Take Blame and Give Credit

In the 1930s,an American named Dale Carnegie wrote about the practice of taking blame for things that go wrong and giving credit for things that go right. Unfortunately, too few Americans seem to have taken his advice. But Europeans have! (Or maybe it was their practice all along and Mr. Carnegie happened to be the one to pass that along in the States. )

By admitting fault quickly and emphatically when you’ve made an error, you immediately take the antagonism out of a problem, and everyone’s focus turns more quickly to a solution rather than fault-finding.

Once when I was new at a company and putting together a web page, it was discovered that the search criteria didn’t work as expected. Although I wasn’t sure what was wrong with it, I admitted in an e-mail- “This is the first time I’ve done this, so I may have made an error on the page.”One of my colleagues immediately fired off an e-mail to everyone involved indicating that there was absolutely nothing wrong with my coding and there must be another problem. It was discovered that there was a problem with the search mechanism (not the page.) If I had not admitted fault (even incorrectly!) or had been defensive about my work, these people would still be wondering if there was something wrong with the code, coming from a “green” programmer as it were.

Passing along credit is even more effective than taking it for yourself. If a project goes well and you are congratulated, it is much more charming and effective to say “Thank you, but the administrative staff set it up beautifully” or “The programmers did all the work.” The administrative staff or the programmers will appreciate it, and the person congratulating you will think more rather than less of you for passing along credit.

Compliments

Another thing that Mr. Carnegie wrote about that seems more common in Europe than America is the practice of giving compliments.

In America, compliments are often seen as passe’ or condescending. Complimenting someone is seen as unnecessary. People refrain from pointing out things about differences in people’s dress, practices or cultures. Some men refrain from complimenting women colleagues in particular because they are trying to be “politically correct.”

Everyone likes to hear nice things about himself or herself, regardless of where they are in the world. But in Europe in particular, giving compliments is a perfectly acceptable and even expected mode of interaction. Compliments can be very simple- admiring someone’s taste in office furnishings (assuming you really DO like their office) or complimenting someone on their proficiency with the computer or complimenting their analysis of a situation. Many Europeans for whom English is a second language particularly like to be complimented on their grasp of English by Americans. (And often their English is better than ours! See notes on language.)

Being genuinely interested in other people, and expressing sincere compliments is a practice that is much more common in Europe but is effective in developing rapport with people anywhere.