One of the descriptions I find most confusing is, when people use the word amazing to describe an experience, place, or person. It’s confusing as I rarely can imagine what it is they are describing and very often I can’t relate to their experience, for example, when they show me the place. In a way it also makes me feel somewhat stupid.
But actually, the word amazing most often is a generalization. If so, it is also laziness as well as most certainly anxiety.
Whenever asking members of a team to name who they appreciate most while describing why that is so, people will hesitate. Their first thought will often be, that if they nominate someone, the others will feel left out. Appreciation is then understood as reducing all those who were not nominated. What is missed, is how an individual may appreciate a specific attitude or behavior because of something dear to them. And that this is independent of all the competencies that may be relevant to achieving a task. Expressing such an appreciation then becomes the anxiety that having done so will disappoint others. It is the anxiety that appreciating one person may lead to being disliked by others.
In essence, it is a lack of clarity. The individuals didn’t make themselves aware of what it is that they appreciate and what it is that the other person does well in their relationship. They stay with the emotional appreciation of “I like that person” or “that person is amazing.”
It is hard work to see what it is of themselves that reacts to the other or what it is that the other does that is helpful for them. Not doing it to be able to appreciate others means that behaviors they dislike or trigger them will be just as difficult to name. It leads to finding themselves somewhat helpless whenever they don’t understand behavior or find themselves triggered by it.
It pays to search for clarity.
After a while, everyone in the team will know what they are appreciated for and will have a better insight into what it is others don’t know how to deal with. And once this is known, it becomes easier to adjust to one another.
