Praise And Thanksgiving

Never pass up an opportunity to express gratefulness, especially in the workplace. In my (almost) 45 years of life, I’ve never heard someone say “You say thanks too much, please tone it down.” Do it often, do it out loud, and do it in front of an audience.

That being said, the object of your expressed gratefulness matters. What you praise is what you encourage to happen more often. But the converse is true too, what you don’t praise you will discourage. And if your praise for a person’s work is disproportionately towards things less important to their job, you may be having the side effect of making them feel they aren’t actually doing a good job with the things that do matter.

Of course, that may literally be true. You may be using praise of the inconsequential as a defense mechanism to avoid hard feedback of what is consequential. Or you may not be. But if your praise quotient is out of alignment, the individual you’re praising will have to guess. And that ambiguity can be disheartening.