Praise Based Leadership

CategoryLeadershipPatterns: Praise Based Leadership

Often, the easiest way to make people behave a particular way is: when they do it, make them feel good for having done it, and they'll do it again. (The opposite--punishment--works less well. It discourages one from doing something again, but it also lessens your credibility and influence, and makes the person less likely to do much of anything anymore.)

In kindergarten, we learn: Be quick to praise, slow to criticize. That works for little kids; I think it works for big kids (i.e., adults) too. You want to know when you've done well. You want to know that other people recognize that you've done well.

I think well applied praise is key to cultivating an environment in which knowledge workers thrive.

-- BobbyWoolf, 08/26/00

For a dissenting opinion, try reading PunishedByRewards? by AlfieKohn? (ISBN 0618001816 ). His argument is that reliance on external motivation destroys internal motivation. Instead of attempting to do a good job for its own sake, we teach people to do the minimum to get the praise. --WayneMack

I read this book and liked it, though afterwards I read his Harvard Business Review article on the same subject ("Why Incentive Plans Cannot Work") and find it gives a very good summary of what's in the book: http://www.sosu.edu/faculty/cvonbergen/Incentives.pdf

I just went to Amazon to look up that book, and clicked on one of the buttons which rated a review as useful or not. Amazon said back to me: *** Thanks for the valuable feedback you've provided. We're constantly looking to improve our store, and your help is greatly appreciated! *** which seems to be a good example of what Alfie is talking about :-).

I listen to the Benjamins. They tell me how I'm doing. All of them, together. --PhlIp

In PunishedByRewards? wasn't it more that rewards ruined internal motivation for things you like to do? How about motivation for a job that often you don't want to do in the first place? Not getting feedback for something you dislike doing is even more demotivating. --oogoody

I believe you have answered your own question. If you are doing a task only to receive praise, then what happens when the praise goes away? Do you really believe someone should follow you around and tell you "Great job!" every time you do something you would prefer not to? Also, do not confuse praise with having a pleasent work environment. If your boss does not communicate with you on a regular basis, it is dysfunctional to do special things to get "praise." --WayneMack

I like my praise in the form of cash. I expect, and get, regular praise, once a month, via direct deposit. You can be damn sure that if I stopped getting this praise, I'd stop doing the things I don't want to do.

Someone might want to contrast with the AntiPattern "ManagementByWalkingAway".

I think it depends on your personality. I quickly get uncomfortable when I think I am being praised too much. If I know that something is important then I don't need much encouragement to do it. But other people need more praise. If your people need praise, give it to them! Especially if you are someone like me who tends not to need much praise, because you will be likely not to give enough. -- RalphJohnson

The kind of praise matters too. What you are trying to do is to start a postitive feedback loop within the person that you are praising. If you can get them to make themselves feel good everytime that do the right thing then they'll keep doing it even when you aren't around. The key to doing that is to get them to see for themselves that they've done a good job. You can do that by describing what they've done in positive terms or (even better) get them to describe what they've done. Point out the positive qualities that they displayed in order to get the job done. Seeing that you are good at exemplifying your own values is a strong motivator. -- PhilGoodwin

I don't like the notion of praise; to me it seems artificial and a little unwholesome. I like appreciation better. I can tell someone how I feel about their (good) work, and hope they feel good about that. That's about it. If that doesn't work, then the chemistry is wrong. I can never "make someone feel good", because I can't predict how they will receive my words. And I don't want to be in that business.

My experience as a manager is that praise is dicey, especially so with engineers, where it can often be taken as condescending, manipulative, overly personal, or phoney - no matter how well intended. I agree that appreciation is better, especially when the appreciation authentically ties the meaning the engineer makes from the work to the importance of the work to the business. Getting meaning from work is pretty important to people, and participating in that meaning-making is an important part of managing. On the other hand, an exuberant high-5 celebrating success is fun, and works because of its well-understood parallel context in sports. Since writing the preceding words several months ago, I had an experience giving appreciation to each member of a team at a team meeting. This particular team has been having some problems and I wanted to show the team lead and her team members how positively I felt about their contributions. I expressed great appreciation to each in turn for the unique and important aspects of their work in developing a new technology, specifically tying their individual work on the technology to the organization's future. This kind of public regard can help change the way people look at their work and help them to construct a more positive view of the social aspects of work. My hope is that they will from time to time give each other these kinds of regards - it will mean far more coming from a technical peer than from a boss.By the way, appreciation should always be expressed to a person directly, not about a person. -- DaveVanBuren

The idea of getting people to feel good every time they do good leaves me wondering whose yardstick is being used to measure goodness. If it's mine, then an appreciation does the trick. But if it's something else, then I would't know how to guide them in that. If positive feedback means a system you can eventually step away from because it runs itself, I'm not convinced. That strikes me a little like giving someone a lifetime of birthday money and saying "go get yourself some great presents". It fails by failing to connect.

