The best compliment isn’t “you’re talented.” It’s “can you show me how you did that?”

There are two kinds of praise and they point in opposite directions. Being called talented closes the subject, because it treats the result as something you were issued rather than something you built, and leaves nothing to discuss. Being asked how you did it treats the thing as a method that can be learned, which is both truer and far more useful to you. One ends a conversation and the other starts one.

Try giving the second kind this week. Ask somebody how they did the thing, specifically, and listen to the whole answer. Then notice how differently it lands when somebody asks you.