I noticed the most well-liked person in our office never gives compliments about results. He compliments effort. The difference is massive.
Most people compliment outcomes. "Great presentation." "Nice work on the report." "You killed it in that meeting." Feels good for a second. Then it fades. Because outcome compliments are a verdict. A grade. And once you grade someone they start performing for the next grade.
This guy at my office does something different. He compliments the process. The specific effort behind the result.
"I could tell you rehearsed that presentation, the transitions between sections were really smooth." "The way you organized that report made it easy to follow, you clearly put thought into the structure." "You stayed really calm when they pushed back in that meeting, that's hard to do."
The difference sounds small on paper. In practice it hits completely differently.
An outcome compliment says "I approve of what you produced." An effort compliment says "I see what you put into this." One evaluates you. The other one sees you. And being seen is the thing people actually remember.
I tested this for a month. Stopped saying "good job" entirely. Replaced it with one specific observation about what I noticed them do. "You stayed late three nights to finish that, that kind of commitment is rare." "I noticed you rewrote that email twice before sending it, the final version was way tighter."
People responded like I'd given them something they'd been waiting years to receive. Because most people work hard quietly and assume nobody notices the effort. They only hear about the outcome. Pass or fail. Good or bad. The person who sees the work behind the work becomes someone they trust on a different level.
Compliment the effort, not the result. Acknowledge the hours, the revisions, the persistence, the parts nobody sees. That's the compliment people carry with them. The "good job" gets forgotten by lunch.
The piece that made me realize I could actually train these patterns instead of just admiring them was Socialyze. It runs 2-minute voice conversations in your browser and shows you what your response patterns actually look like. I was doing the opposite of everything Mike does. Jumping straight to disagreement. Not acknowledging what was said before giving my take. Ending exchanges abruptly. Hearing those patterns broken down after a conversation made them fixable instead of invisible.