CHAPTER FIVE
The Power of Positive Praise
Pull out a pen and paper and take this quick quiz:
1. The U.S. Department of Labor recently reported that the number one reason people leave an organization is:
a. The pay is not good enough.
b. Someone else got a promotion and not them.
c. They don’t feel appreciated.
d. They want better benefits.
2. According to a recent Gallup Poll, what percentage of the American workforce received no praise or recognition in the last year?
a. 25 percent
b. 45 percent
c. 65 percent
d. 85 percent
3. According to the Gallup Corporation’s research of five million employees worldwide, the frequency of praise and recognition in the workplace should be no less than:
a. One time per day
b. One time per week
c. One time per month
d. One time per quarter
4. Researchers have determined for healthy relationships the perfect ratio of positive comments to negative comments is:
a. 1 to 1
b. 3 to 1
c. 5 to 1
d. 10 to 1
5. Cigarette smoking has been shown to decrease life expectancy by 5.5 years, but a 2000 Mayo Clinic study showed that positive emotion can increase life expectancy by:
a. 4 years
b. 6 years
c. 8 years
d. 10 years
To see how you did on this quiz, turn to the end of the chapter for the answers.
A BUSINESS CASE FOR POSITIVE PRAISE
Well, how did you do on the quiz?
The leading reason, by an overwhelming margin, people leave organizations has nothing to do with pay, benefits, or promotion. The leading reason is they do not feel appreciated. This is because 65 percent of the American workforce did not receive any praise or recognition in the last year. It’s like we’re saying to our employees, “I told you I loved you when I hired you. If that changes, I’ll let you know.”
Contrast this frequency with the frequency of praise and recognition needed for fully empowered employees. Gallup found that no less than one time per week is the proper frequency for praise and recognition. In fact, when managers achieve this frequency, Gallup has documented data that indicates it results in 56 percent higher attainment of customer loyalty, 38 percent higher results in productivity, and 50 percent lower employee turnover. (Smith and Rutigliano, 2003, page 119) What would these numbers do for your company?
Furthermore, the distribution of positive comments to negative ones must be within a five-to-one ratio for workplace relationships to be healthy and whole. That is, there must be five positive comments given for every one negative comment. Amazingly, in 1992, psychologist John Gottman had 15-minute conversations with newly married couples and used the five-to-one ratio to predict whether these marriages would end up in divorce. Ten years later his predictions were 94 percent accurate. (Rath and Clifton, 2004, page 55) Other dramatic benefits come from the fostering of positive emotion. Studies at the Mayo Clinic found that it can increase life expectancy by 10 years, almost twice as much as the 5.5 years smoking a pack a day takes away from your life.
This is so because everyone who works for us has an invisible checking account within his soul. Just like our personal checking account, you can make deposits into and withdrawals from this account. Throughout the course of the year in working with people, in big ways and small ways, we increase the equity in the account we have with them or decrease it. Just like our personal checking account, we bounce checks when there is not enough in the account to cover the withdrawals. This happens relationally when we use and use a person, but fail to give anything back in return. The next request we make, or the next mistake we commit, gets a volatile reaction, the emotional equivalent of a bounced check.
Wise leaders are always investing in the equity of the emotional bank account of the people they lead. They see it as one of their top priorities. They understand the five-to-one ratio and make far more deposits than they do withdrawals. Then, when it is time to make a withdrawal, or they make a mistake because they are human, their checks don’t bounce. People receive what they have to say, even if it’s bad news, and give them the latitude they need to grow as a person in the job. Positive praise is a key way to do this.
THREE KEYS TO POSITIVE PRAISE
Make It TRUE
The way to start making deposits into your employees’ emotional bank account is not by throwing around happy words indiscriminately. This kind of verbal outpouring, however well-meaning, will breed resentment among your people. Praise is praise only if it is true, otherwise it is flattery (a fancy word for lying). This means taking the time to catch people doing things right, not just doing things wrong, which is the modus operandi of most managers.
