The 5 star thing is true. I've had a few colleagues who (in a metaphorical sense) always give 5 stars. It's actually quite infuriating - everything is good, so nothing can be better. It's much better to have a frank and critical conversation about something, with the shared goal of improvement.
Interesting perspective. Personally, I would find effusive praise of that kind profoundly weird, and uncomfortable, because it doesn't fit into the framework of mostly male-male communication I'm used to(relatively traditional, tinged with some ex-military vibes). In large part, the sign of doing a good job is the absence of criticism. Since you could almost always improve on your performance, there tends to always be some level of criticism.
Maybe I'm weird, but external validation doesn't really push any of my buttons. If you think I really did a great job, give me a bonus, or an extra day or two of vacation. Otherwise, I've got work to do.
Positive feedback is great in reinforcing good behavior, for sure. I think the difference is when positive feedback about a coworker is directed towards management which, since there's an adversarial nature underlying most workplaces, you are acting as someone else's public relations spokesperson for free. I'm not saying that people should never point out the excellence of their coworkers to management; what I'm saying is that the mechanics of the workplace make this behavior rare and simply not worth the effort in most cases. The safest thought pattern for one's sanity is to give praise, but never expect that praise to be reciprocated.
In my job, my boss expects everything to be fantstic, for him 'good' simply won't do and he tells me so every day, but occasionally you have to push something which is merely 'good'.
It can be a downer, but when I do 'fantastic' I know I've deserved the praise which is a massive moral boost.
I don't think this is true in general (though it might be so in the field you are working in). I've received many constructive comments from colleagues, and this has often lead to subsequent collaboration.
2. Leading with thoughtful praise is probably necessary when making a negative comment if you don't already have a trusting relationship. If it is reasonable for the other person to think you are just armchair-quarterbacking and don't actually understand their problem, you need to demonstrate otherwise first, and voicing appreciation for things that they have done is one way to do so.
3. If a manager hasn't already established this relationship with their direct reports, then there are probably other problems (unless it's someone new on the team)
4. Having to do this every time will eventually lead to idle flattery or non-sequitur comments just because things don't always happen in a nice 2:1 ratio of good to bad.
> Like others have said, effect of praise would be very specific to individuals, but some have said praise hasn't helped them much.
My understanding is that they were mostly referring to "fake" / superfluous praise, which I too respond quite badly to. But I think there's a big range between that kind of praise and no praise at all. Personally for me (and my guess is that for many people), if no matter how hard I work that's never acknowledged and I always get suggestions for improvement, that would create frustration and a feeling of unreasonable expectations from the company.
There's a coaching philosophy that says to never praise unconditionally; rather every piece of praise should be followed with a criticism.
I suppose this is theoretically a good practice, but only if you're already operating in a high-trust environment. If you're not, it starts to feel like you're never good enough, because absolutely every victory, no matter how big or small, is followed up with "but it could be better...". Which is, again technically accurate, but part of the finesse of being a good people-manager is understanding that humans are not robots who can simply process and accept criticism without any emotional hangups.
I think the fact that you must "praise" a colleague once every two weeks makes the whole thing pointless and fake.
Other people might disagree.
I like to praise people directly, when they've done something clever, good, or difficult. I'm happy to say to higher-ups "[My colleage] David did an awesome job on this recent project". But writing that for the whole company to see just seems .. weird.
While I really like the sentiment, I think there's a reason why people naturally don't provide much positive feedback about individuals at workplaces.
What do you really get by pointing out the good work of a coworker? A warm fuzzy feeling, to be sure. Maybe greater comradeship. But wait, who's the next person to get a promotion? Maybe it'll be the person you keep praising to management. So you'll probably have to work smarter/harder to get that same praise, hence the same chances at promotion. But you don't want to work that much harder; you're already working hard enough as it is. But that 5% raise and that "senior" title look pretty shiny. <one year later> Hey, how come nobody has been recognizing you for your good work? Meanwhile that coworker you've been praising is now your boss!
> But letting the praise stand alone can encourage them to think that everything they do is outstanding. Connect your positive comments to other things you want them to address. For example, you could say, “Now that you’ve done so well with the ABC presentation, for the next one, I’d like you to also [do the next thing they need to improve].
If I haven’t heard that a thousand times. Nothing kills my productivity more than a insincere “good job” while also being handed more work.
No, the point is that praise is better, but appears to be worse because you praise exceptional performance and people are unlikely to repeat or exceed that exceptional performance right away.
This is why it helps to have one or two colleagues you really respect, who really respect you. If you're confident that they're very good, then if they think you're good too, you must be good, right?
I find this satisfies my need for the approval of others, while being much safer than looking for the approval of a dozen, hundred, or ten thousand readers or users.
In the culture of prefacing every simple question with empty praise, then all praise becomes an empty formality. It's far worse than receiving a simple "good work" after the job is done. If you have to choose between the two instead of finding some reasonable middle-ground, then you should choose the one that entails treating your coworkers like professional adults instead of emotionally sensitive children.
I don't know how healthy this is but: I haven't run into many people who are harder on my work than I am.
I have an attitude that there's absolutely nothing I do that can't be improved. This may sound miserable on the surface, but for me it's actually quite freeing. It has the effect of making it easier to accept that things aren't actually going to be perfect (so it can help avoid the trap of over-engineering) and at the same time, it makes it much easier to have productive conversations with co-workers about what to improve/delete/rework because the existing product is something that could be better.
The other thing to think about, IMO, is that that PR comment, snarky or not, was something someone put the time in to come up with. For you. It's a gift. I've worked in places where getting any kind of PR comment beyond "approved" or "Fix your indenting" was an uphill battle. So getting a comment from a colleague that is meant to a) help make you better at what you do and b) help you both create something you can be proud of, is massively positive. It took time and effort for them to read what you did and think of a way to make it better.
Much modern management theory recommends against the praise-criticize-praise format, FWIW -- I noticed this while I was taking a required management course at the Mouse. Everyone knows what it is, so you wind up dissipating the value of the praise because it feels like something that you're just saying for the sake of the formula.
This comment is fairly irrelevant to the topic at hand.
Good question :-) You start by remembering that a lot of people have constant praise - they bought a new Thing™? "Well done you!" Say their friends. Or "You look sensational today!" Or whatever it is. Hyper-positive praise is very common, and any hint of anything else may well be jarring.
Any improvement suggestions might need to either get thrown in the bin (even if they're valid and simple) or filtered through their manager, or have a guided conversation so they think they came up with it.
It just depends on the person and your relationship with them, really.
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