If at first they don't succeed
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It's been many years since my first child was learning to walk, but I still remember the excitement of it all. We cheered every move as Dave struggled to get up, stood up, fell down, tried, failed and finally walked.
We cheered every valiant attempt, every small bit of improvement and, finally, success. Why don't act the same with people at work?
Praise is a powerful tool, the most powerful one we have to get a person to try something new, or continue improving at something difficult. But we seem to withhold praise until performance is excellent. Sometimes we don't even praise then.
That's like waiting to praise that baby learning to walk until he or she wins an Olympic medal in track. It's stupid and counterproductive. Here are some tips for using praise effectively.
Don't wait for perfection. Praise effort. Laud improvement. Applaud small wins.
Catch people doing things right. Praise their work. Thank them for their effort and contribution.
Praise things that are praiseworthy. Don't tell a subordinate that he or she is doing well if it's not true. Don't call performance excellent when it's marginally acceptable.
Don't even praise everything that's good. Praise is most effective when it's delivered inconsistently. But there's plenty to praise out there, probably much more than you realize until you start looking.
Boss's Bottom Line
If at first they don't succeed, praise, praise again.
Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.
Categories: Supervision, Leadership
Tags: Leadership Supervision
Wally, I agree. We need more praise in the workplace. But I would disagree somewhat with the statement, "Praise is most effective when it's delivered inconsistently." Instead of "inconsistent", maybe you mean "intermittent". We should be consistent in our praise; that is, the same behavior should be praised over time. But praise has a stronger impact on behavior when it is not given every time the behavior occurs. Is that what you meant?
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Yes, Stephen, that is what I meant, but you said it more precisely and helpfully. Praise is more effective when it's not given every time the behavior occurs.
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Wally, so often we focus on feedback that we forget to tell employees what they are doing right. Today at work, we picked our sales and non-sell people of the month and displayed their picture on the wall as well as a couple of sentences about why they were chosen.
I bring this up because the non-sell associate chosen, does exemplary work when he is there, but has time and attendance issues. I thought it was important that we recognized the positive in him in order to inspire more of the desired behavior. Hopefully this sent a message that he is valued despite any difficulties. Miriam
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Thank you for sharing that, Miriam. I agree that it's important to reinforce the positive, but my initial reaction was "What message are we sending by choosing a person with "time and attendance issues" as person of the month?" There may be more to the story, but, in general, I'd prefer that the person's supervisor offer the praise where it's due and work on the issues, and see the larger award go to a person who doesn't have recurring behavior issues.
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Brilliant post again, Wally. An HBR study found: "Progress ranked No. 1 on the list of engagement factors related to performance."
But far too often we just recognize and praise end results. In many organizations where a project can take months to years from concept to launch, how do you motivate people in the middle? By praising progress!
More on this and the HBR study here: http://www.recognizethisblog.com/?p=438
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Thanks for the kind words and the pointer, Derek.
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I was taught when training horses always to reward the try. If you can recognize and praise even the smallest effort you can cut your training time in half.
From the human perspective I would like to add that praise is always more effective if it is specific. A specific description of the action or behaviour you are referring to is more meaningful than a general "good job."
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Great points, Laura, thanks. Praising effort is truly powerful, especially when you can also praise progress. I recently had a coaching client where the mix showed up. My challenge was to help him improve performance in a particular area. First we identified the key things he needed to do each day to generate improvement, but, as with many situations like this, there was a delay between the behavior change and the performance improvement. In this case it was almost two months before we saw the uptick we were after. In the meantime, my job was to review things weekly, check the logs we agreed he would keep, and encourage him by praising effort. When the performance improvement manifested, I could praise the performance, but also draw a clear link to the behavior that generated it, reinforcing the importance of the behavior.
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Thanks. This is something we all could benefit from remembering.
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Thanks, John
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