Find and give genuine compliments you want the recipient to live up to. People feel good about themselves after a compliment and proud of whatever trait or behavior produced the praise. Accordingly, one particularly beneficial form of sincere flattery would be to praise people when they’ve done a good thing we’d like them to continue doing. That way, they would be motivated to do more of the good thing in the future in order to live up to the admirable reputation we’ve given them.
