- Flattery helps people advance in their careers and ingratiate themselves to leaders
- In the long term, flatterers can become resentful and leaders who reward flattery suffer reputational damage
- Candour, if delivered with confidence and care, can be a more effective approach than a ‘complement sandwich’ when delivering criticism
Who doesn’t love praise now and then? Regardless of one’s career, creed, or circumstance, warm words have the power to share a little of our sunshine with others.
Indeed, praise is so pleasant to receive that the act of giving it can be incredibly useful. There is arguably no better testament to this fact than the current U.S. administration under President Donald Trump.
Whether in diplomatic relations with countries in Europe and the Middle East, or domestically in cabinet meetings referred to as a “televised groveling festival” by Rolling Stone, heaping Trump with adulation has become a standard tactic for trying to influence U.S. policy or simply avoiding the President’s ire.
Insincere praise is still effective
But praise, like chocolate, can be harmful if consumed to excess. When kudos are insincere or too lavish, they become flattery. The problem with this is that flattery is, by definition, deceptive – it’s either too effusive or not offered in earnest.
According to a study from Dirk de Clercq, Distinguished Professor of Management at the Goodman School of Business, Brock University, and Renato Pereira at ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, flattery is an example of ingratiatory behaviour that can be used by employees to improve their standing in the workplace. By targeting these behaviours at authority figures, employees hope their efforts to be liked and accepted will meet with reciprocal favours.
Interestingly, the researchers find that such attempts are correlated with strict adherence to leaders’ authority, especially when employees show a natural tendency to want more and have a cynical view about people in power.
Therefore flattery, the study shows, is subtly transactional, offering deference to power in exchange for material benefit.
And it works. Research conducted by Professor Gerald Ferris at Texas A&M University in the 1980s shows that flattering your boss leads to more positive evaluations and an easier climb up the corporate ladder.
“People tend to believe that flattery is just too transparent to be effective, but we have found that is not necessarily true. We have found a strong correlation between this type of behaviour and good evaluations,” Ferris said.
The reasons why are varied and complicated. Ferris’ research suggests some leaders enjoy having their egos stroked, whereas others may feel unsure of themselves and their decisions, and take flattery as reinforcement that they are right.
The power of flattery in negotiations
In the theatre of politics, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s U.S. visit in early November offers a masterclass in how strategic praise can result in tangible benefits for the person doing the praising.
Orbán entered the meeting with Trump, like all world leaders, with a set of goals in mind. In this case, one of his goals was to negotiate an exemption for Hungary to U.S. sanctions against Russian energy. The sanctions are designed to pressure Russia to engage in peace talks to end the war in Ukraine, but could also pose a serious economic challenge for Hungary, which relies heavily on imported Russian gas and oil.
“People tend to believe that flattery is just too transparent to be effective, but we have found that is not necessarily true. We have found a strong correlation between this type of behaviour and good evaluations.”
– Gerald Ferris, Professor of Management at Texas A&M University
During the broadcast part of their meeting, Orbán presented himself in a way that would appeal to Trump’s Christian nationalist base, differentiating the Hungarian government from the “liberal ocean in Europe”. And when Trump claimed, as he has in the past, that Russia would never have invaded Ukraine if he had been president, Orbán made sure to seize the moment and back him up.
“No question that if that time, the name of the United States president would have been Donald Trump, there would be no war between Ukraine and Russia next year. But what we are speaking about here is more than that,” he said.
While the truth of this statement is a matter of conjecture, Orbán’s approach to engaging with Trump yielded the results he wanted, with Hungary receiving a one-year exemption from the sanctions.
This decision contrasts with the pressure Trump has applied to European leaders to stop buying Russian energy, but it’s a big win for Orbán domestically. His hope of re-election in April 2026 is built in part on the promise of delivering cheap Russian energy to voters.
The risk of succumbing to flattery
Though Orbán’s visit could be a textbook case study in effective negotiation, it also reveals some of the problems inherent in flattery. In particular, the benefit to the flatterer is not always aligned with the interests of the flattered.
