“Good job” fades by dinner. “That pass under pressure was smart” can stick for years.
LEADERSHIP
WHAT THIS MEANS
General praise is pleasant and weightless, because it could have been said to anybody about anything. Specific praise proves you were actually watching, and it tells the person which part of what they did was the good part, which means they can do it again on purpose. That is why one sentence about a particular moment outlives a hundred cheerful ones.
Pick somebody this week and tell them something exact: the choice they made, the moment, why it worked. It costs about ten extra seconds of thinking. Watch how differently that lands compared with the praise you usually hand out.
A QUESTION TO SIT WITH
What exactly did someone do well that you never named aloud?
MORE IN LEADERSHIP & INFLUENCE
- Kids remember the counselor who sat with them when they couldn’t sleep, not the one who ran the best game.
- Leadership starts with leading yourself: doing what you told yourself you’d do, even when nobody’s checking.
- The older scout who teaches knots to the new kid ends up knowing them better than anyone.
Free, with nothing to buy inside it.