In Praise Of Positive Feedback
Many managers have a block against positive feedback. “I am not the kind of person who gives positive feedback,” they will say or “People have to earn positive feedback from me,” or “I’m not going to tell them they did a good job just for coming in on time!”
It’s a shame – and a little weird – that positive feedback has gotten such a bad rap. The truth is that positive feedback is an insanely effective tool in your arsenal. It helps your employees feel confident, which helps them do a better job. It makes them feel appreciated. It signals that you have their backs. That, in turn, builds trust, high morale and loyalty, all of which lead to stronger retention. It allows you to give them – and for them to take in – critical or constructive or directive feedback more easily, because they are used to hearing positive things from you, too. And, it’s free.
The downside of not giving positive feedback is equally potent. When you rarely or never give positive feedback that means that for the most part your employees only hear from you when you give them directive, constructive or negative feedback. That inevitably leads to them feeling unappreciated, which leads to performance drop or stagnation. It’s hard for many people to feel like they are making progress if they only hear what they are falling short on. It doesn’t position you, the manager, as an ally. Therefore you don’t build trust and loyalty – the social capital to glues a team to you and helps them overcome and navigate the inevitable ups and downs of working life.
So how can you build this useful tool into your management repertoire if it’s not natural to you?
1. Embrace the need to give positive feedback. As with everything, the first step is to get your mind set right. You may have your own blocks against giving positive feedback – you might think that you don’t need it so your employees shouldn’t. You might not want to “over-praise” for fear of giving someone a big ego, or you might simply be uncomfortable. Please get over it. Study after study show that positive feedback increases employee performance. Accept this truth.
2. Look for opportunities to give positive feedback. Once you buy in to the idea that increasing positive feedback is necessary, you might justifiably not be sure what to praise. Spend some time really tuning in to what’s positive about what your employees are doing. No you don’t have to praise someone for simply coming in on time but you could certainly praise someone who has done a good job day in and day out over a period of time. If someone exceeds your expectations even in a small way tell them. Be specific.
Here’s an example of a script you could use when someone is just doing a good job at her job: Perhaps your sales executive is supposed to set targets with the team and then meet them. That’s her job. Even so….when she sets targets and meets them quarter after quarter, what’s wrong with pointing it out? That can simply look like “Gosh, Mary, you set challenging targets for your team and then meet them, quarter after quarter. If only Swiss watches were as reliable as you! You do a great job for us and I want you to know I appreciate it.”
3. Make sure you say it (or write it.) Sometimes we humans think that people read our minds. You might notice a person doing something worthy of positive feedback or praise. You may register this “good job” and it may make you happy – so happy that you forget to go tell the person. Or you may simply feel awkward to be that proactive or direct with someone. Find ways to trigger yourself to tell this person. If a manager feels positively about the employee or about the work she just did, often they won’t say anything.
4. Don’t make it a sandwich. I just wrote about the evils of the feedback sandwich. Don’t think that you have to “balance out” positive feedback with constructive feedback. In fact, the opposite is true. When you give enough straight positive feedback to your employees you’ve demonstrated that you are an ally. You can then give constructive or directive or critical feedback to your employees when they need it without sugar coaching it.
5. Encourage employees to give each other positive feedback. Creating a climate of positivity and feedback around you is a marker of a master manager. You can do this informally by simply suggesting that one of your employees go tell another that they did a good job on something or that they helped. You can also give praise publicly in team meetings and other forums to reinforce this kind of behavior. You can also encourage this formally by incorporating into your team values or asking everyone to share positive feedback about another team member in a monthly team meeting. To make this meaningful you have to role model the behavior yourself – see number 1!
I’d love to hear how you’ve incorporated positive feedback into your manager toolkit – let me know at [email protected]
I am an executive coach who works with startup CEOs, co-founders and executive teams. I also work with large, Fortune 50 companies to help groom their executives. I am an MBA, recovering CPA and former start-up CFO. I lecture at Harvard and Cornell Universities and the Naval War College and I am the Executive Coach for the Runway Accelerator Program at Cornell NYC Tech. I’m also on the Entrepreneurial Advisory Council of Cornell University. My areas of focus are: Leadership Development; Scaling your Start-up; Executive Presence; Power Influence & Charisma; Decision-making. Find me at AlisaCohn.com; reach me at [email protected] and follow me @AlisaCohn.
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Article originally appeared on Forbes in June 2017