Finding the good

We need to catch people doing things right. What is right? Is it perfection? If you get 80% on a test – is that right? Is it good even though it is not perfect? What if the usual was 55%, but today the score improved to 70%; is that good? I think most would offer praise, which of course would be the right thing to do. If you were critical of the missed marks in these examples, you probably shouldn't be reading this blog.

The weird thing is that in the workplace, we do criticize in the gap between right and perfection. Instead of recognizing what is good, or right, we magnify the areas that are less than perfect. The reasoning: calling that which is not perfect, "good," is not doing my job. If my boss knew that I was providing positive recognition for this, that is less than perfect, he would think I don't understand the standard.

The reality: it will never be perfect!

If you recognize everything, or every part that is right (good), those that did the work will try harder than ever to bring the remaining parts to good, usually without you ever having to mention them. They will just want more of that praise and will work harder than ever to receive it.

Not being able to find something good says more about you the leader than it does about anyone else.

Finding the good

Are you going to re-enforce that behaviour?

I was sitting beside a college while he was reading his email. He nudges me with his elbow to get me to look at a message from one of his managers and with pride says, "Look at that quick response!" He was proud of the quick reaction of his manager and wanted to brag a little about it. It is a natural tendency to feel good when our people perform well and to want others to know about it.

He seemed to be moving on to other messages, so I asked him how he was going to re-enforce that behaviour.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"You are clearly happy with what he has done, so don't you want to recognize it so that it is repeated?" I clarified.

He immediately started to type an enthusiastic reply to the original message while reading aloud his positive, complimentary words as he typed.

I realize that this is really quite basic, but at the same time, it is often overlooked. The premise of the book "Whale Done!," (Authors: Ken Blanchard, Thad Lacinak, Chuck Tompkins, Jim Ballard) is that we will achieve desired performance more rapidly if we only reward good performance and completely ignore bad or negative behaviour.

I'll bring it home for illustration. If my daughter helps around the house, I provide positive recognition. If she does not, I say nothing and do not show any disapproval. I focus my attention on her subjects with good marks, and completely ignore those that are not satisfactory.

I have to admit that this is hard, primarily because of the way we are taught. The world generally does not work like this. You aren't pulled over by a police officer and rewarded because they were driving the speed limit.

If . . . when, we spend the majority of our time catching people doing things right, I believe that we will achieve performance and results beyond what we even thought was possible.

Which behaviours have you been re-enforcing?

Are you going to re-enforce that behaviour?