In my consulting work, when I ask team members in startups and small businesses how they know whether they are doing a good job, the typical response I get is “Nobody has yelled at me today,” or “No news is good news.”
This means you are missing the positive impact of catching people doing things right and reinforcing that performance with timely praise and support.
Worse yet, you may be practicing what leadership expert Ken Blanchard calls “seagull management,” where you set goals with people and disappear until something goes wrong. Then you fly in, make a lot of noise, dump on everybody, and fly out. I can relate to this and other insights in his new book, “Simple Truths of Leadership,” with co-author Randy Conley.
In my experience on both sides of the business management aisle, I see the value of these authors’ focus on the power of effective and timely praise in reinforcing behavior that moves people closer to their goals and…
