When David D'Alessandro became CEO of John Hancock Financial Services in 1996, he felt that compliments from his subordinates were disingenuous unless he had truly accomplished something difficult. Otherwise it's brown-nosing, says D'Alessandro, who retired from Hancock in 2004.
QUIZ: Know the difference between brown nosing and being nice?
"A transparent sucking-up act," says Raul Fernandez, CEO of ObjectVideo, recalling one former employee who would swing by his office most every morning with something nice to say. The man stopped doing it the day the company was sold and Fernandez was no longer boss. "There is a difference between a kiss-ass compliment and a positive comment," Fernandez says.
"When they say, 'Oh, Mr. Draper, it is such an honor and thrill to be in your presence,' then I am a little put off," says Timothy Draper, CEO of venture-capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson and on Forbes' list of the top 100 dealmakers. "My radar goes up."
However, fresh research indicates that top executives may not be as good at weeding out brown-nosers as they think and that many are gullible to disingenuous ego strokes from subordinates.
Bosses now are told to praise down because the old-school days of a paycheck being enough to motivate employees are all but over, says Deloitte CEO Barry Salzberg. But praising up is a different animal, a knotty conundrum of the workplace. Most CEOs say they appreciate an honest compliment if it passes the sincerity sniff test. Trouble is, bosses don't often have a good nose, at least not for the brown-noser.
CEOs do get a lot of opportunity to detect what's sincere and what isn't. University of Michigan business strategy professor James Westphal has researched ingratiation and says he finds that when someone is promoted to CEO, the compliments from below increase exponentially and spectacularly. But most CEOs aren't any better at detecting a snow job than the rest of us, he says, which raises the question: Should we be exercising discretion with the boss or should we be laying it on thick?
Uncertainty about that question is so widespread that a study published in the November issue of the journal Psychological Science, entitled "When the Boss Feels Inadequate," says that underlings who don't praise their boss risk him or her becoming a bully and lashing out. Yet, by the paper's conclusion, it says flattery is not recommended, because it can cause the boss to lose touch with reality.
USA TODAY asked 22 current and former CEOs of large companies for their thoughts on brown-nosing. Seventeen said that their own careers were never helped by delivering strokes to the boss, yet 20 said that employees should compliment the boss if they are sincere about it.
Positive reinforcement
If kind words make employees better, they can do the same for CEOs, says Aubrey Daniels, author of Oops! 13 Management Practices that Waste Time and Money. "Bosses are like anyone else. Behavior that is never positively reinforced will stop. Behavior that is effectively reinforced will continue."
Just as bosses are advised to try to catch even bad employees in the act of doing something right, some CEOs even recommend complimenting a bad boss. It will feel unnatural, says Coldwell Banker CEO Jim Gillespie, but it can help them become better.
"It's all about timing and sincerity, but a well-placed compliment to a bad boss might go a long way toward changing behavior and performance," says Jerre Stead, CEO of IHS, a publisher of technical documents with annual revenue of $844 million.
Joe Herring, CEO of 9,800-employee health care company Covance, says he once had a boss who rarely came out of his office. One day, after a rare interaction with the staff, Herring told his boss that the appearance improved morale and that the staff hoped he would do it more often. That compliment worked, Herring says.
D'Alessandro has a different point of view. Don't waste your breath complimenting a bad boss, because they will "either fire you anyway, or you will quit," he says.
Most CEOs, like most everyone, are suckers for a compliment, and ambitious underlings can gain an advantage if they are skilled at flattery, ingratiation and agreeing with everything the boss has to say, Westphal says. Compliments delivered to the CEO, even disingenuous ones, are powerful and often cause them to feel the need to reciprocate with favoritism, even to employees they don't like. Westphal doesn't go so far as to recommend brown-nosing, because it's not good for the company. Quite the opposite. The right thing to do is to honestly challenge the boss, he says.
The right thing but maybe not the safest. CEOs can be especially thin-skinned to the hard truth. A 2006 study by human resources firm PsyMax found that 83% of non-management employees were good at taking criticism, but that fell to 78% of those promoted to supervisor or foreman and to 66% among CEOs, presidents and chief operating officers.
If getting a promotion is the goal, then it's probably best to lay it on thick. Just do it in private, Westphal says, because even if the boss is gullible, co-workers will see the manipulation for what it is.
But CEOs warn to take care. "Hollow" compliments are a sign of immaturity and justification for why the brown-nosing employee should not be promoted, says John Sheptor, CEO of publicly traded Imperial Sugar, which has nearly $600 million in annual revenue.
The art of flattery
Westphal says he is sometimes criticized for his research because many see ingratiation as a workplace positive. After all, business training pioneer Dale Carnegie embraced the art of sincere flattery, and his disciples see it as helping to reduce workplace conflict. But, "On balance, the cost of reduced debate is greater than the benefit of less conflict," Westphal says. "Good CEOs are conscious of this danger and elicit disagreement and debate and verbally validate it."
James Copeland, who retired as CEO from Deloitte & Touche in 2003, says he dished out so few compliments and so much constructive criticism upstream during his career that bosses told him that supervising him was the most painful part of their job.
"What I really want is honest, objective feedback, even if it's difficult to hear," says Chris Kearney, CEO of Fortune 500 manufacturer SPX. "People need to be direct, honest and constructive in their feedback to the boss. Giving disingenuous feedback is not good for anyone."
SRA International is a large government contractor with 6,900 employees and for 10 consecutive years was named to Fortune magazine's list of 100 best companies to work for. CEO Stanton Sloane says that years ago, he was in a large meeting when he told his boss that he was a genius.
Bad idea. The boss' retort: "This was a team effort, and the credit goes to the team, not me," Sloane recalls.
The anecdote shows that there are subtle ways to compliment the boss, perhaps by praising the team under their charge and by using "we" instead of "you," he says.
Marsh Carter, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange Group, suggests limiting compliments to bosses one level up; otherwise it crosses a familiarity line that won't be appreciated.
Most CEOs are men, who are especially vulnerable to ingratiation by women, says Mary Lou Quinlan, the onetime advertising director at Avon Products, now CEO of marketing consultant Just Ask a Woman.
"Women are way, way better at it because they are more subtle, more facile half-truth-tellers" and expert at knowing what to say to get others to like them, Quinlan says. "Getting the boss to feel good is a piece of cake."
The employee who makes the boss feel less insecure will stay employed in a bad economy, Quinlan says.
While it may be true that women are talented in this area, Westphal says that his research underway of top managers and directors indicates that women are less likely than men to engage in "sophisticated forms of ingratiation" that get them to the summit of business.
Gulf Power CEO Susan Story says her office is so relaxed that her employees sometimes gush over her for comic relief. They do it intentionally in front of their colleagues, who react with "gaggy sounds or rubbing the tops of their noses."
Story says she also has received compliments that are touching and meaningful. She recently delivered an economic update that included discouraging news for the company. She says one employee said, "I know we have tough times ahead of us, but I don't worry that we will make it through as long as you are here."
On the other hand, she remembers a compliment used as a weapon in a politically charged office. She says the colleague wanted her job and said, "You're such a great public speaker. Ever think about leaving here and doing that full time?"
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