If I placed a white sheet of poster board in front of you with a dark smudge on it, what would you see? The dark smudge, of course. It wouldn’t matter if 95 percent of the poster board was pristine white, you would focus on the smudge. Unfortunately, this is what happens in our working relationships. In fact, the more time we spend with people, the more fixated we get on the 5 percent that is wrong with them than the 95 percent that is right.
Catching people doing things right is primarily a change in focus that seeks to find the good things people are doing and recognize them for that good. It also embraces the process people are going through and not just the end product, which is not waiting for everything to be done right before offering affirmation. Positive praise understands that progress toward the ultimate goal can be affirmed and will fan the flame of accomplishment along the way.
Is the smudge irrelevant on the poster board? No. Especially if that smudge is seen every day by your customers. Deal with the smudge un-apologetically, but in a climate where enough deposits have been made so this withdrawal won’t bounce a check.
Make It SPECIFIC
“Hey, you did a great job!” is really an empty accolade. It says nothing and means nothing. Perhaps we say it with the best of intentions, but the words miss their mark. The reason? They are not specific and only specific praise has power.
Consider this alternative, “Hey, you did a great job with that customer. When he came into the store, he was hotter than a pistol. I really admire how you kept your cool and were able to give him what he wants. Again, good job!” What is the difference? You state in very clear and concrete terms what this great job looks like and affirm it. The carrot and the stick have proven to be poor motivators in the workplace because they do not move people from within. Positive input, encouragement, and genuine appreciation, however, communicate value and worth from the inside out and bring a sense of energy and strength to both the giver and the receiver. When provided on a regular basis, work becomes a place people enjoy coming to instead of just putting in their time.
An additional benefit of catching people doing things right is being able to affect behavior. Like a magnet over shavings, praise will pull out the true metal in the pile and motivate people to do those actions again and again and again. You can’t very easily punish a killer whale, but with a regular system of positive reinforcement they have been trained to achieve the most amazing feats. “When good performance is followed by something positive,” Ken Blanchard writes in his book on this very subject Whale Done!, “people naturally want to continue that behavior.” (Blanchard, 2002, page 35)
Make It PERSONALIZED
If you were in Japan, you would use yen. If you were in Venezuela, you would use bolivars. If you were in Germany, it would be the euro, and in the United States, the dollar. Different places, different currency. And it is only that currency that is accepted in those places. Different people have different currency as well. This is the reason for personalized praise.
Some people are terribly embarrassed by being spoken about in public, others thrive on it. Some people read every note, card, and letter you send them; others toss all written communication aside, preferring to be spoken to face to face. Some people want their workplace to be about business only and never talk about their private life at work; others post the pictures of every family member and their pets inside their cubicle. Again, different people have different currency and if you are going to be effective in making deposits in their life, they must be made in the currency they trade in. Praise must be personalized.
TWO DON’TS IN DELIVERING POSITIVE PRAISE
As you are being true, specific, and personalized with your praise, there are two mistakes to avoid. The first mistake is following praise with correction. This is a common practice and a misinterpretation of the five positive comments to one positive comment ratio. The thinking goes that if you need to correct someone, compliment him first so he can accept your correction. But for the person receiving this one-two punch, it makes praise hollow, manipulative, and fraught with danger. What it will also do is make people wary of you, anxious when you are praising because they are not sure if the other shoe of correction is going to drop. Not exactly the tone of trust you are trying to set with your people.
The point of the five-to-one ratio is the kind of climate you are creating so that when you need to correct someone she can receive it. Giving correction when appropriate is an inseparable part of effective leadership, but do it honestly and plainly. No positioning or spin. The advice I was given once was: Stand up, speak up, and shut up.
A second don’t is similar to the first, though not as devastating. It’s the “keep up the good work” mistake and goes like this: You deliver a piece of positive praise, and, instead of just ending there, you feel compelled to give a challenge to the person you are praising. As if the affirmation will somehow motivate this person to do poorer work rather than better work, so a challenge must be made to keep it up. Does this actually make sense? Then why do we do it?
