One of the hardest lessons I’ve ever had to learn is how to graciously receive. Today I’m asking you to learn it faster than I did. Because your heart will rejoice, your shoulders will lift, and you will stand so much stronger in your own skin. Don’t be like me. Please don’t be like me.  

Accepting compliments was never my thing. You look great. Fabulous hair. Strong performance today. Each one landed with equal parts pride, derision, and incredulity. (The pride always got smacked down by the other two.) But the saddest moments? Those were when someone tried to compliment my professional worth.  

I was nearly fifty years old, shaking hands with around 130 people on my last day. Nearly everyone cried on my shoulder. Nearly everyone looked at me with something approaching horror and asked, “Who’s going to have my back?”  

I thought it was the most selfish thing I’d ever heard. Crying and wailing about their own problem, while I was the one walking out the door. Not one thank you. Not one we had some fun, eh? Not one great job, kiddo. Just tears, and what I decided was a very self-absorbed view of their own backs.   It took me fifteen years to understand what they were actually saying.  

Fifteen years. DUH.  

They didn’t have the words. Nobody does, really. They were standing in front of the person who had championed them, fought for them, and shown up for them. And the best language they could find was who’s going to have my back? That was the compliment. That was the gratitude. I just didn’t know how to hear it.  

Recently, I received a handwritten note from someone I’d known maybe fifteen years ago. Completely out of the blue. Extremely complimentary, clearly written, straight from her heart. She wrote about how I care, how I inspire, and how I am a true example of servant leadership.  

My first reaction? Ewww. I bow to no one. Servant leader? Hard pass.  

But I sat with her note long enough to realize something important. When someone speaks or writes from their heart, their words will never perfectly convey what they feel. Their words convey their feelings, shaped by their experience of you. The job isn’t to critique their vocabulary. The job is to receive the feeling underneath it.  

So I accepted the “mundaneness” of care and servant and let the warmth of what she actually meant wash over me.  

Last week, a client sent me a note written in words I use myself. That caught me completely off guard. Genuine Care. Psychologically Safe. Held in Trust. Non-judgmental. There in black and white. Describing me and my process in my own language. I had no excuse to deflect. So I didn’t. I lowered my guard. And then drank in the four (!) decades of compliments I had been quietly withholding from myself.  

And sitting with those four phrases, I finally understood something I’d never quite articulated before. Genuine Care. Psychologically Safe. Held in Trust. Non-judgmental. These are not glossy marketing words. They don’t sell services. They describe the person selling the services. You can’t put them on a website header or a capabilities deck. The only place they legitimately live is in a testimonial. Written by someone else, about you, from their own experience. Which means the only way to earn them is to actually BE them.  

No wonder I’d been discounting compliments built on words like these. Soft words, like soft skills, never lead the line. They don’t close deals. They don’t make the shortlist. We’ve spent decades being told to lean on credentials, methodologies, and frameworks. Anything that sounds rigorous and measurable. The warm stuff gets shuffled to the back.  

But something is shifting these days. Leaders are waking up to the reality that soft skills aren’t supplementary. They’re foundational. And if soft skills are finally getting their due, maybe soft words are next. Maybe genuine care and being held in trust will one day be the differentiator, not the footnote.  

My podcast guest this week is already living in that future. She uses those soft words constantly and to tremendous effect. Rashmir shares some of her own hard-won lessons. Ideas she’s had to unlearn, frameworks she’s building from scratch, and a process that simultaneously engages and challenges our most ingrained leadership instincts. Her accent is delightful. Her ideas are genuinely provocative. I think you’ll want to hear this one.