“Nice job” bounces off. “The way you handled that customer was smart” sticks. Notice details when you praise.

Vague praise is pleasant and weightless, because anybody could have said it without looking. A specific sentence carries something else inside it: proof that you were paying attention at the moment it happened. That is the part people keep, and it is why detail lands harder than enthusiasm.

Choose one person this week and tell them something only a witness could tell them. Name the actual thing: the pass they made with no time, the way they stayed calm with a rude customer, the paragraph in their essay that worked. It takes eight seconds and they will remember it for years.