Effective leaders treat others with a positive regard. Specifically, effective leaders understand the power of appreciation. This goes beyond the Carnegie precepts of “Be hardy in your approbation and lavish in your praise.”
Effective praise is a skill set that must be learned like any other. As leaders we often find ourselves spending and inordinate amount of time identifying what is wrong, identifying mistakes, and concentrating on errors. Effective leaders look for opportunities to find people doing things right and offer them the encouragement they need to keep on doing things right.
According to Dr. Ben Bissell there are five things a leader can do to insure their statements of praise are effective.
- Make sure the praise is authentic. Authentic does not mean it must be a tremendous accomplishment. It does mean it has to be honest. You don’t need to wait until your friend has finished a marathon to offer praise. In fact it may be more effective to acknowledge when he has reached a two mile goal.
- Make sure the praise is specific. Acknowledging the excellent way in which an irate client was handled is an excellent example. Identify areas of strength and acknowledge them.
- Make sure the praise is immediate. Providing positive feed back as soon as things happen is a powerful tool to encourage them to happen again.
- Make sure the praise is untainted. Tainted praise has an ulterior motive. Tainted praise often has the addendum “but” attached.
- Make sure the praise is private. Recognizing someone in public is often more a performance by the speaker rather than support for the subject of the praise.
How ever you elect to reinforce others it is important that you do so on a regular basis.
Previous posts in the series:
- Fostering Responsibility: Becoming a Great Leader #4
- Reining in Rule Breakers: Becoming a Great Leader #3
- Motivating Others: Becoming a Great Leader #2
- Becoming a Great Leader
Reg Adkins writes on behavior and the human experience at (elementaltruths.blogspot.com).
Good article, you spoke about specifics and when to praise… (hey, i’m already doing it)
Because life continually requires us to attend to problems and breakdowns, it gets very easy to see in life only what is broken and needs fixing.
But satisfying relationships (and a happy life) require us to notice and respond to what is delightful, excellent, enjoyable, to work well-done, to food well-cooked, etc.
Thank you for the reminder.
[...] The Power of Praise: Becoming a Great Leader #5 [...]
The quote is actually;
“HEARTY (not ‘hardy’) in your approbation and lavish in your praise”. Please correct your error.
Well, Josh let’s take a look….
“hardy” –adjective, -di‧er, -di‧est. 1. capable of enduring fatigue, hardship, exposure, etc.; sturdy; strong: hardy explorers of northern Canada.
2. (of plants) able to withstand the cold of winter in the open air.
3. requiring great physical courage, vigor, or endurance: the hardiest sports.
4. bold or daring; courageous: hardy soldiers.
Hmmmm,yep, I’m going to stick with hardy.
Thanks though!
“Hmmmm, yep, I’m going to stick with hardy – etc.”
Incredible. You have misquoted, have been corrected, and yet will stick with what you want to say.
Sorry, I can’t be “hearty” in my approbation of you, either. You may like your word – that is up to you – but Dale Carnegie didn’t use it, so the quote is incorrect, however you protest.