How to make friends, coworkers, and team members feel good about themselves

David Spinks is the cofounder of Feast: Helping busy people build a habit of cooking at home. He also cofounded CMX Summit, TheCommunityManager and writes about building startups and life experiments at WhatSpinksThinks.

Want to make friends and build a strong network?

Want to be the person that people want to spend time with?

Want to earn someone’s trust and respect?

Want to be that manager that everyone loves and enjoys working with?

There are a few people I’ve met in my life that I have a deep respect for, more so than anyone else I’ve met. They’ve proven their ability to do all of those things above time and time again. Everyone loves them, they’re incredibly successful and they just seem to live a good life.

Some time ago I noticed there’s something very consistent about what makes them all so successful and well thought of.

They make other people feel really good about themselves.

Every chance they get, whether with friends, strangers, in public, in private, whatever… they make you feel awesome.

There are a number of ways that I’ve seen them work their magic. Some are simple and very obvious. Others take a little more work and aren’t so obvious.

1. Compliment people even if it feels awkward

The simplest most obvious thing you can do it compliment them.

Complimenting can feel awkward and take some willpower sometimes. I catch myself wanting to compliment people but then feeling embarrassed and just keeping it to myself.

I learned from watching these people who are really good at complimenting how effective it can be.

If you like someone’s shoes, you think they’re funny, you respect them… anything good, tell them! By keeping it to yourself you’re missing an opportunity to make someone else feel really good about themselves. That in turn will make you feel good for making them feel good. And your relationship will strengthen.

Take Action: Think about someone you know and care for. What’s one thing you like about them? Have you ever told them that? What’s stopping you from texting it to them right now or telling it to them next time you see them?

2. Make other people successful

This one is harder but more powerful.

I haven’t been so great at this in my career. I remember the first time I was put in a managerial position, this concept didn’t even cross my mind. Instead of focusing on making others successful, I thought they were there to make me and the company successful.

It was a shallow understanding and one that resulted in a brilliant failure, but a memorable lesson.

I’ve tried to adjust my thinking to a new idea: I work for everyone else in my life. My job, is to make them successful. If I can do that, we all win.

Take Action: Look at your to-do list for the next week. Look at each item and think about who it’s helping. Is it making someone else successful or just you? Are there other things you can add in there that will make someone else successful?

3. Shine the spotlight on other people

Make sure credit is given where it’s due every chance you get. This is another thing I haven’t been so great at in the past. Turns out I’m decent at finding spotlights and I haven’t always thought about pointing it at the people around me.

There’s a difference between internal and external recognition as well. Just because you’re very grateful and tell the person that all the time, that won’t have the same effect as recognition in the public eye. If you can give them both, that’s ideal.

Take action: Look at your Twitter feed. When was the last time you bragged about someone else? When was the last time you put the spotlight on someone else? Who can you tweet about right now to put the spotlight on them?

If you focus on those three things, you’ll make people feel good about themselves. When they win, you win.

Image credit: Shutterstock/Everett Collection

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