I’ve sat through so many meetings where the first and/or last 10 minutes were spent recognizing the great job that someone did.  One person does it and then another person chimes in with someone else to thank.  They go round and round in one great circle attempting to be encouraging.  But it’s all just hot air.  I’ve never done this.  I will never do this.  There is nothing genuine about these forced and awkward moments during meetings.  Just let us have the 15 minute back to ourselves.  We’d all be much happier.

Don’t tell people that you appreciate them just because someone said you should or because you read it in some book.  Give a shit about the people you work with.  And if you can’t muster that, ask yourself what’s wrong that you can’t and work on fixing that instead.

We can smell your bullshit a mile away.  And we don’t want it.

Don’t misunderstand though. Praise is important.  It just needs to be genuine.  For some leaders, this comes naturally, but for others not so much.  Here are a few ideas:

Be specific.  Everyone on your team should have something you appreciate about them.  It could be that they’ve stuck with the company for 10 years through some trying times where other less capable people jumped ship.  It could be that they kept their cool while a difficult client or senior leader yelled at them.  It could be that they worked all weekend to make sure they had something done for Monday.  The list goes on.

Be consistent.  This doesn’t mean praise them the second Friday of every month.  It means do it for every member of the team.  And it means do it every time they do something worthy of praise.  It doesn’t have to be a big long speech or conversation.  You’d be amazed how far a simple ‘thank you’ goes.

Know when is appropriate.  Meetings with other teams is not the time to tell everyone how great Janet is.  If you want the CEO to know and at the same time have your employee know.  Tell the CEO when you meet with them individually or in an email if that won’t be for a while.  Then let your employee know about the conversation.  If it is something really big, ask that the senior leader you talked to reach out and give the employee some face time.  Moral of the story though is that Jim being great has nothing to do with our 9am meeting on new business.

Don’t give mixed signals.  Putting an employee on a corrective action one day and then telling them how much you appreciate them the next will never appear authentic even if you really mean it.  Don’t yell at an employee in the morning and then think you can fix it with praise after lunch.  In both of these instances, you need to give people time to process and react.  Wait for it and then praise them for their reaction if it’s on the right path.  The only exception I can think of is if you realized you were wrong.  In that case, don’t wait.  Apologize immediately and let them know you appreciate their understanding.

While these are all helpful guidelines, at the end of the day, just care about your employees, speak from the heart, and do for them what you’d want your boss to do for you. No hot air required. What are your thoughts?