I remember being contracted to give a series of training sessions to managers on a Saturday. Because it was the company’s busy season and they wanted to get this training done, they asked their people to do it outside of their workweek on one of their two days off. Amazingly, everyone was game, and at the beginning of our first session the vice president of the division called in to the training class and thanked everyone for their sacrifice. He praised these leaders for their commitment to the company and for the results they had achieved so far in the year. You could see the people in the room rise in their seats and swell with pride. Then the vice president ended his call with these words, “Now, get better!”
Wham, the oxygen was sucked out of the room. It was like he had said to them that everything they had done was not enough and they must do more or he would not be satisfied. Resist the temptation to tag on to the positive words you give people a challenge to keep it up. It’s unnecessary and ineffective. It’s like going to the ATM machine, putting $200 into your account and then withdrawing $200. That’s useless and doesn’t get you anywhere. Praise others truthfully, specifically, and personally with no additional agenda items and no strings attached.
BUSINESS COACHING EXERCISE: THE AFFIRMATION MATRIX AND WEEKLY REGISTER
Here are two exercises that work together to achieve this objective:
The Affirmation Matrix
Take an 8½≤ × 11≤ blank sheet of paper and hold it up in portrait view. Fold this sheet in half from the top to the bottom. Then fold it in half again from top to bottom. Now from the left to the right fold the paper in half and open your sheet up. If you followed these instructions to the letter, you will have an 8½” × 11” sheet of paper with 8 squares, four running down the left half and four running down the right half of the paper.
Take out a pen and write in the upper left square the word spoken and in the square immediately to the right of this square write the word written. Move one row down and repeat this process writing the word public on the left and the word private on the right. Move one more row down on your paper and write the word expected on the left and the word unexpected on the right. Finally in the last row of squares write the word professional on the left and personal on the right.
You should now have a sheet of paper that looks like this:
© 2007 Leadership Link, Inc. Used by permission.
You are now ready to use this matrix to personalize praise. Combine items on the left with items on the right. There are over 20 statistical combinations for you to play with. For instance:
1. Spoken, public, expected, professional: Praise given to a sales associate at a team meeting highlighting the specific things that person did in winning the latest sales contest.
Change this a little bit, however, and you have:
2. Written, public, expected, professional: A distribution e-mail sent out to everyone in the division praising this salesperson for the specific things he did to win the latest sales contest.
Change it some more and you have:
3. Written, private, expected, professional: A handwritten card sent to this salesperson genuinely thanking her for the specific things she did to win the latest sales contest with a $50 gift card included (also unexpected).
How would you do the next two?
4. Spoken, Private, Unexpected, Professional: ___________________
5. Written, Private, Unexpected, Personal: ______________________
Don’t wait for the conclusion of a sales contest to do this, however. Remember the once-a-week ratio? Make public praise a regular part of your weekly staff meetings and private praise a habit in one-on-one conversations. Thank people for the work they do (professional) and the kind of person they are (personal). Remember birthdays and Administrative Professionals Day (expected, personal, and professional) and silly days like Saint Patrick’s Day (you know, thanking the people who bring in all the green that makes your company run!).
“I don’t have time to coddle my people like this!” one leader blurted out to me in a coaching session. I asked him to look at it this way, “If you knew for a fact that if you invested one dollar in a venture, you would receive two in return, would you do it?”
“Of course!” was his reply. “Who wouldn’t?” That is exactly what Benjamin Schneider, Professor at the University of Maryland, discovered. In operations as diverse as bank branches, call centers, insurance companies, and hospitals, for every 1 percent increase in positive climate there was a 2 percent increase in profit. (Goleman, 2002, page 15) This is what positive praise does within an organization, a pretty good return on investment!
You will notice a gift is included with the praise being given in some of the earlier-mentioned examples. This is a great way to add impact to the words you are trying to say, especially if the gift is the right kind of currency for the recipient. The gift doesn’t have to be something big, either. I had an employee who grew up in New York and missed salt bagels, a favorite on the East Coast. Whenever I was in a bagel shop with salt bagels, I bought one for her and brought it back to the office thanking her for her hard work.
