Six steps to P-R-A-I-S-E people for great performance

William Shakespeare rightly remarked that Our praises are our wages. We people are all
emotional beings. So every individual needs recognition and appreciation for doing good work.
When people feel respected, valued they deliver great performance. Research says that
emotional state of individual is linked to the quality of the work. When we praise an individual
then brain secretes hormones such as serotonin and oxytocin these chemical substance works
as good feel factors which in turn helps an individual in improving the quality of work. Therefore,
recognize people contribution by praise.
Mark Twain rightly commented that I can live for two months on a good compliment. That
means when you praise people it will have longer impact on people performance. so people
leaders should sincerely and regularly praise his people for the good work, people will be
motivated, engaged and deliver great results. Praising people costs nothing but does
everything. So lets see below six steps to P-R-A-I-S-E people for great performance.
P-Pinpoint
First step to praise your people is to catch them doing things right and while you praise you
need to be very specific you need to pinpoint their right behaviors, efforts, actions, results
delivered, in specific situation or incident, or about productivity for instance instead of saying
you have done great job or you have done great presentation, or you are good at customer
relationship, you are good at negotiation, you are great worker etc. you can be more precise,
specific and pinpoint for example you can say you have closed 98% of customer issues in first
contact ,you made effective use of Gantt and PERT charts in your presentation ,you can say
you have maintained 100% accuracy under tight deadlines, without instructions you have
negotiated lower rates with important vendors ,you come to work 15 minutes early each day.
When you pinpoint actions and behaviors then employee sees that specific behaviors are
noticed and appreciated, he or she will feel good and work harder and continue to do those
things again and again to deliver better results every time.
R-Recognize
Second step to praise your people is to recognize their contribution by praise. When you
observe productive behaviors of your team member recognize their efforts and behaviors in
particular incident for instance you can say your negotiated agreements that resulted in 2 new
projects for company. Your contributed workplace improvement ideas that saved the department
$5000., You never raise your voice no matter what the circumstances, you always respond to
provocations with calm and grace. When employee receives this sort of recognition for his/her
work from the manager. Then your team member become more committed and highly engaged.
It is the responsibility of the manage to monitor the performance and behaviors of the team and
recognize the good work, offer appreciation and feedback regularly to perform better every day.
A-Appreciate
Third step to praise your people is to appreciate and acknowledge good quality of team
member, be grateful for their efforts and actions. Thank your employees when they do good
work whether its one-on-one in person, in the town hall meeting, in a group meeting, on
voicemail, in a written thank-you note, on email or at the end of each day at work.
Prof Jeffrey Pfeiffer of Stanford university commented: creating a fun, challenging, and
empowered work environment in which individuals are able to use their abilities to do
meaningful jobs for which they are shown appreciation is likely to be a more certain way to
enhance motivation and performance even through creating such an environment may be
difficult and take more time than simply turning the reward lever. Similarly, H. Jackson Brown Jr.
said Dont forget, a persons greatest emotional need is to feel appreciated. Appreciation
provides happiness, job satisfaction, increases engagement and decreases attrition
I-immediate
Fourth step is to praise your people immediately when you Catch them doing things right. if you
noticed your team member has done any good work no matter whether it is small or big task
immediately praise them. One should not hesitate or delay or miss the opportunity to appreciate.
The impact immediate appreciation will be huge on the team member on other hand if you delay
it will lose the importance and value. So leader should not wait till monthly meeting or midyear
review or yearend review to offer praise, the more timey is it the more relevant it becomes. So
dont wait for the perfect moment whenever you observe right behaviors or actions immediately
praise them and this can improve the performance of employees
S-Sincere
Fifth step is to praise your people sincerely. When you observed any positive productive
behaviors of your team members praise him or her immediately and sincerely. Sincerity is the
quality of being open and truthful. If you praise people with sincerely, seriously and genuinely
your people will believe you. Being sincere and honest help your team members trust on you
and helps you to build a strong relationship. Your people can make out if you just praise them
just for heck of it. So You need to be very sincere and genuine in your praise otherwise it will be
counter effective
E-Encourage
Last step is to encourage your team member every time, give them support, courage and hope.
Help them to realize their aspiration to accomplish their goals and dreams. Encourage your
team to take more challenging responsibilities, encourage and support them in preparation and
implementation of personal development plans, encourage them to broaden their knowledge
and experience. Make their life easy and help them to develop life skills and competencies.
Always encourage your team members even when things are not going well. As there is a
saying A word of encouragement during a failure is worth more than an hour of praise after
success. Praise and encourage are very important to improve the performance as rightly
remarked by Jerome Fleishman, Most of us, swimming against the tides of trouble the world
knows nothing about, need only a bit of praise or encouragement and we will make the goal.
So encouragement is very essential to bring out best performance
Summary of P-R-A-I-S-E
In nut-shell to praise people first catch them doing right things and pinpoint their productive
behaviors, recognize their contributions, appreciate and acknowledge their efforts and results
immediately without any delay and sincerely praise the good work and at last encourage them
by providing with the right opportunity for learning and development, encourage people to take
more responsibility, encouraging and supporting them preparation and implementation of career
development plans and broadening their knowledge and experience . Even non-financial
recognition has greater impact on people for long term by praising and valuing employees you
will witness superior performance and excellent results. Oprah Winfrey rightly said The more
you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.
Source: People Matters