I work in a mostly female office (oh, the world of development), populated with lots of well-dressed, super-pleasant women between the ages of approximately 22-55. This creates what I think of as the compliment cycle, or the ego boost train I got used to when I was in Switzerland for a month living with a large group of girls: even without full-length mirrors and an ironing board, we all made a serious effort to remind each other how gorgeous and stylish we looked every morning!
What this means: women are psychologically conditioned to use compliments as a way of doing several things:
1) ingratiate themselves with each other
2) establish a personal connection
3) talk about something other than the weather/the weekend
4) make each other smile/feel good about themselves
I'm not always sure if we truly DO love the other woman's lipstick/handbag/new haircut, but it's an interesting bonding and socialization method that definitely exists in offices and other social situations. A compliment is a quick way to have a one-on-one interaction with someone you don't know anything about, and usually opens up for a "oh thanks, I got it on sale/at this store, you should check it out" or a similar conversation extension. And even when you notice that the compliment is part of a fairly established office routine, it never fails to make the other woman smile or walk away feeling a little bit better, knowing someone else has noticed her efforts to put on a good face to the rest of the world. When you don't always interact on a professional level with everyone in your office, or even know everyone's name, a semi-superficial--ok, entirely superficial--compliment is the simplest way to create connections and a positive atmosphere. Women can be catty, or we can be complimentary. We're good at both, and in a workplace like mine, compliments rule the day. Try it!
The compliments even work with men, who are usually more surprised and pleased with the comment than a woman, since its not such a typical "how about the Pats?" interaction between men. And men--if you notice, in a non-sexual way, that we look particularly nice or have cut our hair, we'll be endlessly impressed with your observational powers and that you took the time to try to make us smile.
towards the end of the egypt dialogue we all talked about how our self esteem was gonna go waaay down when we didnt have a whole bunch of people telling us how hot we look every day.
ReplyDeletefor us, the guys got in on the action too, and did a good job of keeping it genuine and non-sexual, while still not worrying about being made fun of for noticing our shoes or whatever. i was wicked impressed.
Guys should know this already, and if they don't I'm glad you informed them.
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