The Charm of the Compliment

Do it right and you're a star. Do it wrong and you're a brown-noser. What is it?

Giving a compliment, and in today's world there's nothing more important, or more poorly cultivated.

Time was when youngsters who expected to move up in life went to charm school, where they learned the rigors of giving and accepting compliments among other monumental matters.

Miss Conduct laments the demise of the charm school tradition, which she pegs somewhere around the first iteration of the flared-pants craze, and perhaps not coincidentally, the death of the first peace movement. In Miss Conduct's opinion, the only good thing to come out of it is her own job security.

Fortunately, because Miss Conduct missed out on charm school, she had to come up with her own basic rules of etiquette, and darned if they don't hold up:

1. Treat everyone as if they were your boss.
2. Your boss is perfect in every way.
3. Always be entertaining. If you can't be funny, then flatter, even if it involves creative application of the truth.

But how to apply Rule No. 3 to the charm of the compliment in the office?

A successful compliment combines context, content and style in a seamless, snappy package that lifts everyone within earshot and sticks in their brains, like a really good jingle.

Context

The context of the homage is the first consideration.

Time and place are the most significant factors, closely followed by the characters involved. You wouldn't interrupt a companywide meeting to issue an off-topic comment, so you mustn't do so with an off-topic compliment, either.