Give Positive Feedback: Catch People Doing It Right

Positive feedback must be the most easy to use and effective means of improving performance ever! It involves little more than catching people performing well and complimenting them on it. You must be sincere, and the more specific you are in describing exactly what the person has done, the better. Beyond that, it is hard to go wrong. One would think that every manager would be using it, every day!

But no! What one hears in corporate corridors is criticism, blame and accusation; there are put-downs and raised voices; we even produce printouts and reports to show the detail of exactly how and where people go wrong. But rarely does any of this produce the positive results in behaviour change that we want! Most often it produces cultures of blame, threat and unease.

Constant criticism causes people to lose confidence in themselves, and to become unsure that they will ever get it right. They avoid taking risks, knowing that the only time they receive acknowledgment is when things go wrong. Doing it right becomes more important than doing it better. The other effect of continued criticism is no effect at all, as people simply tune it out.

There is a serious disconnect here. Organisations claim to develop cultures in which people are highly motivated, where they can perform to the limit of their capabilities and where they grow and develop throughout their careers.

A culture like this is built around people who are motivated, creative, prepared to take risks, and who are confident in the support they will receive from their managers and leaders.

However, when criticism and blame are used as tools to manage performance, they reflect a very different set of values and beliefs concerning feedback and motivation. Those who use criticism and blame would seem to believe that people work best when they are anxious and scared; when they are motivated by fear and when they lack confidence in their abilities.

These beliefs underlie the traditional authoritarian approach to leadership and performance management. It is doubtful how effective this ever was. What is not in doubt is how ineffective it is today.

Today, employees are more educated, more aware of their own capabilities, and more intent on developing them to the maximum. Most people are employed as knowledge workers, valued for their intelligence, creativity, decision making and problem solving abilities. They cannot be motivated or managed effectively with an authoritarian style where the focus is on picking up mistakes and giving negative criticism.

Positive feedback places the focus on what is going well. Research shows clearly that it has a consistent and predictable effect on encouraging people to use more of the behaviour on which they have been given the feedback.

By comparison, people react in many ways to negative feedback or criticism. Sometimes it motivates, but only in the short term. At other times it demotivates or provokes anger and resistance.

There are two easy steps to use in giving positive feedback.

First, identify something that you appreciate and that the person does well. Describe it clearly.
Second, tell the person how much you value or appreciate what they are doing.

Then STOP! Do not ask for anything more. Do NOT say: That was a great job you did:But. The word: But, annuls all the good effect of the positive feedback.

Try it. See how well people perform when they are asked to do more of what they are good at!

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