The Employee Praise Primer: Dole it Out Carefully and Make It Count When You Do.

Since the feel good ‘80’s it’s been very fashionable for bosses to praise employees quickly and often.

You know what I’m talking about: “just catch your employees doing something right and let ‘em know you appreciate it!” Then beam like a proud mommy or daddy.

I say it’s a destructive leadership style.

Carried out to a facetious extreme, that dictum would have you, the boss, saying something like, “Gregg, I noticed when you came out of the rest room, you had washed your hands. I think that’s just great that you recognize the important of proper hygiene!”

Or….

“Jackie, you did a wonderful job collating these copies. The pages of the report follow one after another perfectly.”

It’s creepy and disingenuous.

And it’s not what employees want...or what spouses; significant others, students, kids or your friends want either. Shallow and quick praise hurts you more than saying nothing. It tells your employees you are more concerned appearing to be a good boss, than taking the trouble to actually be a good boss.

We all appreciate kind words when the praise demonstrates a unique understanding of what it takes to do a job well. The strong boss will go to the trouble to explain that she or he understands how the successful task has made a difference to the organization.

Here’s what I’m talking about:.

Sucky praise: “Hey Mike, great job on the Longstead project. You really rock!”

Powerful praise: “Hey Mike, I know how you really burned the midnight oil bringing the whole Longstead thing together. The customer back copied me on a lot of your e-mails, and I could see you were sending great updates past 7, 8 and 9’oclock at night, so they’d have new information from you first thing in the morning. They told me they think you rock. I told them I’m glad you are a part of my team.”

The sucky praise is kinda’ nice, at best, sorta’ insincere at worst. . The Powerful praise will have Mike working late time and time again because he knows exactly why it’s appreciated.

Next Posting: How to criticize. That’s right: criticize! (Please notice the word “constructive” is nowhere in sight!)