One of the easiest and most valuable things you can do as a manager is to recognize an employee for a job well done. You should be looking for specific things you can recognize an employee for on a daily and weekly basis. You should recognize employees one-on-one as well as publicly. And for the record, you can’t give too much praise. But for the flip side… as effective and productive as praise can be, false praise can be extremely destructive. Specifically, it can be destructive to your best employees and kill any positive morale and momentum you have built. What is false praise? It’s giving undeserved recognition to employees or giving equal recognition to underperformers and superstars on your team.
Here are a few forms of false praise…
The Group Praise: This is one form of false praise that many managers fall into on a weekly basis. Here’s what happens… Usually at the end of the day or in a team meeting, the manager will tell all employees, “everyone did a great job today, I really appreciate it” or “everyone’s doing a very good job” or “thanks for all the hard word”. Get the picture??? This is what’s happening here. The manager feels like he just did some serious managing and motivating while the superstar is wondering why the employee that’s doing just enough to get by is getting the same praise that she is getting. What just happened is the manager demotivated his best employee with false praise.
Keeping the wrong person in the wrong job: This is a little more subtle but what’s happening here is the manager, usually because of her relationship to the employee, is keeping an employee in a job where he is not performing up to standard. This gives the employee a sense of praise (false) that he is doing just fine. This is one of the most cruel things a manager can do. Wasting years of an employee’s productive life in a job he is not suited for. This is also very demotivating to the employees that clearly see an underperformer being kept in the same role, especially if it’s a management role.
Praise to Perform: Pay attention to the wording. You want to praise for performance, but you don’t praise hoping to get performance from a non-performer. Some managers have the mixed up impression that if they praise someone for mediocore work then that employee will be inspired to be remarkable. The opposite is true. The employee being praised will think he is doing just fine and will continue that same performance at best. This form of false praise now sends a powerful signal to your remarkable performer that she can do less for the same praise or worse she’ll leave.
Bottome line… false praise encourages underperformance and at the same time demotivates remarkable performers. By giving false praise you’re creating the proverbial “paycheck collector”.
