Compliment? Not Quite! (Continued from Newsletter
)
Nancy complained to us that "for some reason" staff was not being very cooperative and wondered why they turned on her. We evaluated several areas of mismanagement, but one in particular got our attention. Seems even though she silently recognized their work effort, she fell "short" of praising her staff for the things they were doing well. Instead, she continued to harp on and focus on their inefficiencies, without offering a single word of praise. After pointing this out to her, she promised she'd try to be more attentive in the future.
Several weeks later, Nancy telephoned SOS, but instead of hearing how much better things were since she vowed to turn over this new leaf, she voiced criticism of our recommendation, saying it didn't work! She insisted that "praising them" made them more defiant than before and blamed us for the outcome of her efforts.
"Tell me what happened," I said, "because this doesn't make sense to me." I knew that praising good behavior almost always encouraged repeat good behavior, so I was confused as to why the outcome was different in this case. She went on to explain by saying, "I did what you said! I made an extra effort to praise every one of them." "How?" I asked. "Well," she said, "I started by writing a personal letter and made a point of really saying some nice things. Naturally, I didn't have time to write a separate letter to each one of them (we have 18 staff people), so I went ahead and just emailed each of them a copy. Well, one person actually printed it up and threw it in my face; then walked out the door. She QUIT! So, your little plan didn't work. In fact, it fired them up more and now I'm out a staff person because of it!"
"You're not out one staff person because you wrote a nice letter, Nancy," I said. Don't you see what happened? I bet when they first received the letter, they were touched, but by sending the same exact letter to each staff person, you negated the sincerity of it. It was a nice gesture gone sour. Didn't you think they would share these letters and compare notes and see that you rubber-stamped each one? There was nothing personal about them; just a bunch of words and they felt it. You might just as well have photocopied them and handed them out at a staff meeting!"
In the future, if you want to give your staff a public "team thank you" then gather them as a team to do that. If your intent is to write a personal note...then MAKE it personal. For example,
"Kris, I appreciate the work you did on Mrs. Smith's orthotics. She was really happy with the result and so was the doctor with your work. Thank you for the extra effort I know you put into getting this done."
Nancy learned the hard way that the only praise that's certain to make an impression is GENUINE praise. A dispassionate "attaboy" or a general pat on the back (or word for word emailing each them the same letter of thanks) does not come across as heartfelt. Next time you offer praise (and you should do so regularly whether verbal or written), make it specific to each employee and make it meaningful . Otherwise, your efforts will be no different than Nancy's.
