by Melissa Janis
I received the secret to giving meaningful praise decades ago and didn’t realize it until I became a manager years later. It was an old-fashioned three sentence paper memo from my SVP. She said she was aware that I had persuaded a major client to endorse our product in a company press release. As with all good feedback, it was timely and specific. But the third sentence contained the magic: “You showed tremendous finesse.”
I held onto that simple paper memo for more than 20 years. The thought of it still makes me smile. Why? Because not only did a senior manager acknowledge my accomplishment, she labeled it larger than I did. I thought I had a nice win. I thought it was about building and leveraging relationships. She made it about FINESSE.
Throughout my later career in Learning & Organizational Development, I have consistently observed a disparity between manager and employee perception of feedback. Managers frequently say they routinely praise their employees, while employees report that the only feedback they receive is negative.
Turns out both are right. Managers do attempt to recognize good performance, but it’s usually such generic compliments that their employees don’t experience it as praise.
What can close the gap?
Much has been written about improving the effectiveness of feedback by being more specific, which suggests going narrower. That’s true, but to be highly impactful, feedback should also think BIG.
Consider the behavior you want to praise and reinforce, and reframe so it’s actually more significant than how the employee sees it.
Going bigger ensures that feedback is memorable because it’s meaningful, inspires the employee to think differently about their performance, and just simply feels good.
All it takes is a little finesse.
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Melissa Janis is Senior Director of Learning & Development for McGraw-Hill Education. The views expressed are her own. You can follow her on Twitter @melissajanis.