What to do with compliments?

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My current boss often compliments me and my work, and I'm never comfortable with it or understanding what to do with it. Since she compliments a lot of people, I am unable to tell if she's just good at recognizing her workers for doing well, or if she's team-building, or if she just does that to keep people feeling good enough to not (she hopes) burn out, or what. Often when she's complimenting me it's for things any normal worker willing to do any decent job is doing - not for me truly being outstanding, for example (unless her other workers are so pathetic I look fantastic by comparison - also a possibility as a few workers have told me to stop doing so much as it makes them look bad. But again, I'm just doing what should be done - nothing extraordinarily).

What are the signs or clues that would allow me to figure out what these compliments really mean?

I think of this as more of an encouragement to keep her employees motivated. Don't you feel better when you recieve compliments for doing a good job? I certainly do . I think it's just to tell them that they are doing a good job and to recieve recognition for working hard in the work place . I have often recieved compliments from my boss and all I do is say thank you. The compliments encourage me to keep doing what I'm doing and it makes me feel better to know my work is being recognised and that my boss appreciates what I do.

Agreed. Good post.

OP, I have just complimented Night_Shade917 because I thought his/her post was good. My motivation for doing this was to show that a) I agreed with his/her comments, and b) thought his/her comments were well articulated and deserved acknowledgement.

Actually I don't feel better after a compliment. To me they have the same depth of communication as "Have a nice day" - they're just throwaway word-sounds that people toss around for whatever reason. I do the work I will do no matter what my boss says, unless she gives me a different directive. And I'm always already very aware when I'm doing a good job and not, as I'm very self-motivating and results-evaluating. So "You do great work!" makes no difference to me, though "Process this type of paperwork before the others" would.

So maybe the problem is she's giving me a general compliment - "I appreciate all you do!" - which means nothing to me and doesn't affect anything I do or how I feel about myself or my work, versus giving me specific feedback I could do something with? Like maybe it would mean something to me if she said instead "I appreciate that you always get your state paperwork done before its due" - that would confirm for me that I'm doing something she finds of value.

Meanwhile, though, I'm still left with general compliments I guess I just say "thank you" to and then ignore.

I find it really annoying when a supervisor is excessively cheerful and encouraging.

But compliments are not a commodity, such that those of different people are interchangeable, quite the contrary they have to be valued very differently according to the patterns of use by the individual in question. There is a sort of "compliment inflation" that goes on in some cases, in the sense that frequency is a good guide to value although not the only measure.

Although it has been off-putting, you've obviously reached the point where you know enough about how this person uses compliments to accurately devalue them.

But once you've adjusted for personality they still have a reduced meaning you can learn to interpret. In this case they may at least mean that they don't think you're doing badly.

i use to hate compliments most of the time because they make me feel kinda wierd and awkward. but i have been practicing accepting them and being as gracious as possible and now i even enoy receiving them from time to time (as long as its not in front of a whole bunch of people then i still blush and am awkward)

Usually on receiving compliment, I will deflect them unless I know they are 100% sincere. When I know they are genuinely praising me, I utter something along the line of "mfenenen..." and look away, or down, which I have been told is not the best reaction. Uber-modesty can be as bad as being egotistical. As the OP said "I'm just doing what should be done", so thank me, but don't praise me.

With being praised by a boss, examine your own actions and compare them to the strictest interpretation of your role/assignment. If they exceed that, then the praise may be genuine. If everyone is complimented equally, or regardless of oustandingness, then assume it's meant to be motivational.