Commendation, not flattery: how to make praise land with senior people

Senior people have a finely tuned filter for flattery. They've heard every variant. "Great presentation" lands the same as silence — sometimes worse, because it signals you weren't really paying attention.

Commendation lands when it's specific, timely and costly to fake. Here's a script I use with directors, partners and my own boss.

The 3-line commendation

1. Line 1 — Behaviour. What you observed, in concrete terms. "The way you reframed the budget question in today's exec as a sequencing problem rather than a scope problem…"
2. Line 2 — Impact. What it made possible. "…shifted the room from defending to planning. We left with a decision."
3. Line 3 — Invitation. What you'd like more of. "I'd find it useful when we're stuck — could you do that more often when you spot it?"

Why this works upward

Most senior people get praise on outcomes and rarely on the underlying move. Naming the move tells them you saw the craft, not the result. The invitation reframes you as a peer asking for more of a behaviour, not a junior dispensing applause.

What to avoid

• Public delivery by default. Send it in writing first; let them choose to surface it.
• "You're amazing". Adjectives about the person, not the behaviour, sound like flattery — because they are.
• Stacking it before a request. Never commend in the same message as an ask. Wait a day.

This is one slice of the Commendation pillar from the C.A.R.E. framework. The free one-page worksheet below walks you through your first week.