The Right Kind of Praise

Praise motivates! Most managers know the importance of giving praise, however be careful. It’s all too easy to give the wrong kind of praise which can limit potential and actually be counterproductive.

As a leader/manager focused on improving results, you need to build grit and resilience in your team. To help achieve this you need to praise people correctly. This video shows you how.

You are probably thinking, are there any secrets to giving praise? Surely, as long as you do it and you are sincere about it, that about covers it, doesn’t it? Well, yes and no. There are in fact two rules, which apply to giving praise.

Rule one, be specific. When you give praise, talk about some specific attitude or skill which the other person has shown. If you just say, “You’re doing a great job,” they may think that applies to every aspect of their work. When in reality, you may have a concern about another part.

Rule two, and this is the big one, reinforce a growth mindset. This is absolutely essential if you want to unlock the potential in people. To explain this, let me introduce you to the work of Carol Dweck, from the University of Stanford. She’s been researching the difference between winners and losers, in the workplace, in sport, and in the performing arts for the last 30 years. According to her work, some people have what she calls, a fixed mindset, and some people have a growth mindset.

If you have a fixed mindset, you tend to believe that your creativity, your talent, and your intelligence is fixed. That’s what you were born with, that’s just the way it is. On the other hand, if you have a growth mindset, you believe your creativity, your talent, and your intelligence can be grown.

Carol Dweck says that her research shows that most people who win in life have a growth mindset. If you’re interested in learning more about this, she’s written a terrific book called, Mindset. She then asked herself the question, so what causes people to have either a fixed or a growth mindset?

Her research showed that one of the causes is the kind of praise people receive, especially when they’re young. If we praise people for their ability, for their talent, for their intelligence, for being clever, then when they come up against a challenge they have difficulty with, as everybody does, their thought process is, “Maybe they lied to me, maybe I’m losing it, maybe I’m not as bright as I thought I was.”

Instead, if we praise people for their perseverance, the fact that they love a challenge, for their ability to handle adversity, for their persistence, then when they come up against a challenge, as everybody does, their thought process is different. Their thought process is, “Oh, I just need to persevere some more.” That’s how people unlock their potential, that’s the attitude of resilience. Highlight this in your management training sessions.

So when giving praise, avoid praising people for their ability or their talent. Instead, praise the things they have control over, persistence, determination, loving a challenge. Everyone encounters setbacks, the difference is what happens next. Those with a growth mindset regard setbacks as a learning opportunity, that’s grit, that’s resilience.

When you reinforce a growth mindset, you are helping each person on your team to unlock their potential, and you are helping yourself to build a high-performance workplace.

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