Give praise

How Well Do You Give Praise?

Posted on November 30th, 2013

Do you perform better with encouragement? So do your people.


Genuine appreciation from you, the manager can taste better than anything – even a pay rise! If you make people feel special you will end up with a special team.


Most people in this Country go to bed hungry, not for food, but for praise. We are not suggesting you praise people all the time – just more frequently. You also still work on weak points but not to the point where it breaks their spirit down.


Take care when giving praise. All too often if you say to someone ‘you did a good job’ and although they may feel pleased with that comment, they don’t know what has pleased you in particular and what the overall benefit is.


Sometimes if you tell someone they did a ‘good job’, they may consider the praise is relevant to their whole performance when you may have a concern about a separate aspect of their work.


Here is a three step RSO model for giving praise:


Step 1 REFER to the situation deserving praise

Step 2 Highlight the SPECIFIC skill or personal quality used

Step 3 Explain the OVERALL benefit


This structure is useful because we want the person to know exactly why they are being praised.


  1. REFER first of all to the situation deserving praise. Does the person know exactly what situation we are referring to? Eg:“It’s good to see you have cleared the backlog” or “I like the way you handled the ABC visitors.”


  1. Highlight SPECIFIC skill or personal quality used. What specifically did he or she do well? Did they use any particular skill or personal attribute? Eg: “I particularly appreciate how you tackled the new website. It demanded a great deal of persistence.” or:“You presented yourself very well and controlled the question and answer sessions with considerable skill.”


  1. Explain the OVERALL benefit. Does the person know the benefits of his actions? Eg: “Which means that our department have exceeded target by 20% and we will be highlighted in the company news update.” or: “They now completely understand the benefits of our system and see us as the leader in our field.”


Learn more about LDL management development