A common mistake, however, is to give a gift without words. This is a great opportunity missed. A gift without words may not have any framework of understanding for the person receiving it. Furthermore, a gift without words teaches nothing. How can a person repeat what you are praising if they don’t know what it is? If you give flowers, take the time to write a note of appreciation to go with it. When the flowers have long since passed away, the card may be kept for years. If you buy a gift certificate, put it in a card with a written note. Words and actions make a powerful pairing.
One of my coaching clients shared with me the story of the greatest day of his professional life. He had crushed his sales number one year and won the highest award in his division. At an end-of-the-year banquet, he was brought on stage and cheered by his peers. Then his manager said this, “Everyone knows this is a very hard job to do and none of us could do without the support and sacrifice of our spouse.” This brilliant boss had the salesperson’s wife come on the platform and she received a standing ovation (spoken, public, expected and unexpected, professional and personal). To this day he still chokes up a bit telling the story. This is the power of positive praise!
The Weekly Affirmation Register
How do we make this behavior a regular part of our life and leadership? Here is a simple worksheet to fill out every week for the next six weeks. Place the names of the people who directly report to you down the left column and a brief description of what they do to the right of their names. Then place a check mark for the days in the week that you gave them specific, personalized praise, being careful not to drop below the one-time-a-week metric. Use this worksheet until the habit of positive praise has become your own. Once a quarter, use the worksheet again to check up on yourself to see whether you are on track. Have others in your organization use it to master this habit themselves.
Weekly Affirmation Register
© 2007 Leadership Link, Inc. Used by permission.
| TEAM MEMBER | CORE RESPONSIBILITIES | M | T | W | T | F |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ | |
| 2. | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ | |
| 3. | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ | |
| 4. | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ | |
| 5. | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ | |
| 6. | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ | |
| 7. | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ | |
| 8. | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ | |
| 9. | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ | |
| 10. | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ | ❏ |
The first time I used this register I noticed there was an engineer who worked for me who I consistently failed to affirm. He was the most difficult person on my staff and made his feelings known about me, which weren’t very positive, to anyone who would listen. I responded by avoiding him, which, of course, made the problem worse. So I made a choice to be the bigger person and went out of my way to find something he did right every week and tell him how much I appreciated it. No miracles happened. We didn’t become the best of friends. But tensions definitely eased and our working relationship improved measurably. When he left our company to take another job, he thanked me for being one of the best bosses he had ever worked for.
POSITIVE PRAISE DOES NOT WORK WHEN . . .
As important, and as powerful, as positive praise is, there is one thing it is not: a cure-all. Effective leadership is not as easy as taking a simple positivity pill or waving a magic wand at people. Positive praise must complement other tools in a leader’s toolbox and work together with them to get the job done. Stated in another way, positive praise does not work when the following conditions exist.
Positive Praise Does Not Work When You’re Looking for a Quick Fix
Imagine turning 65 years old and deciding for the first time in your life to start saving for retirement. How much money will you be able to set aside? Financial experts would all agree: not much. The way to save for retirement is little by little, month by month, over the course of years. Interest compounds and equity builds, not by one heroic act of savings, but by hundreds of small investments.
When we as leaders realize that we have set a negative tone for our team and make the commitment to delivering positive praise on a regular basis, we must view it as a long-term investment. One great act of affirmation, at a team meeting or a year-end banquet, will go only so far. Like starting to save for retirement at 65, a quick-fix approach to praise does not build up the kind of equity that is needed to be effective with people. This is true for any leadership behavior, not just this one. Great leadership is a cloth with many, many threads of action woven consistently over time.
The good news is that you can get started immediately and make a real difference. And although the emotional bank account of many of your people might be overdrawn, you will be surprised at how quickly you can bring it back into balance again. Relationships and people are very resilient and respond well when their leaders make a genuine, consistent effort to do the right thing.
Positive Praise Does Not Work When You Need to Apologize First
We’ve all experienced this. A person clearly crosses the line and offends us. You know it. She knows it. And everyone else knows it too. But instead of coming to us and saying she’s sorry, this person treats us differently. She’s sugary sweet and sickeningly nice, never mentioning a word about the offense.
