Fire Them…Up With Praise and Recognition

Awhile back one of my clients shared a wonderful story about the power behind praise.  He had to give feedback to one of his direct reports who had difficulty arriving to work on time. He was late a number of times and required corrective feedback.

Example of the power behind praise and recognition

Awhile back one of my clients shared a wonderful story about the power behind praise. 

He had to give feedback to one of his direct reports who had difficulty arriving to work on time. He was late a number of time and required corrective feedback.

My client was grinning ear to ear when he shared how he was deliberate in finding something to acknowledge the direct report for first, before actually addressing the issue. Which, according to my client, created such a transformation in the direct report!

The client was able to create a positive space, earn the direct report’s full attention and better able to raise and address the lateness issue in a more positive tone.

The flip side would be to explode onto the direct report.  Fire a million questions at him as to why he can’t arrive at work on time. (This kind of language is accusatory and designed to deliver more of the same negative behaviour)

All this would only result in the direct report wanting to protect himself – his ‘lizard brain’ kicks in and says danger! Protect yourself! So they stop listening and instead of coming up with solutions, they start thinking up excuses or reasons for the behaviour.

There are also those leaders whose confidence in their own abilities tends to be on the lower side of things. Because of this they tend to shy away from giving their direct reports the very thing they need most!

I had a conversation with a leader who was four months into his role as team manager. It was his first time holding this position so naturally he was a little gun-shy. The challenge/request I made of him was to start of meeting with his direct reports regularly. This serves multiple purposes-most important of all he and his team would get to know each other.

Follow up session: He still had not set up a meeting with the team. With a few discovery -type questions asked of him, he shared he wasn’t feeling ready to meet with them. He didn’t believe he could hold a proper coaching session with them. He just didn’t feel confident with his skills and ability to coach others.

This proves the saying, “you can’t give what you don’t have” to be true.

Bottom-line: You’ll find  great return on your investment when you pour into people.

Bypass the “lizard brain’s” natural leaning toward the negative and instead give genuine praise and recognition to your people.

Rather than having to fire them- you can fire them… up!