Tag: hgc

My Compliment Fails & Their Messy Social Contexts (31/365)

Photo by Grégoire Bertaud on Unsplash

A few years ago, my moms and sister had a kind of competition. For 30 days, whenever one of them gave the other a compliment, the recipient had to receive it graciously. That was it. That was the whole competition.

At some point, they’d realized they were doing what I’ve been noticing female colleagues doing lately. They’d deflect, demur, or negate the compliment.

Instead, the challenge was to simply say, “Thank you,” and let the compliment stand.

At work, the deflection has led to unexpected escalation.

Example

Me: Wow, you are incredibly thoughtful and good at what you do. We’re all so fortunate to work with you.

Her: No, I’m not.

Me: Yes, you really are.

Her: No. I didn’t really do anything anyone else couldn’t do.

Me: Are you kidding? That’s what I’m saying. No one else did think to do it, and you did.

Her: I’m just part of the team.

Me: Yes, and I’m saying this team is so much better for having you on it.

Her: I don’t know about that.

Me: I will stop complimenting you now.

I’ve had some version of this conversation with female-identifying co-workers over and over again. It’s gotten so that I can feel it starting and have started actively deciding whether or not I’ve the energy to see it through.

The male version is different.

Example

Me: Wow, you are incredibly thoughtful and good at what you do. We’re all so fortunate to work with you.

Him: Yeah, thanks, I like doing thing X.

It’s a subtle difference.

I’ve little doubt we start building this habit in school. With boys, we build many more opportunities to be the star, and we encourage it. In girls, we aculturate support roles and expect them to blend in. Consider the weekly football/basketball game. It is much more likely you’ve left a game talking about the star player of the game – a star quarterback, a player who couldn’t miss a shot all night long. Now, think of the cheerleading squad. First, you’re not likely, as a passive observer to know any particular cheerleader’s name. Whats more, you’ve likely never left a game and talked about how a particular cheerleader had a particularly good night.

Even my ability to use the example above reinforces the expectation. Nothing is inherently male or female about basketball, football, or cheerleading. Still, I could offer up each activity with confidence you’d unquestioningly picture boys on the field or court and girls on the sidelines. It’s problematic.

We replicate these roles and expectations in our classrooms as well. We make it acceptable for boys to stand out and make it taboo for girls.

One effect is compliment discomfort. In light of #MeToo, I’ve been wondering if part of the hesitancy also has to do with a defense mechanism against standing out as special in predatory systems. Do compliments elicit a response (conscious or not) that says, “Please don’t make me stand out. This place is already unsafe for me”?

All of this is to say, I’m uncertain what to do. I very much want to compliment those with whom I work and learn on a regular basis. I also realize my compliments run counter to larger social gender norms and could be construed as making people vulnerable in unsafe systems. Bigger than all of this, I know it’s not my job to “fix” anyone or “correct” how anyone responds to my words and actions. So, I’m left struggling with what course is best. What I’ve been doing is wrong, and what is right isn’t clear.

Can You Take a Compliment?

After last night’s improv show, I was sitting in the lobby of the theater as the last few audience members were leaving. “Great show,” a few of them said, “That was really funny, and I had no idea where it was going.”

“Thank you,” I said.

Last night was one of the rare occasions I was in agreement with them. It had been a fun show. The group was listening, playing around the fringes of chaos, and still paying attention to when we needed to calm a scene or “rest the game”. While far from perfect, it was a good show. I could agree with those audience members.

This is different than many shows where the quality to which we aspire and what actually ends up happening on stage are significantly different. After these shows, inexplicably, audience members still offer what feels like genuine positive feedback on the performance. These are the hardest “good shows” to hear.

Internally, I think, “Were we at the same show?” and begin to tick off the myriad moves I should have made and didn’t. I map the imperfect listening and the lines I thought would land, but flopped when they made it to the audience.

Externally, I say, “Thank you.”

Time was that I would say thank you and keep internally accounting for all of my flaws in the show. After almost two decades of performing improv, I’m getting better at realizing mine isn’t the only valid perspective on a show.

For everything I would or could have done better, the audience members who honestly compliment a show I think went down the tubes can recount a moment that made them laugh, surprised them, or pulled them more closely to a world that didn’t exist before the show started and will never exist again.

And that’s the lesson. Were they to pick at the flaws of a show (while socially awkward), I’d be right there with them. “When you went to do X, but the other person did Y, it looked like you all didn’t know what to do next,” would bring me into the conversation fully.

Acknowledging what we did right, though, is a more difficult pill to swallow. It means not only seeing the world from another person’s perspective, it means seeing me from another person’s perspective and deciding to like what I see. This is not easy.

Yet, it’s exactly what I asked high school students to do when I implemented High Grade Compliments. The thing I was prepared for in helping my students formulate specific, positive comments for their peers was the mining and speaking their thinking. Seeing the good in another person and speaking that good to them are two different things.

Remarkably, they took to this quickly. They’d been paying attention to what they appreciated in their classmates all along, it seems. What they struggled with – to the development of deep blushing, nervous smiles, and an inability to hold eye contact – was hearing someone else call out how they made our classroom a better place.

It’s why I added coaching on the receiving of compliments to the process. The rule was simple, “Really listen to what they are saying and then say, ‘Thank you’.”