The biggest challenge I've found with a praise (or appreciation) based reward system is that things can be so bad that there's nothing to appreciate. Hopefully this would be an inherited situation, not one we created for ourselves. What I'm saying is that when I'm genuinely and profoundly disappointed, there's very little room in which to move. Others may disagree, but I feel it's better not to fake it. -- WaldenMathews

I was once threatened with physical violence after complementing a coworker on his work. I'll never know what he found to be offensive in what I said. Praise certainly isn't a sure fire bet.

I am around children a great deal and they are who I was thinking about when I mentioned creating a positive feedback loop. Recognising and feeling good about one's accomplishments is an essential skill. I want children to grow into having the ability to control their own behavior based on their values. In order for that to happen their reward system has to be largely internalized. It should never be completely self supporting (otherwise they wouldn't be able to continue learning from social cues), but it should be pretty strong. I think that the same holds true for adults to a lesser extent.

It is important to be able to see the positives in a situation even if it is overwelmingly disappointing. Often this is the first step toward salvaging what is salvagable. It can also be an important part of dealing with other people. You don't pretend that there's nothing wrong, you just notice and comment on the good as well as the bad. For instance, my daughter is in a stage where she often overestimates her ability to do things and ignores us when we ask her to let us help her. When I scold her for her defiance and the trouble it causes I make a point of mentioning her initiative, competence and independance. That seems to help keep things in perspective and allows us to focus on the real issues instead of having a power struggle. -- PhilGoodwin

I think I remember a Mary Tyler Moore episode in which Ted Baxter says "That's the cruelest thing you've ever done to me, Lou", after Lou Grant just paid him the only sincere compliment of their entire relationship. Maybe your violent case was also too far gone in need of a kind word.

I think internalizing rules and values is the natural outcome of a consistently applied system of rewards, and a consistently applied system of rewards is a matter of having a consistent value system and expressing it. I sometimes pay a vague compliment "Nice!" to my 7-year old son, and his response is almost predictably "What?", meaning he wants to know exactly what it was I liked. I agree about the value of internalizing, but it seems so obvious and automatic it's not worth mentioning. Unless I'm missing something.

There are cases (employees) where reward by pat on the back won't help, and I guess that's what I wanted to bring out above. Not that it's not worth trying for a while. I'm talking about the kind of person who takes a single minor compliment and construes it as meaning he walks on water in all respects, and still doesn't listen to negative criticism at all. I can think of a couple of these who worked for me. One of them was fired. The other one was the reason I quit. -- WaldenMathews

Is there any kind of difference between praising the person or praising the work? --RogerLipscombe

Maybe. Can you elaborate?

I'll take a stab at this: praising the person is rarely done to their face and involves praising the qualities of the person themselves (he's a hard worker, she writes extremely clean code, etc). Praising the work is different because it says you like what was done independantly of who did it. Maybe praising the work is the better way to go because it shows others that you are interested in the product and that they too can achieve that. Praising people can be treacherous ground as it may be seen as favouritism (if the person consistently does good work). Of course, I suppose that consistently praising one person's good work could be just as problematic...

Why isn't personal praise done to the person's face? Is there something wrong with being interested in a person beyond the products they can create?

I sometimes find that if someone praises me, that they can come across as insincere, and I find it insulting. On the other hand, if they praise my work on its merits, this tends to happen less.

Also, I'd have to agree that praising a person can alienate other people - the other people have nothing concrete to judge me on - I might be brown-nosing, or maybe they just missed something.

Praising my work gives people a definite benchmark - people know that they have to emulate that, or they'll know that I have been brown-nosing if my work is crap. --RogerLipscombe

Why is insincere praise aimed at a product less of a problem than the same aimed at a person? Doesn't praising products force people to compete against each other, rather than to develop their capability regardless of whom they are better or worse than?

