The Importance of Flattery

We’re used to thinking rather badly of flattery; but in fact, it’s one of the moves that can help people to develop and grow into better versions of themselves.

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“Flattery has a bad name. It’s associated with saying something upbeat but untrue in order to hoodwink its unsuspecting target for low personal gain. In Aesop’s famous fable, The Fox and the Crow, an ugly crow has found a piece of cheese and retired to a branch to eat it. A sly fox, wanting it for himself, flatters the crow, calling it beautiful and wondering whether its voice will be as sweet as its appearance. The crow lets out a horrific screeching sound and the cheese drops straight into the fox’s gaping expectant mocking jaw. But there’s another form of flattery with more valuable and ethical ambitions. Parents of small children invariably discover its uses – which deserve to be better known and practiced around all age groups. Let’s imagine that a child isn’t yet entirely kind to their brother, or good at drawing, or a perfect cook or helpful around the house – but the parent declares that they are so as to encourage and make more concrete what is as yet only tentative and fragile in their ambivalent nature. The child is being helped to end up as some of the things he has already been described as being...”

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