School, life, and any number of outside forces had tuned them in to hearing criticism from others and even accepting it. And while critique has its place in the building of better ideas and examining beliefs, it shouldn’t be our default when people start to talk about us or our work. Living in the belief that the world wants you to know what’s wrong with what you’ve built doesn’t lend itself well to inspiring the building of new things.

It was the teaching of this lesson to assembled adolescents that shifted my practice in improv. Urging others to be open to what their peers might appreciate about themselves meant I needed to shift my listening as well.

Now, when shows don’t go as well as they did last night and an audience member’s opinion of a performance is more positive than my internal damning, my thank you is internally followed by, “…for making me take the time to realize there was more good there than I was willing to see.”

This post is part of a daily conversation between Ben Wilkoff and me. Each day Ben and I post a question to each other and then respond to one another. You can follow the questions and respond via Twitter at #LifeWideLearning16.

Things I Know 44 of 365: Positivity can be viral

I can live for two months on a good compliment.

– Mark Twain

Friday, Sam started class.

Well, she pre-started class.

“Mr. Chase!” as the rest of the students filed in.

“Mr. Chase!” during the general din of everyone taking their seats.

“Mr. Chase!” as I made my way to my computer to log attendance.

“Yes, Sam,” said I through gritted teeth letting only the voice of patient Mr. Chase escape.

“Can we do a high-grade compliment?”

“Um, sure.”

High-grade compliments are a piece of the opening of class I started a few years ago.

They have three rules:

  1. Be in close proximity.
  2. Make eye contact.
  3. Pause to collect your thoughts.

The difference between a high-grade compliment and a low- or medium-grade compliment is the focus on complimenting who you see a person as being – the best parts of that character my mom was always so concerned with building.

A low-grade compliment might be something like, “I like that shirt,” or “Your hair looks nice.”

Physical attributes, but still things that accessorize a person phyisically.

A medium-grade compliment might be something like, “You have a nice smile,” or “You’ve got a great sense of humor.”

Sometimes still physical attributes, but closer to who people are or who they present themselves as.

A high-grade compliment says, “I see you. I appreciate you. And here are some of the reasons why.”

From time to time, we’ll start class with a high-grade compliment, a student is picked at random, and I follow the three rules to compliment them publically in front of the whole class. A really good compliment can last anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute in delivery.

Sam was asking if we could start class with one.

As soon as my “sure” was out of my mouth, Sam followed her first with a second, “Can I give it.”

Usually, I deliver the HGCs. On ocassion, the kids will take it over.

Midway through my second “sure,” Sam was out of her seat and positioning herself in front of Douglas. As shocked as everyone else in the class was of her placement, no one was more shocked than Douglas.

The Douglas and Sam are any kind of oil-and-water-esque metaphor you can think of. They bicker, they tease, they call each other names.

And Sam was about to give him a HGC.

I was maybe holding my breath.

“Even though we call each other names and pick on each other, that’s just how we do. That’s Sam and Douglas,” she began.

“I wouldn’t want it any different. You’re like a brother to me. I know if there’s any part of the homework that I don’t understand, I can come to you and you’ll put the kidding aside and help me. And I know, when something’s wrong with you, you know you can come to me and I’ll try to help you. So, even though we call each other names and fight all the time, I wouldn’t want it any other way. ‘Cause then we wouldn’t be Sam and Douglas.”

And then the class applauded.

I swear. Douglas has it recorded on his phone if you don’t believe me.

But the class wasn’t done.

Another student raised her hand.

“Mr. Chase, can we do good news?”

Good news is my bastardization of a concept from Hal Urban. For 3-5 minutes at the top of a class, I ask the class what’s good that’s going on in their lives. We talk about how to mine the really good news rather than pieces like, “I’m wearing my favorite socks,” in the interest of not taking 20 minutes of class time.

“Sure,” I said again.

“Well, my mom had back surgery, and they had to disconnect her spine and stuff like that. And it’s been really stressful and scary. But, the doctors say she’s recovering faster than expected and she’s going to be coming home from rehab.”

Applause.

Another hand.

“After 28 years, my parents paid off the mortgage on their house.”

Applause.

Another hand.

“My brother has been having a rough time of managing going to dialysis three times a week, but this week someone from California called and said they’d like to donate one of their kidneys.”

Applause.

Another hand.

And it continued like this – students brimming over with stuff that was good in their lives.

Even the student assistant teacher in the room, a senior who the rest of the class is starting to see as an older brother, raised his hand, “I got accepted to college this week.”

A raucous applause. Why wouldn’t someone accept their mentor into college?

It was positively contagious.

One student stood her chair to share something she said only two other people knew. When she was done, the class applauded again. As she stepped down those sitting around her hugged her in congratulations.

Things were winding down and Sam yelled out again, “What about your good news, Mr. Chase?”

My mind went blank. Usually, when I schedule good news, I try to have something in mind to get the ball rolling. I’d been paying such close attention to what everyone was saying, I hadn’t thought of anything.

“Come on, Mr. Chase, what’s your good news?”

It hit me I was happy that I’d found out this week my little sister Rachel, now in her junior year at college, will be spending her spring break with me as she has every spring since her 8th-grade year.

Applause.

Now, tomorrow could just as likely bring a falling out between friends or a feud in a group project, but Friday showed me something beautiful.

It showed what fostering relationships in the classroom can look like. It showed that working to make sure all my students feel safe and supported is worthwhile work. It showed that they have come to trust me and the rest of their classmates with the deeper pieces of who they are.

We weren’t talking reading or writing, but we were definitely building our understanding of the power of words.