Good bosses are easy to spot. They want to make their staff look good. The greatest pride they can get is developing the skills of their staff and watching them become successful over the years.
Bad bosses are also easy to spot. They view their staff as slave labor and want to make themselves look good.
I have had both over the years. If you are a skilled observer you can usually tell who is who within one minute.
Even more, I think, and I also think from the content of your post, you will get my appraisal of this:
You can tell a lot about the character of a superior, by the way that they praise you or say thank you.
I saw it in the military for the first time in my life as a young man, and I was fascinated in the way that nearly all the men around me had it too, and were much in tune with the way mine saw it.
When you did a good job, flew a bunch of sorties, or had the cleanest area in an inspection, you would largely get two types of “thank you” categories that left an impression on you:
The ones who came in, looked at you and your mates, and said “Good Job! Thank you for your effort!” then they would turn around and go on to something else. It was such a fake thank you, that you realized they didn’t have the character to say a genuine thank you-they were only saying thank you to you because it was something they were expected to do.
When they walked away, you could not only hear grumbles like “Boy, that guy’s a piece of work...”, but you could just see it in everyone’s face when your eyes met.
That was the first kind of “thank you” that leaves an impression.
The second kind of thank you category that leaves an impression on you is typified by the the ones who came, looked at you and your mates, and you just knew he was going to say something, so you stopped and paid attention. He didn’t need someone calling out when he came in, and when you saw him, you paid attention. When he said thank you, he meant it, and you knew he did.
Of course, those guys were leaders. And you realized that if you paid attention, you could spot phonies a mile away.
But the good side of that was, that you could also spot leaders a mile away. And I have always felt, in all walks of life, it is valuable (and, yes, fun) to spot those people and ally with them, whether in or out of work. If you can, you become friends with them. And if not, you can still gravitate to them and pay attention.
I have met some just wonderful people in this life because I saw something in them I liked.
Perhaps it was simply: “Quality”.
But I think it was simply: Sincerity.
Or even more specifically: Authenticity.
Authenticity is equivalent to Truth in many ways, and to me (and many others) when you feel in your heart that what you see is what you get.
And when you look at Trump, you get: Authenticity.
When you look at Biden-or Harris, you get: Whatever is diametrically opposed to Authencity.
In this case we discussed, in the end, this is why I completely agree with you: Because you can spot it quickly instinctively, and almost aways pretty accurately. And those around you did too.