Many organisations measure the frequency of praise in employee satisfaction surveys. Most often the question is “My manager praised me in the last 7 days.” I know a manager who keeps an Excel spreadsheet of when he praised someone, while proudly talking about the success of his recognition. It shows how silly the measurement of praise can get and how it actually works against its original idea. Praise is often disguised behind the mask of recognition, which is a different matter altogether.
Praise is just as much a communication barrier as criticism. In both cases, it is a matter of judgement, i.e. putting oneself in the position of the parent/teacher and thus automatically putting another person in the position of the child. However, in a working relationship, two adults could be together.
Praise is, in its very nature, judging others according to your expectations. But human beings do not exist to meet each other’s expectations, but always to meet their own expectations.
Praising and reprimanding refers to a hierarchical or vertical communication situation. If we want cooperation, accountability and flat organisation, then cooperation will still be at the same level, horizontally between two adults, and praise will work against the original goal. In vertical communication, inevitably, at some point, an inferiority (or superiority) complex arises. In the pursuit of praise, we begin to bend ourselves to what is important to the other person – their value system.
I was a weight watcher years ago. At some point I noticed that I always gained kilos the following week, or even skipped the weigh-in if the instructor had praised me (even stuck a star in my notebook). I would have been much more impressed if someone had expressed gratitude that, thanks to my inspiring example, they too had started to think more about health. I had a similar situation many years later, where a long-time acquaintance ran up to me on the street to say he had seen me in the gym a while back and was inspired by the story of my physical body transformation to tackle his own physical health, which he had long put off. It also inspired me to go to the gym, where I hadn’t bothered to go for 2 weeks.
There is nothing wrong with giving an assessment. It helps you to set boundaries, to feel what you like and to make your choices accordingly. But judgement is linked to a (subconscious) desire to control the other and “call them to order”, to be “normal” or to belittle them because they can never be up to your standard.
Negative and positive assessments of others are part of the power game. Critic/appraiser feels good and important, recipient of criticism/appreciation feels ashamed or uncomfortable. Positive feedback in the form of praise can also send the message that you expected less from the person and they surprised you.
One manager told me that people need to be motivated through praise when they seem to be tired. Maybe praise the fool and the fool does. Some people need praise every day, and praise must be sought for everything. But is that person in the right job in the first place, and perhaps it’s your responsibility as a manager to tell them that maybe it’s time to do something different in their working life, or to start looking deeper into the reason why they are so dependent on external judgement and can’t be themselves.
Rather than praise, I suggest you focus your talk on gratitude. Gratitude puts people in the same position through genuine respect, care, vulnerability and appreciation. For example, “It was a great help to me. Thank you!”, “It makes my heart happy!”, “Thank you, thanks to you I got it done much faster.”, “It touched me, it went to my soul!”
Gratitude is an expression of something where another person has helped me to grow better, to achieve what I have wanted within myself. Non-judgmental, neutral, emotive and sincere.
At a certain point, we don’t need the gratitude of others, because I know that I have contributed. This is when I am truly in touch with my true inner being. At work, we very often contribute to others, but I need to feel that loving and embracing myself is in keeping with who I am. You don’t always have that gut feeling.
Praise is a level of thinking, gratitude is recognition through feeling, which is more empathically understood and people relate to each other on a human level, which in turn sets the stage for deeper committed collaboration. Feelings are universal and we all feel them, regardless of nationality, gender, age, etc. Maybe when we are grateful, we express our feelings and it goes into people’s souls more than praise. People forget what you said, they forget what you did, but they don’t forget how you made them feel. It is possible to feel through expressing one’s feelings, because speaking the language of feelings is speaking the same language as speaking.
But I can only be grateful if I know what I need and want. Because then I can see what matches my needs and wants. Speaking from the heart brings people together. At the level of thinking, we are more often confronted with opposition.
So stop praising, understand what you want, and notice through the expression of gratitude how the other person has helped you to grow towards what you want without you knowing it. Praise diminishes the other person, gratitude elevates you both. Why not replace the measurement of praise with the measurement of gratitude if everything has to be measured so much?
