Acknowledgement (Stroking) for Difficult People
The people who cut others down are the ones most in need of encouragement — use it as sugar for the medicine.
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 85%
When someone is being difficult, Carter's first move is triage: decide how important this person actually is to your career. If they're not critical, draw boundaries, avoid them to the extent possible, and go on your way slaying your job every day. If they are critical and you need them on your side, she deploys a strategy she calls acknowledgement, or stroking. The insight is that people who are difficult and who cut other people down are most in need of encouragement. So you find something truthful you can acknowledge — never fabricate; she won't say 'Bob, you've always been a champion of gender equity' if it isn't true — and lead with it before raising the difficult subject. Something like: 'Bob, your opinion carries great weight around here, and when you speak positively of someone people really give that meaning.' A little acknowledgement up top is the sugar that delivers the medicine.
Origin
Carter developed it out of her work with women navigating coded workplace feedback and her broader recruit-don't-request philosophy — applied to the hardest case, someone actively working against you whom you can't avoid.
Core principles
- 01First decide how important this person actually is to your career.
- 02If they're not critical, draw boundaries and go on your way.
- 03If they are critical, recruit them rather than fight them.
- 04People who are difficult and cut others down are most in need of encouragement.
- 05The acknowledgement must be truthful — never fabricate a compliment.
- 06Acknowledgement is the sugar that delivers the medicine.
How to run it
- 1
Triage their importance
Decide how important this person actually is to your career. This determines whether you spend any energy here at all.
- 2
If not critical, draw boundaries
If the person using those words isn't critical to your career, just draw boundaries, avoid them to the extent possible, and go on your way slaying your job every day.
- 3
If critical, find a truthful acknowledgement
Locate something you can honestly say about them. It must be true — Carter refuses to tell Bob he's always been a champion of gender equity if he hasn't been.
Pro tip Look for what's real: 'your opinion carries great weight around here, and when you speak positively of someone people really give that meaning.'
Watch out A fabricated compliment is worse than no compliment. The strategy depends on the acknowledgement being truthful.
- 4
Lead with the acknowledgement, then raise the subject
Put a little acknowledgement up top, then bring the difficult subject: 'I'm here today because your good opinion means a lot to me personally and professionally, and so I want to raise this difficult subject with you to see how we might get to a place of understanding.'
Pro tip Acknowledgement is like sugar you use to deliver the medicine.
- 5
Frame resolution as mutual benefit
Close the frame around helping them and helping the company: 'so that I can help you better and I can help the company by getting to the place I want to be.' You're recruiting, not requesting.
In the wild
Carter's worked script for a critical-but-difficult colleague: she won't say 'Bob, you've always been a champion of gender equity in the office' if that's false. Instead: 'Bob, your opinion carries great weight around here, and when you speak positively of someone people really give that meaning. So I'm here today because your good opinion means a lot to me personally and professionally, and I want to raise this difficult subject with you to see how we might get to a place of understanding — so that I can help you better and help the company by getting to the place I want to be.'
→ The truthful acknowledgement up top opens a difficult conversation that a direct confrontation would have closed, and reframes it as recruitment onto your side.
Common mistakes
Fabricating the acknowledgement
Carter explicitly refuses to say something untrue to soften someone up. A false compliment is detectable and destroys the credibility the whole approach runs on.
Spending this energy on someone who doesn't matter
The triage step is first for a reason. If they're not critical to your career, boundaries and avoidance are the correct answer — not a recruitment campaign.
Is it for you?
Best for
People facing a hostile or dismissive colleague who is genuinely career-critical and cannot simply be routed around.
Not ideal for
People who aren't important to your career (just draw boundaries), or cases where no truthful acknowledgement exists to offer.
From the transcript
“the second thing i like to do in this kind of scenario is to decide how important this person is to my career”
“what i employ is a strategy that i call acknowledgement or stroking what that means is oftentimes people who are difficult and who cut other…”
“so a little bit of acknowledgement up top it's like sugar that you use to deliver the medicine”
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Alexandra Carter