Research into the dark side of flattery finds that ingratiatory behaviours can foster resentment towards the person being flattered. A study co-authored by Gareth Reeves, James Westphal and Michael McDonald at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business and the University of Texas College of Business shows how the act of flattery is grating on the flatterer.
By violating notions of authenticity, autonomy, and meritocracy, flatterers lose their sense of self-respect. They may then externalise this unhappiness by blaming the recipient of their flattery.
The results can be serious reputational damage. In giving away gold in exchange for being showered with sunshine and hot air, leaders become blind to the sharpening resentments of their staff, and the repercussions that follow.
For instance, in a workplace setting, the researchers find that managers who flatter the CEO may channel their feelings of resentment by giving negative comments to journalists.
A research paper by Nadav Klein, Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD, similarly finds that leaders who succumb to flattery run the risk of reputational damage.
Across seven studies and six supplementary studies, Klein and his co-authors observe that leaders who grant favours to flatterers are often perceived as naïve. They have “fallen for flattery”, and this not only shapes impressions of them as leaders, but also how people view the organisations they represent.
Timon of Athens might be one of William Shakespeare’s lesser-known plays, but it remains one of the greatest cautionary tales against this kind of folly ever put to the stage. The titular Timon, based on a real person, lavishes wealth on his sycophants until he is stripped clean and cast aside, haunted by the warning of the philosopher Apemantus:
“He that loves to be flattered is worthy o’ the flatterer.”
What do we risk losing by flattering those in power?
When fawning creeps into politics, diplomacy, and public discourse, the impact extends far beyond the remit of a few managers or a single organisation.
For instance, the June 2025 NATO Summit at The Hague was marked by European leaders lining up to burnish Trump’s Presidential prowess.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte seemed to lead the charge, with his comments likening Trump to a “daddy” in mediating the Israel-Iran conflict quickly being turned into a meme by the White House. But it was far from an isolated effort. Another standout moment came from Lithuania’s President Gitanas Naus?da, who suggested copying one of Trump’s key slogans by adopting the phrase “make NATO great again”.
“A summit dedicated to the sole aim of making Trump feel good is one with very limited aims indeed. All it does is push the difficult decisions forward for another day. Individual decisions to bow down to Trump also mean missing the opportunity to mount collective resistance.”
– Andrew Gawthorpe, Lecturer in History and International Studies at Leiden University
The remarks punctuated a summit that was light on detailed policy discussions and heavy on photo opportunities, a schedule tailor-made to hold Trump’s interest.
While the combined charm offensive had its desired effect, encouraging praise from a U.S. President who has been openly sceptical of the defence coalition, such flattery obstructed the chance to have productive discussions, according to Andrew Gawthorpe, Lecturer in History and International Studies at Leiden University.
“A summit dedicated to the sole aim of making Trump feel good is one with very limited aims indeed. All it does is push the difficult decisions forward for another day. Individual decisions to bow down to Trump also mean missing the opportunity to mount collective resistance,” he writes.
Gawthorpe highlights the tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, which have the potential to damage the U.S. economy as well as those of its trading partners, as an example of where world leaders could join together and push back.
Individual countries may not have the necessary economic weight to stand up to the U.S. alone, but collaborative action might apply enough pressure to motivate a course correction.
But if all countries follow the U.K.’s example, flattering Trump with an “unprecedented” second state visit to butter him up for a trade agreement, Gawthorpe warns he may internalise the message that he can “get away with doing pretty much whatever he wants”.
Such a belief could have significant impacts on the U.S. economy. If Trump believes he can chart his own course, he may weaken institutional frameworks, creating economic uncertainty.
This chain of events is a common trend that NEOMA Business School researchers Alfonso Carballo Perez and Margherita Corina observe following a populist upsurge in democratic countries.
