Maya Angelou: How You Made Them Feel

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

-Maya Angelou

This quote is often attributed to famous poet and civil rights activist, Maya Angelou, but like many quotes or ancient wisdom, the origin story is debatable. For now, Google’s tailwind seems to favor Maya Angelou’s strong brand over the competition, so let’s run with this.

Regardless of who (all) might have penned it, it’s a gem.

What matters most in your daily interactions isn’t so much the specific actions you take or the words you say that people remember most, but how someone was made to feel: listened to or ignored, included or left out, amused or exhausted, or big instead of small. This is the essence of it. 

What’s more, the feelings you elicit in others last—or linger—surprisingly long. That’s just how we’re wired. So you should keep in mind the long-term implications of how you made them feel because, this way, you won’t be constantly playing from behind.

First Impressions and Feelings That Last...or Linger

Perhaps the best example of how you made them feel comes from first impressions and their downstream implications, where a good first impression lasts, and a bad one takes bleach and an open flame to witch away. 

Lasting first impressions: There are many ways you can genuinely make someone else feel good about themselves, thus making a lasting impression. For example: being prepared, asking questions about them and theirs, remembering and using names, giving genuine compliments, being generous in conversation, and avoiding reflexive pessimism, etc. (You could also read or listen to Never Split the Difference by former FBI Hostage Negotiator Chris Voss for even more nuance) All these behaviors tend to be remembered favorably, which is a tailwind down the road. 

But first impressions can go differently.

Lingering first impressions: With first impressions, there are many unambiguous ways you could leave a bad taste in someone’s mouth, perhaps by forgetting names constantly, interrupting too often mid sentences, or glancing frequently at the phone. But if you’re making these mistakes, a quote isn’t the antidote.

Then, there are the more nuanced set of errors, where how you made them feel becomes a very helpful way for you to think through the more subtle points of first impressions.

For example, most people don’t like it when someone else one-ups their vacation story to the lake by pointing out that they flew to Hawaii, hijacks a back-and-forth dialogue and turns it into conversational keep-away, acts like a know-it-all under the banner of “being helpful”, or just commits too many word crimes.

This second set of conversation crimes, less heinous than the first, violate what we desire in our interactions: that they be generous, equitable, and enjoyable. And bitter tastes aren’t soon forgotten.

Because bad first impressions can take a while to undo, these lingering negative thoughts and feelings can act as a anchor, potentially holding you back in social, business, or work opportunities.

Make Lasting Impressions: Good first impressions are uplifting, congenial, and they’re enjoyable to be a part of. You’ll be remembered. You’ll be more approachable. You’ll be invited to parties. Your future will be better. 

But first impressions are just one way to think about this wisdom.

The Halo Effect

Why is it that attractive people tend to get more chances? Why do coworkers tend to get appraised with higher skills, just for happening to work on favorable projects? 

These tendencies stem from a bias, or structured cognitive error we possess, called the Halo Effect.

“The Halo Effect is the name given to the phenomenon whereby evaluators tend to be influenced by their previous judgments of performance or personality.” - Ann Bethel

The Halo Effect is a sub pattern of anchoring effect, described by Israeli Psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in their Nobel Prize winning work. The psychologists found that people tend to bias their decisions on “anchors” based on prior information—in the most ludicrous cases, even if the information was entirely irrelevant. Then, the judgments we later make end up being small increments upward or downward from some prior informational anchor.

And so, the Halo Effect is the reason attractive people’s ideas (perhaps those in Sales) can be appraised higher or the reason why people who work happen to work on successful projects (or teams) tend to have their own skills appraised higher than they otherwise might be.

Decision-makers, which includes you, can have a hard time disentangling one person’s skills and specific contributions from everything else that has happened. They’re too intertwined. Both the attractive person and the lucky coworker benefit from their halos, which color them favorably.

The Halo Effect also describes part of the reason why someone’s past judgments, like how they were made to feel, can last or linger. And so, halos help shape future judgments by nudging one’s decision-making, in thus-n-thus way.

If all this feels like too much fuzzy thinking, that’s because it is. But that’s also the point—there’s a lot of fuzzy thinking out there.

Decision-makers, which includes you, have only so much time in the day and cognitive resources available. We’re routinely left using mental rules-of-thumb or feelings to make decisions. That’s just how the world turns.

The Halo Effect and How You Made them Feel

In relationships, why not forge a lasting halo? 

Wearing the gift that keeps on giving, you’ll increase your luck surface area. You’ll be less hindered, you’ll be less nit-picked, and you’ll become a victor of your own successes. Keeping in mind how you made them feel increases the odds you’ll find luck.

But if you’re burdened by an unfavorable halo, it will prevent others from hearing you out, lead to less opportunities, and act as a barrier to progress as everyone else won’t exactly be singing your praises. A bad halo is a drag. 

In Short

Maybe Maya Angelou originated this quote, or perhaps that’s merely poetic truth.

Nonetheless, how you made them feel is a helpful framework for you to think through the nuance of what’s really going on during your daily interactions (which also help shape the future).

You get what you give, and you get more when you give more, so how will you make someone feel?

Author’s Note

Because we’re intellectually wired one way, and emotionally another, one helpful conversational mental framework for me has been thinking about the “Two-Yous” dynamic, when having a conversation. (Ray Dalio mentions this idea in his book Principles.)

The “Two-Yous” is a mental model that represents your emotional and rational dimensions, simultaneously at play with interactions. It can be thought of through using various dichotomies: the IQ vs EQ (intellectual “you” vs emotional “you”), the higher level you vs the lower level you, the heart vs the brain, Spock vs Kirk, or however else history casts the duality. When communicating, it’s helpful to consider which “you” you’re really addressing in a particular moment. This can help illuminate that there’s often a “game behind the game”.

“The empathic position is not, ‘I know how you feel’, but rather, ‘I don’t know how you feel.’”

- Sherry Turkle

Said differently: to comprehend is to equalize*.

“More than what you said or did, people remember how you made them feel.”

-Author’s preferred version of the quote

*Paraphrased Honore Balzac