Why your boss thinks criticism is more effective than praise... and is wrong! - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Why your boss thinks criticism is more effective than praise... and is wrong! - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog I just discovered a great article by Linda Hill Kent Lineback on why criticism seems more effective than praise in the workplace but isnt. From the article: This is one of those areas where the lessons of experience arent obvious ? and can even be misleading. Your observation that criticism is more often followed by improvement is probably accurate. But whats going on isnt what you think. In fact, its something called regression to the mean and if you dont understand it, you and your people will be its victims. Basically, the article argues that we all have an average performance level over time but actual performance varies from day to day and task to task. But we tend to forget this: If you track someones performance task by task, youll discover that a great performance, one thats far above the persons average or mean, is usually followed by a less-inspiring performance thats closer to the mean. It works the same the other way. A terrible performance is usually followed by something better. No ones making or causing this to happen. Its part of the variability built into human activity, especially when doing something even moderately complex. Consequently, when someone performs worse than their own average and you criticize them for it, they will tend to perform better afterwards, simply because they return to their own average. They would have done so, even if you had said nothing. For the same reason, when someone performs better than usual and you praise them for it, their next performance will tend to be worse. And this means that: Even if you dont notice these apparent connections consciously, youre aware of them intuitively. And the most likely consequence will be that you criticize far more than you praise. This is a brilliant insight and the lesson is that we must shift our focus from increasing performance on individual tasks to raising peoples average performance. And this is done more effectively by focusing on what people do well. A lot of evidence suggests that positive reinforcement ? identifying and building on strengths ? will produce better results than a relentless focus on faults. This is important. To improve, people need positive feedback. Its just as important to recognize and reinforce their strengths as it is to point out where theyre falling short. And you need to understand why praise can seem dysfunctional, so you dont withhold it. Read the whole article its brilliant and it reinforces the point weve made again and again that praising people for their good work makes them happier AND more effective. Related posts #h5yr and #h5is ? find out how these two cryptic twitter tags promote happiness at work. Happiness and elephants How Richard Branson celebrates his employees Thanks for visiting my blog. If you're new here, you should check out this list of my 10 most popular articles. And if you want more great tips and ideas you should check out our newsletter about happiness at work. It's great and it's free :-)Share this:LinkedInFacebookTwitterRedditPinterest Related