and Renninger believe the answer might be in dealing with a surprise.

Surprises according to the authors trigger four stages.

So, what happens in each stage?

Freeze-simply put it feels uncomfortable and we do something to get comfortable, so we respond with some type of DEFLECTION.

Explanation-Confirmation Bias kicks in. We search for information that confirms our views and totally discounts or ignores those that go against that view.

Shift-This takes practice and time but remember that when someone compliments us, we need to focus on what their view is not ours.

Share-Letting the giver of the message know how you feel.

Quote to summarize

Ariel Lopez, the CEO of Knac which is a hiring platform tells a story and lesson about compliments. Someone stopped her and shared with her praise. She began to deflect, and the person told her the following:

“I’m giving you your flowers; you can choose to water them or not”

We all need to be looking for opportunities to surprise others and be prepared when it happens to us to accept not deflect it.