During a fight with her best friend, Speaker A tried "watering someone's flowers," a practice of offering sincere compliments during conflict. Both struggled at first, but genuine praise shifted the tone from adversarial to softer, letting them move past blame. Affirmation in tense moments prevents people from feeling undervalued and signals respect.
Chapters
is called watering someone's flowers, which is the very simple but powerful act of telling someone nice things about them. When I'm in the tunnel vision of conflict, it's often impossible for me to think of a good thing about someone.
'Cause there's nothing good. There's nothing good about them. Clearly.
Yeah. I was in a conflict with my best friend, and at the time, this was our biggest fight that we've ever gotten in, and we were in the thick of it. I said, okay, let's water each other's flowers. And she said, okay, let's try it. You start.
And I was like, Jesus Christ. I like your hair.
And I looked at her, truly my favorite person on the planet, And I could not think of a single nice thing to say.
Oh my goodness.
But I said it. And then it was her turn, and she also kind of struggled. I said another one back to her, and it was a little bit bigger, a little bit more meaningful, and I could feel that she was softening a little bit. And we went back and forth, and maybe it took like 6 minutes, and our whole conversation was different. And where we were once like, you versus me, you're evil and wrong and I'm right and morally justified, all of a sudden the armor could soften.
I've made this mistake without doing that because I'm like, let's deal with the issue. It does make them feel undervalued, especially if there has been tension. And so giving them some affirmation about their talents, their gifts, their contributions to the team is a good level set.
Yeah. And then it allows people to hear the things that are harder.
Because they recognize that you don't think I'm a dumbass.
Yeah. And for me, what I've also found maybe even more shocking is how it changes my perspective. All of a sudden, instead of only seeing this one piece of the puzzle, I'm able to see the whole tapestry.