Positive praise will not work when an apology needs to be made first. In fact, just the opposite will happen. Praise will be seen as hollow and manipulative, just another withdrawal in a long list of withdrawals, and cowardly avoidance of the real heart of the issue.
If you’ve made an honest mistake, or if you’ve really blown it with another person, just admit it. Apologize and move on. Don’t cover up the issue like a fresh coat of paint on rotten wood, pretending everything will be okay. Everything won’t be okay. That’s not the way paint, or praise, works. Say you’re sorry. Own your mistake, openly, honestly, and humbly.
Positive Praise Will Not Work When It’s the Only Communication Tool You Use
An interesting corollary to the five positive comments to every one negative comment study is that there is an upper limit to this ratio. Researchers found that when positive comments to negative comments exceeded 10 to 1, workplace productivity significantly decreased. (Rath and Clifton, 2004, page 57) In other words, you can praise too much and be out of the five-to-one balance, never delivering other important kinds of communication.
Praise creates a climate where people feel empowered, but it is not the only thing that does. Empowerment also occurs when we instruct, explain, discuss, debate, question, challenge, and correct. Yes, some of these things will make withdrawals—actually most of them will—but that’s okay. When we make enough deposits with our people, the relationship will be fine. Equity exists for a reason. Effective leaders learn how to leverage it to help others be their very best.
Positive Praise Will Not Work When Talent Is Misaligned to Task
In the book Whale Done!, referred to earlier, Ken Blanchard describes how orca whales at Sea World in San Diego are taught how to do amazing stunts with positive reinforcement alone. His thesis, and it is a good one, is that what works for animals also works for human beings. But ask yourself for a minute, “What if the trainer was trying to teach a killer whale how to fly? Or how to ride a horse? What then would be the impact of positive reinforcement?”
“That’s ridiculous,” you say, “whales don’t fly and they certainly don’t ride horses!” And that is the point.
Positive praise works best when you are praising a person for a job that’s right for them. If you praise and praise and praise and see no increase in performance, you may not have a praise problem. You may have a fit problem. And no amount of praise will fix a fit problem. In fact, when people who were made to swim are being forced to fly, increased praise makes them feel guiltier for not really doing any better. The best course of action for this challenge is using the tools in Chapter 9, “The Sixth Suitcase,” to align talent to task to help this person find the right seat on the bus. Then praise will be appropriate to the person and the job that best suits them.
BUSINESS IMPACT STORY: HOW POSITIVE PRAISE HELPED IN THE TURNAROUND OF A FAILING SMALL BUSINESS
I had just taken over the company, a small group of radio stations, and we were cash-starved. Owing to the poor management of those who had preceded us, creditors were knocking at our door on a daily basis and pay-checks were often one to two weeks late. A new surprise—not the good kind like an IRS agent paying us a visit asking for unpaid withholding taxes—seemed to pop up at every turn as sales swooned. Yet, amazingly, morale was high. The staff understood the reasons why we had these problems, and, to a man (actually seven men and two women), were committed to helping solve them. At our first staff retreat, held at a hotel whose rooms we bartered, I presented an award that through the years has become one of the most coveted awards to receive in our company.
In preparing for the retreat, I thought of the people who had worked extra hard to get us back on track. One person came to mind who had in the month before really gone the extra mile. She worked extra long hours, took on extra responsibility, and shown an extraordinarily high level of commitment to our recovery. A well-known proverb came to mind, “If someone asks you to go with him one mile, go with him two.” I was inspired! I took an old pair of my wife’s sandals, spray-painted them gold, and glued them to a wood plaque covered in red velvet I found in the garage. The next day I made the presentation. I recounted the incredible things this person had done and presented her with the Golden Sandals.