I think praising a person instead of the product fails to come off as sincere because you provide no justification for the praise. Instead, when you praise the work, you at least have some tangible cause for the praise. Then again, when a manager constantly says, "Good work!" to me, I will quit my job because I can tell that no one is really paying attention to what I'm doing. (*) When you praise, you need to be specific. Even something as simple as "Good work! That's such an elegant hack," shows that you at least know what you are praising. Otherwise, it's just lip service and insincere.

(*) When I was working at ObjectTechnologyInternational/Ottawa as a student, I essentially did nothing for four months. Students were treated as beneath contempt there, even going so far as (punitively? or just incompetently?) transferring experienced student developers who appealed to HR to quality assurance/release to run through slide after slide of the mindnumbing Java compliance tests. I was verbally abused and put in an office by myself. I was given the equivalent of school assignments the output of which I knew they weren't going to actually use. So, I didn't work very hard. My only sense of work-related joy was actively trolling my abusive technical lead just to rile him up. At the end of the term, my manager (not the technical lead), who was absent for most of my workterm, gave me an "Outstanding" review. Considering that I had received an "Outstanding" at my previous employer, where I had managed the team from the bottom up (i.e. I took initiative where management was distracted), negotiated customer contracts, and did some nice coding to boot, this "Outstanding" was rather weak. I was really insulted. But considering the emotionally unintelligent environment I witnessed at OTI/Ottawa, it's not surprising. -- SunirShah

I think you also need to show the ability to criticize negatively (or even objectively) to create contrast between praise and the baseline. Leaders who are incapable of seeing wrong aren't leading, but following. You can't drive a car if you only steer to the right. -- SunirShah

When someone's buttering you up, look behind you for the frying pan.

One thing which is making me stammer is the nearly consistant implication that praise comes across as somehow natively false, insincere, or hollow.

I feel that not enough credit is being given to the insight of the person being praised. If you're praising them in order to keep them happy, it simply *is* insincere. Praise should come when and only when it is deserved. It should be brief, and neither lavish nor elaborate. It's far easier to swallow "wow, that's a pretty slick hack" than "this portion of code is tight and elegant, and I want you to realize that I feel you're a good programmer."

If you want something not to sound like it's made from plastic, don't make a mould and spin one out whenever you feel Praise Is Due (tm). Just be human, and try not to starch your statements. If you want someone to feel happy at work, don't find something to praise, just go talk to them. Being friends with your subordinates is usually praise enough for any but the most self-conscious of workers; they know from your asking even unrelated opinions that you value their input and beliefs, and that's usually all that they want - to know that they're not just another cubicle monkey.

Praise should be held for when it comes of its own accord. That way, it won't seem like a reward, but rather like something genuine. You need praise as a gauge of your effectiveness; this is why praise as reward is often offensive. -- JohnOrder

One of the best things my current manager did for our last project was praise everyone to each other in individual chats about our roles prior to starting to work together. It got me excited to work with/under our informal team lead, who I might have otherwise disregarded, but who in fact did have some great technical skills (and generally turned out to be a smart and fun person to work with). I think it helped us trust each other and recognize each other's skills to gel as a team quicker (we don't do pair programming formally, but we definitely work as a team- pairing when someone gets stuck (and yelping quickly when we're stuck rather than wasting time or implementing ugly hacks), chat/whiteboard about design decisions, definitely have collective code ownership and shared responsibility for writing tests/fixing failures, and choose our tasks from a shared task/bug list). Without the initial praise of our manager to each other, we probably wouldn't have been able to ramp up as quickly and delegate appropriately and know where to go for help. Similarly, I think its helpful when managers with existing client relationships introduce you to clients in a positive manner ("she helped out in delivering ____, and now is doing great work with the ___ team"), both for a positive relationship with the client, and it just feels good to be recognized for legitimate contributions.

On the other hand, I agree that direct praise to myself about myself can be uncomfortable and not helpful if done too formally or insincerely (i.e. positive performance reviews). I do appreciate praise/reassurance mixed with advice when I'm doing something new or that I'm insecure about, and praising the team as a whole in team meetings is useful when outside forces/ unrealistic deadlines are causing stress and low morale. Anyway, sincere appreciation for everyone's contributions (and speedy removal of those who aren't contributing) I think is very useful, though the focus should be more on understanding what makes each team member valuable (and then tasking them appropriately to maximize their strengths and improve their weaknesses) than on just walking around handing out vague praise. --Ami

This is a hot topic in the spring of 2007 on account of an article in The Wall Street Journal.

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