Giving Praise |Leila’s House of Corrections

Are you the type of manager who for one reason or another doesn t give a lot of praise to your employees? A key part of a manager s job is to assess employee performance and give appropriate feedback one element of feedback is praise. Come on managers it s time to give praise!

Receiving praise is more than good for employee morale it s good for business. Giving praise to employees who merit it helps increase employee engagement. And companies with high levels of employee engagement outperform the earnings-per-share of their competitors by 18%. Now, the purpose of praise is to reinforce positive, productive behavior. None of us has ESP. Your employees don t know what you re actually thinking until you say it.

When deciding what to say and how to say it, here s what you need to keep in mind:

# 1: Use the first person. Use I. Employees listen longer and harder to the words of their leaders. Take advantage of that. Say, I m happy, I m pleased, I m excited. Or, This is exciting: I want to talk to you about it. Make it personal.

# 2: Make the connection between the action and the effect it had upon the business. Tell the employee what happened as a result of his/her work. Make sure your praise notes how the action helped the business. Say something like, Sarah, when you hit that target, you helped the whole team exceed its sales goals.

# 3: Thank the employee. It s so easy to forget to say thank you. Don t let this happen to you. Express gratitude and offer support. One of the best things about praise about giving feedback in general is that it costs you absolutely nothing. It s free.

So remember: It s good to give praise where praise is due. Good for the team, good for you and good for business.