Analysing data on the investment decisions of a group of U.S. multinationals operating across 37 democratic countries between 1999-2020, they found that investment by foreign companies can drop by over 10 percent after the election of a populist government.
A strong country-level institutional framework can mitigate the negative effect of populist governments on business investment decisions by 23.2 percent. But this would imply a level of resistance to the disruption caused by populist leaders, instead of taking the path to appeasement through flattery.
In defence of candour
If the long-term impact of flattery is so negative – on the flatterer, the flattered, and the environment in which it’s taking place – there must be a better alternative. Perhaps it’s time to embrace the art of candour.
This is what Assistant Professor Karen MacMillan at Ivey Business School suggests. She argues that the “complement sandwich”, a tactic popularised in the 1980s to make criticism easier to digest, needs to be binned.
“Regularly starting with a compliment to ease into a critique quickly teaches people to be on high alert. They end up ignoring the positive and resenting the negative,” she says.
Instead of slipping every criticism between two positive statements, MacMillan offers a recipe for candour delivered with confidence and care.
- Start with a plan – know why you are giving criticism.
- Make it a dialogue – create space for the other person to share their perspective.
- Show you care about them as a person – offer criticism as a path to progress.
- End with an agreement – keep the momentum going.
- Treat feedback as a process – real change happens with consistent reinforcement.
MacMillan’s guidelines are aimed at everyday interactions between managers and employees, but the underlying principles have a much wider resonance.
Candidly charming
The November 2025 New York City mayoral election shows how such tactics can lead to success on a broader societal scale.
The winner, Zohran Mamdani, has been an outspoken critic of the U.S. President, as well as his closest rival in the election, Andrew Cuomo. Naturally, within the confines of an election, Mamdani can be expected to critique other candidates and, as a Democrat, the majority Republican federal government.
What has sparked commentary across the media is Mamdani’s subsequent meeting with Donald Trump, in which a reporter asked whether he stood by his statements that the U.S. President is a “fascist”. With the election won and the challenge of running a city ahead of him, one might have expected Mamdani to want the President’s ire off his back, leading to a diplomatic retraction of his former statements. But, before he could offer a full answer, Trump himself stepped in.
“Regularly starting with a compliment to ease into a critique quickly teaches people to be on high alert. They end up ignoring the positive and resenting the negative.”
– Karen MacMillan, Assistant Professor in Organisational Behaviour at Ivey Business School.
“That’s okay, you can just say yes,” he said. “It’s easier than explaining.”
Mamdani has since confirmed in an interview with NBC that he still believes this to be true. Instead of changing course or slathering the heavy criticism in layers of praise, the most overt deference Mamdani has shown so far is a polite smile and a respectful head tilt while Trump was speaking.
Surprisingly, Trump’s reception of Mamdani was a warm one. There are few critics the U.S. President has given express permission to call him a fascist to his face.
The televised meeting has sparked speculation as to how Mamdani was able to manoeuvre around a President so ideologically opposed to his own beliefs. Many theories have been proposed, including a Times of India editorial linking it to common conversational tactics in Desi culture when interacting with an older relative one has no intention of obeying.
Whether a result of his cultural heritage, political savvy, or personal charm, Mamdani’s approach to communication is consistently suggested as an important factor. His direct delivery style and candid criticism are combined with an ability to listen acutely and an emphasis on common goals. The last of these qualities was on full display in his meeting with Trump, as Mamdani spoke of their “shared admiration and love” for N.Y.C.
In other words, his candour is delivered with a purpose in mind, he can engage in dialogue, and he reinforces common ground with his political opponents. The result? Viral levels of success on social media and taking home around 50 percent of the votes in the mayoral election, becoming the city’s first ever Muslim mayor in the process.
The continued success of his political career is, as with all politicians, a matter of speculation. But, for the present, his meteoric rise in U.S. politics is testimony to the power of candour with care.
For those who still believe flattery is the surest path to success, in the words of Hamlet, “Lay not that flattering unction to your soul.”
By, Jamie Hose
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