“Balance praise and criticism – you must encourage your workers but not let it get to their heads!”
Ramesh* and I were colleagues at my first job. We had been given the responsibility of supervising the construction of one of the units of a large petroleum refinery complex. I was fairly inexperienced – a couple of years out of college. Whatever experience I did have, involved running simulations on a desktop computer. Supervising other people, was very new to me. Ramesh, on the other hand, was an experienced supervisor. He knew how to “control” and “get work out of” the construction crew.
Nobody uses language like that any more. We now know that you cannot control the people working with you and certainly don’t criticise them. You motivate them using feedback, rewards, recognition, development opportunities – and everything else that is part of the modern leader’s toolkit. But surely, praise is still good, right? Aren’t leaders supposed to balance positive and negative feedback?
Praise is a legitimate part of a leader’s tools of trade. However, even seasoned managers make the mistake of equating praise with positive feedback. This is equivalent to confusing criticism for corrective feedback. So, how is praise different from positive feedback?
Praise tends to be very spontaneous. You catch your team member doing something good, demonstrate a new skill, help a colleague, calm a furious customer down or otherwise impress you. It is very natural to say “That was awesome!” In doing so, you acknowledge that you appreciate their work. This has the benefit of making people feel good about themselves, which all good leaders aim for.
Praise can be directed at an individual – “You’re a saviour John!“, acknowledging that John has made life easier for you, perhaps in multiple ways or on multiple occasions. You value him for it. Praise can also be about a skill or behaviour or mastery of a process – “I love your infographics Divya!“. The latter type of praise (sometimes called process praise) is more effective than praising an individual (personal praise). However, it still does not make the cut as positive feedback.
Positive feedback is more than praise. It may start with praise (especially of the process variety), but it doesn’t stop there. Both praise and positive feedback need to be timely. While praise may be spontaneous, positive feedback is usually intentional.
What distinguishes positive feedback from praise is, that positive feedback:
Is very specific. In the example above, it is about a specific infographic, rather than about all of Divya’s infographics in general
Refers to the impact of a behaviour – “Your infographic on use of paid posts in social media to raise product awareness was great. It made it very easy for the marketing committee to understand why we were proposing an increase in our digital advertising budget. It made it easy for them to endorse our proposal”
Addresses the need for and benefits of continuing or further enhancing that skill or behaviour – for the individual and/or for the organisation. “Divya, if you continue to work on honing this skill, I see you progressing to a bigger role in our communications team. Keep it up!”. OR “Divya, I would like you to coach others on how to create impactful infographics. I see this as an effective way of making more successful proposals in the days ahead. Thank you!”
What are some of the other differences between praise and positive feedback? In your organisation, do leaders stop at praise or do they take the time to provide positive feedback?
*Names and context have been changed to ensure anonymity of the leader(s) involved while retaining the opportunity to draw insights and learn.
