Can You Give Too Much Praise?
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Apr 10, 2012
Last week there was a post on a blog written by a guy named Dan McCarthy titled 5 Myths About Giving Praise. His main premise was that employers always feel they're giving enough or too much praise to begin with, while employees consistently report on surveys that they don't get enough recognition or praise.
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Dan of course gives his 5 myths, which I'm not going to duplicate here because I want you to go read what he has to say. I am going to add my two cents to this because I believe he's absolutely correct.
What does it take to give an employee who deserves it some praise or recognition? It literally takes only a few second to do, and can bring a month's worth of dedication. Having said that, though, it probably takes a bit longer to not only come up with reasons for saying it but in getting used to saying it.
Some employees give you great things every day. Saying thank you to those employees should be a no-brainer, and pretty easy to do. Other employees are just going through the motions, so it takes waiting for them to do something extraordinary for them for you to find something good to say. What of course happens is one employee sees that as favoritism for one over the other when it's really not, so it forces you to do something you don't want to do, that being to counsel the employee who's not giving it his or her all, putting them on notice or letting them go. Mediocre employees are one thing; bad employees are another. Never let one person bring everyone else down for long.
Maybe you're the type that worked well without being recognized by others. Good for you; but we're not talking about you anymore. A misconception many people have is that if it was good enough for them it's good enough for everyone else. Sorry, times have changed and truthfully, that was never good enough even back in the past. We do things for two "people"; ourselves and others. If it's not going to make us feel good, why do it? If it's not going to potentially impress other people in some fashion, even if they hate you out of jealousy, why do it?
Can you give too much praise? No way! Can you give me too much praise for writing this? Let's find out! 🙂
At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter, Mitch. There are always different kinds of people and usually both sides employee and employer are grown up. It is good to say “well done” to somebody and probably it should be remembered for a day. I think the point is to enjoy what you are doing and better do it right.
Possibly Carl, but I also think in the real world leaders need to think more of motivating employees than waiting on them to do things well “just because”. After all, leaders get judged on a different scale than employees.