This increases our credit for good taste, since it shows that we have learnt elsewhere to know what is excellent... Others do the opposite; they accompany their talk with a sneer, and fancy they flatter those present by belittling the absent... how cunning it is to speak ill of every one to every one else.
Baltasar Gracián, 1647 (tr. Joseph Jacobs, 1892)
Carrying genuine praise of absent people does several good things at once: it shows you can recognise excellence, which is itself a mark of taste; it gives the conversation something better than gossip; and it makes you the kind of person others feel safe around, because you clearly speak well of people when they are not in the room. The opposite habit, flattering whoever is present by running down whoever is absent, feels clever and backfires completely. The listener does the obvious arithmetic: a person who belittles the absent to please me will belittle me to please the next person. Speaking well of the missing is not naive niceness. It is the visible proof that you are safe to be absent around, which is worth more than any flattery you could offer to a face.
Practice
- Make a habit of bringing genuine praise of absent people into conversations; it raises them, you, and the room's whole register.
- Never flatter the present by belittling the absent; the listener correctly concludes you do the same to them elsewhere (maxim 125 keeps the register clean).
- When you must discuss an absent person's failing for real reasons, do it plainly and without relish; the sneer is the tell, not the content.
Use this when
- Use this constantly, in every professional and social setting; it is one of the cheapest and most compounding reputation habits available.
- Use it especially about rivals; genuine praise of a competitor marks you as secure and trustworthy at once (maxim 162 lets work do the rest).
Ignore this when
- Don't manufacture praise you do not mean; hollow flattery of the absent is detected as fast as the sneer it replaces.
- Don't extend it to covering up real wrongdoing; speaking well of people is not the same as shielding misconduct from legitimate scrutiny.
A picture of it
In a competitive office, one man is known for a particular grace: he speaks well of colleagues when they are not there, including the ones he competes with, and never trades in the corridor sport of running people down. Colleagues notice, without quite naming it, that they relax around him, because a person who praises the absent is safe to be absent around. His counterpart, always ready with a sharp aside about whoever just left, is entertaining and trusted by no one, because everyone has watched him do to others exactly what he will do to them. The praise cost nothing and bought the one thing the sneer can never buy.
Speak well of the absent. It is the proof, watched by everyone present, that you are safe to be absent around.