A lack of appreciation isn't neutral
I’m a recovering non-appreciator.
I have a natural tendency to focus on problems to be solved. Issues to be improved. I’m not satisfied.
These can be really effective traits in my profession! But strengths can be weaknesses, and I, like many leaders, had a blind spot on appreciation.
I had to learn that appreciation isn’t fluff. It’s not the cherry on top of the ice cream sundae, where the dessert is still awesome without it. Appreciation is a key performance tool that can be used to great effect.
And not using it isn’t neutral; it causes harm.
Why lack of appreciation is a problem
Traditional management is biased towards critique, correction, and hunting for defects. It’s how I learned! The leaders I trained under were highly critical, so I modeled them.
But guess what? It sucks to work under!
Being the recipient of very little appreciation doesn’t feel great, and I’m not alone. I found many studies and surveys reporting this, including this one by O.C. Tanner saying that 79% of people who quit cite “lack of appreciation” as their reason for leaving.
You don’t need me to tell you how much employee turnover impedes performance!
Before you even get to an employee exit, when criticism is more present than appreciation, there are many harms: it kills initiative, generates resentment, hinders learning, and erodes a sense of connection and belonging.
“Superior officers were instructed to refrain from harsh or wounding criticism of mistakes lest it undermine the self-confidence of subordinates, to praise the fact that they did show initiative, and to correct them in such a way that they learn. Otherwise, as one general wrote, ‘you will extinguish a hundred positive initiatives in order to prevent one error, and thereby lose a tremendous amount of energy.’”
— Stephen Bungay in “The Art of Action”
Appreciation is a Performance Tool
Have you ever heard the phrase, “what you appreciate, appreciates”? It means that the behaviors you appreciate are the ones you’ll get more of.
Your job as a leader is to catch people doing things right.
This ties into the concept of focusing on what you control. Lots of leaders only want to appreciate a good outcome, so they wait until the very end, when the work is done and the results are in.
But the problem is that we live in a probabilistic world, which means there’s a level of uncertainty in everything we do!
If you only praise outcomes:
- you’ll often praise people for a bad process that got a good outcome because of luck, and
- you’ll also withhold praise on a great process just because the team was unlucky in the end.
Besides, if you praise outcomes, you’re not reinforcing the behaviors that you want to see more of. The team may not internalize the right lessons from the work. You may be reducing the likelihood of good future outcomes because the team will double down on the wrong lessons learned.
What you want to do is appreciate the inputs. Your role as a leader is to be a systems architect of your organization. You’ve got a machine that you’re trying to tune.
So what do you want your system to do more of?
If you think it’s great for the team to make fast decisions, then appreciate the team for doing exactly that.
If you think it’s great for the team to spend time aligning with other teams, then appreciate the team for doing that.
If you want people to debate ideas, then you better appreciate people who engage in debate - especially when they’re challenging your ideas.
You don’t control the outcomes, but if you encourage the behaviors you want to see, you’re going to increase your odds of success.
How to do it Well
Even if you’re appreciating inputs, you can still be bad at giving appreciation. Here are a few pointers.
Be Specific: Saying “great job” is like eating a Twinkie; it’s just empty calories. The recipient may briefly feel pleased, but they’ll soon realize they’re hungry for something real.
You might be thinking “great job,” but you need to get specific with the person or team.
Maybe you meant, “Thank you all for quickly researching three alternative options to our default choice.”
Or maybe you meant, “Thank you for taking our notes from yesterday and putting structure around them on this Confluence page. That really helps today’s meeting be more effective.”
If you ever say “Good job,” you need to follow it up with exactly what made it so good.
Make it Immediate: Don’t wait! If you’re waiting until the end of the year or end of the month, that’s too long. Sure, you can re-state it there, but don’t have that be the first time.
You want it to be immediate because it’s fresh in everyone’s mind. Your available level of specificity goes down the further from the event you share it. Similarly, the details will be foggy in the mind of the recipient. You want it fresh for the most impact.
“We let our administrative processes get in the way of prompt recognition. Many times we would submit awards three months prior to the departure of a sailor, only to find ourselves calling during the last week to track down the award before his departure. When I say immediate recognition, I mean immediate. Not thirty days. Not thirty minutes. Immediate.”
— L. David Marquet in “Turn The Ship Around”
Make it Authentic: People can sniff out BS. If you don’t mean it, they’ll know it, and that’ll undermine your relationship. If you don’t mean it, don’t say it.
The Payoff
When you get really good at appreciation, it unlocks a host of positive benefits.
You’ll get higher levels of trust and psychological safety, both of which give huge performance benefits.
You’ll unlock a lot of drive and initiative. Your team, motivated in part by the praise, combined with the absolute clarity from you on the behaviors that yield praise, will feel very comfortable performing those great behaviors, even if it doesn’t work out in the end.
Your people will also feel really good when they’re working!
Culture has a lot of definitions, but really it’s the sets of norms and behaviors that get you ahead in an organization. If you’re appreciating the things under your team’s control, and reinforcing the cultural traits you want more of, then appreciation becomes a cultural transmitter and alignment tool. Everyone - including new hires - has great clarity and therefore uniformity in doing the right things.
“The leaders I spent time with shared a capacity for radiating delight when they spotted behavior worth praising. These moments of warm, authentic happiness functioned as magnetic north, creating clarity, boosting belonging, and orienting future action.”
— Daniel Coyle in “The Culture Code”
The Place for Critique
One last thing; appreciation can go too far. If you ONLY do appreciation and shut down all critique or constructive guidance, you’ll end up with a toxic positivity culture.
For full effect, appreciation needs to sit alongside the two other elements of effective feedback: coaching and evaluation.
Let’s say you’re an employee and you only hear the great things you’re doing. Meanwhile, as the leader, you know this person isn’t hitting the mark for their level. You’re giving confusing signals to the employee! Come annual review or promotion time, they won’t understand why they’re not advancing.
You still need to give advice and coach. You still need to let employees know where they stand relative to the standards you’ve identified.
So yes, get really good at appreciation, but ensure it’s got a place next to coaching and evaluation.
Call to Action
This week catch three people doing something right every day. Yes - every day!
Depending on your starting point, that might seem high, but trust me, you can get there. I used to set a meeting invite for myself on Friday afternoons to send out appreciations. It violated the “immediate” guideline, but it helped me not forget as I was building a new skill. Nowadays, I try to think of something to appreciate in every meeting.
When you appreciate this week, notice two things; what happens to them, and what happens to you?
My guess is they’re going to feel great, and you’re going to feel great.
What you appreciate, appreciates.
Kevin 😊
PS - If you’ve made it this far in the newsletter, know that I appreciate YOU. Thank you for taking time out of your busy day to read my thoughts; it means a lot to me.