About absorbing compliments really well, there is the widely discussed idea that one in a position of power loses the privilege to the truth. There are a few articles focusing on this problem on corporate environment. The concept is that when your peers have the motivation to be flattery (let's say you're in a managerial position), and more importantly, they're are punished for coming to you with problems, the reward mechanism in this environment promotes a disconnect between leader expectations and reality. That matches my experience at least. And I was able to identify this correlates well, the more aware my leadership was of this phenomenon, and the more they valued true knowledge and incremental development, easier it was to make progress, and more we saw them as someone to rely on. Some of those the felt they were prestigious and had the obligation to assert dominance, being abusive etc, were seeing with no respect by basically no one.

Everyone will say they seek truth, knowledge, honesty, while wanting desperately to ascend to a position that will take all of those things from us!