I don’t enjoy getting praise. I never know how to react to it. But the more I’ve lived and worked the more I’ve realized what an important thing it is. It tells me what I need to continue and or do more of. If I only received negative feedback on things I had done wrong but no positive feedback on the things I did extremely well, then it would be entirely possible that I would end up thinking that mediocre work is actually great work.
Too often we think of coaching employees as telling them what they are doing wrong or what they need to improve on. Praise is usually then only talked about as a means of increasing morale. While praise can be essential to morale for some people, people are not universally in need of praise to remain motivated. Some people are driven primarily by status or primarily by money. Praise me all you want but show me the money.
While praise is not a universal booster of morale, it is still universally needed.
I had a manager that worked with me and she told me about an employee that she was having issues with. I asked her what he was doing wrong and she said nothing, he just isn’t a rockstar. He always seems to do the minimum and nothing more.
I asked her how she was attempting to deal with him and she said by telling him he needed to do more. He’d then do more for a short period of time but shortly after revert to doing the minimum threshold.
I then asked her what she did when he was doing the extra work for that short period. Nothing. He got no affirmation that what he was doing was good or appreciated. Nothing. Any praise he did hear during this period was indistinguishable from the generic morale fluff he heard while doing the minimum.
My advice was to go over the top with the praise. Make the praise distinguishable from any other praise she had given previously. He needs to know that his change was meaningful and impactful.
She did just this and while he never became the rockstar of the team, when he eventually went to revert back, he didn’t revert back the whole way to where he had been previously for so long. She saw a marked improvement that this time lasted, all because she adequately conveyed to him praise that he could recognize as different from the praises he was used to.
Do you have an employee that is stuck at mediocre? What do you do to raise them up and keep them performing at a higher level? Let us know in the comments.
We recently engaged in a Managed Services model at work which includes a lot of new resources with different experience and expertise. Some require more motivation as compared to others. Praising plays a very essential role in boosting morale. I have an off-shore lead, who once praised, came back with asking for more work aka wanting to prove more. Another thing which I also do is ask the seniors / leadership to send an appreciation email to the developers which has evidently boosts morale; let’s them know the impact of the good work they do. It also helps to draw a picture / show a vision on how their individual tasks can contribute to bigger picture and the mission of the department.