Rules Of Management

RULE 12 - Encourage people

“A group becomes a team when each member is sure enough of himself and his contribution to praise the skills of the others.”

Norman Glass Shidle, The Art of Successful Communication

If you don’t let people know you’re pleased with them, they’ll wilt. People come to work for a whole raft of reasons – most, nothing to do with the money despite what they’ll tell you – and right there at the top of their unwritten, unspoken, undeclared list will be ‘Praise from the boss’. That’s you by the way, the boss.

They might call it ‘recognition’ or ‘acknowledgement’ or ‘feeling I’ve done well’ – but how do they know? They know because you tell them.

“Tell them they’re going to do good before they’ve done it.”

Now you can praise them retroactively, so to speak – wait until they’ve done good and then tell them they’ve done good – or you can encourage them in advance – active praise. Tell them they’re going to do good before they’ve done it. Why? Because the chances of them doing good are that much greater if you have praise them in advance. They won’t want to let you down, or themselves.

Being a manager is a minimalist’s dream. You want to build a great team and you want to so it with the smallest output of resources. Praise is free. It is instantly replaceable, doesn’t wear out, is invariably 100 per sent effective, is incredibly simple to do and takes no time at all.

So why don’t more managers do it? Because it takes self-assurance. You have to be feeling pretty good about yourself to be able to dish out praise well in advance. If you doubt yourself, you’ll doubt them. If you doubt them, you’ll not praise them because you’ll be sure they are going to screw up.

It takes nothing except courage to say, ‘Come on, you can do it. You’ll be fine.’ The more responsibility you give people, the more you trust them, the more you praise them, the more you encourage them, the more they’ll give you in return. Praise costs nothing and brings in loads. Encouragement should be a given.

Encourage an atmosphere where everyone encourages everyone else –
‘You can do it’ should be heard every day all around you. If you’re not saying it, chances are your team isn’t either. Encourage the good ones to give the less good ones a hand up. In any good team an air of fostering help should be actively encouraged and praise when it happens. We’re all in this together and we sink or swim together.

posted by Right Ranger @ 6:09 PM