Flattery, the sincerest form of sycophancy

[영어도우미]

Flattery, the sincerest form of sycophancy

"The Chairman's Guidelines," a popular comedy show on SBS, features an assistant manager and a supervisor who compete over who is best at flattering the chairman. They make absurd comments like "If he wanted, I would play dodge ball against a bowling ball," as they vie to see who can be the bigger sycophant. 
The show is wildly popular among Korean employees. "Regular salarymen empathize with this show's premise," said Hyeon Byeong-su, who plays the chairman. "It is similar to how they live their lives. It hits a nerve."
Most of us have thought about how to flatter the boss, but it can be difficult or embarrassing to do it well.
Flattery is an important lubricant of human relationships, but it also tends to be a form of deception or manipulation. It can also be open to many interpretations.
"My boss was having trouble finding the right place for a foothold during a company mountain-climbing event," said a trading company manager. "Then, one of our employees held his hands together and made a stirrup for him. The chairman used the stirrup as a boost and advanced up the trail."
The manager says that the helpful employee was later bombarded with criticism. His response was "Even if I helped the chairman out of sincere loyalty, others would have insisted I was being a sycophant."

What is flattery?
According to the dictionary, flattery means lavishing someone with exaggerated praise in order to please. The word originated from the French word "flater," which means to stroke or caress.
But the definitions of flattery vary."If you compliment the boss or co-workers to convince them to do something good for you, that's flattery," said the owner of a business in Seoul.
There are positive aspects to flattery. Richard Stengel, the author of "You Are Too Kind: A Brief History of Flattery," defined flattery as "strategic praise."
More negatively, others equate flattery with sycophancy. They say that flatterers try to butter somebody up by paying compliments that are based on the truth. But sycophants usually lie ?this comparison implies that flattery is good, while sycophancy is bad.
Most employees agree that flattery is a an essential part of their job. The JoongAng Ilbo surveyed 1,268 members of Career, a job-seekers' Web site. They found that 40 percent believed that flattery is indispensable to human relationships. Those who said flattery is unnecessary represented only 16 percent of the total. Fifty-three percent of respondents agreed with the statement, "Flattery has a positive effect on my eval‎uation" and 61 percent said, "My boss is fond of flattery." Forty-nine percent of the participants said they used flattery at least twice a month.

Flattery and compliments aren't very different from each other
Does flattery really work? "No one dislikes being flattered," said Lee Jeong-seok, a manager at Manine Media. "If somebody flatters me by saying something I want to hear, it works remarkably well. When an employee encouraged me by saying, 'You are the only one who can handle this tough project,' I felt as though I was important. I couldn't dislike his flattery."
Kim Jeong-a, a marketeer, regrets that she was not a better flatterer. After her team succeeded in winning a profitable project against competing companies, the person who received all the praise from the boss was another co-worker who was a good flatterer.
But there is an old Korean motto that says "Too much is as bad as too little," and it still holds true in some circumstances. "One of my employees kept saying 'You look very young today,' or 'What an intelligent decision you have made,' and things like that," said an advertising company executive. "But it made me feel very uncomfortable, so now I avoid seeing him."

 

By Hong Joo-yun, Kim Kyung-jin JoongAng Ilbo [estyle@...]

for the complete article: http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2877330

 

VOCABULARY LIST :

absurd (adj) - ridiculous or unreasonable; foolish in an amusing way
vie (v) - to compete with other people to achieve or obtain something
empathize (v) - to be able to understand how someone else feels
sycophant (n) - a person who praises people in authority in a way that is not sincere, usually in order to get some advantage from them
to butter up - to be very kind or friendly to someone or try to please them, so that they will do what you want them to do

 

DISCUSSION POINTS :

 

1. In your opinion, is it good to flatter someone or not? Why?

2. Personally, do you think there is a difference between flattery and sycophancy?

3. According to the article, most people think that flattery is important in human relationships. Do you

   agree?

4. Have you given compliments or flatteries to your boss and co-workers? Why or why not? How did

    your boss react? How did your co-workers react?

5. Have you ever received flatteries and compliments? If yes, from whom? What kind of comments did

    they give you? How did you feel? How do you take flatteries and compliments?