All right, I know what you’re thinking. This is the corniest story you have ever heard. And I would agree with you, except here’s what happened next. The Golden Sandals began to take on a life of their own. At our social events every six months or so, each recipient of the Golden Sandals was given a chance to pass them on to someone else in the company who, like her, had gone the extra mile. In doing so, she had to say why this person earned the award and what was appreciated about this person. People would stand up, both men and women, and start talking with tears rolling down their cheeks as they shared what another person on our staff team meant to them. The recipient would take the award, display it proudly in his work area, and give it away with the same reverence with which it had been received.
When our financial turnaround was nearly complete, a vendor approached us who had our same company name. They wanted exclusive national rights to its identity and paid us to select a new moniker. The staff met again on a retreat and landed on this in honor of the Golden Sandals: Extra Mile Media. At one of our events, as a complete surprise, a staff member gave a typically touching Golden Sandals speech and gave the award to me. I felt my throat tighten and thought to myself, “This is a stupid pair of sandals my wife never wore and a block of wood I found in the garage!” But it really was more than that. It was sincerity, gratitude, and appreciation expressed openly by my peers worth more than any paycheck. That is the power of positive praise.
TOP 10 WAYS TO USE THIS TOOL
1. When presenting this tool, always use the paper-folding exercise. It gets a person involved in learning, not just listening passively. It also arouses their curiosity and helps them own the principle. I have had clients actually tape this piece of paper to the wall so they could keep it on the top of their mind throughout the week. Help your clients think through the “currency” of how each of their people like to be praised. That is, what is the best combination of written, spoken, public, private, expected, unexpected, professional, and personal for each team member?
2. For the first few weeks of using the Weekly Affirmation Register , have your clients fax you their sheet at the end of the week for four to six weeks. Talk through each encounter. Reflect on what was done, how it went, how it was received, and any improvements that could be made. This is a new skill; take the time to let your client learn it.
3. Inevitably there will be someone on the Weekly Affirmation Register that will be the most difficult to praise and the easiest person to avoid. Talk through the relationship specifically and design a strategy for how to best make deposits in this person’s emotional bank account. Be realistic. Not everyone in the workplace is willing to be positive and productive. Leaders must make sure, however, they have done everything in their power to reach out to this person.
4. Sadly, struggling managers have often burned many bridges with their people. They have many, many more debits than credits in their people’s emotional bank account. These eleventh-hour situations often come to coaches and you can help them “get out of debt” by making positive emotional deposits. Again, do it with realism. Because of the past, team members will distrust these initial efforts at affirmation, but, as a person perseveres in this habit, the ledger will come into balance and followership will increase.
5. A leader can use the Weekly Affirmation Register to manage up as well. That is thinking through how to praise the boss and the boss’s boss. Have your client place her boss on the list. When the words being spoken or written are true and the spirit in which they are shared sincere, this will be received as genuine appreciation for someone who rarely receives any.
6. Ask your client to teach the Affirmation Matrix to someone at work and have that person fill out a Weekly Affirmation Register , faxing it to you to see. Debrief this encounter in a coaching session and listen to what your client learned in the process. Teaching this to someone else forces a person to think it through one more time and learn it more completely.
7. Encourage your clients to put the birthdays and work anniversary dates of every one of their direct reports in their calendar. Have them buy a set of cards and handwrite notes of affirmation for these special days. This is extremely doable! Ten direct reports with one birthday and one anniversary in the year amounts to fewer than two cards every month.
8. Designate a Wall of Fame in the office or workplace where people can publicly post their praise of others, letters of recognition from satisfied customers, achieved goals, newspaper clippings of personal accomplishments, whatever.
9. Teach the Affirmation Matrix to teams and use it as a team-building exercise so that it can become part of their relating to one another. Put team members’ names in a hat and have them draw names out one by one, delivering words of positive praise to the person they pick. Explore what an appropriate peer-given award might be for this group, like the Golden Sandals mentioned earlier.
10. For deeper insight into a client’s use of positive praise, use the Gallup Corporation’s free, online Positive Impact Profile that accompanies the book How Full is Your Bucket? A person can go back to this profile again and again, measuring the growth in his ability in this area.
Here are the answers to the opening quiz:
1. C, 2. C, 3. B, 4. C, 5. D
1. C, 2. C, 3. B, 4. C, 5. D
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