A second important lesson that I took away from my recent reading of Dale Carnegie's How To Win Friends and Influence People (HTWFIP) is to motivate people with praise and appreciation.
After considering a variety of things that motivate people, from food to sex, Carnegie concludes that praise and appreciation best feed a person's desire to feel important. 
The correlary here is that mere flattery does not have the same impact as genuine praise and appreciation.
Think for a moment about how genuine praise makes you feel. I'd be lying if I said I didn't appreciate it, yet I'm not nearly as generous with praise as I should be. If I don't praise as much as I'm praised, doesn't that mean that I think I'm better than other people? Since I'm clearly not, it means I need to give more praise.
So I'm thinking about the application of this rule in today's business world.
One implication seems to me to be that e-mail is generally a less personal way to communicate and as a result a less effective way to give praise and appreciation, especially to people you see regularly, like the employees in your office. This suggests taking time to express praise and appreciation in person. When sending positive feedback by e-mail, it makes sense that it be specific to make it feel as genuine as you intended it to be.
A second aspect I see comes as much from working recently with OC Tanner, perhaps the worlds largest employee recognition company, is that a small gift can go a long way toward giving recognition real meaning. If the boss backs up praise with even a modest gift, it gives the praise deeper meaning.
Another thing that I've been thinking about without a lot of success for on-line businesses is to consider ways to communicate appreciation to customers. Typically, I receive a receipt from on-line merchants that includes a pro forma "thank you" but I rarely feel appreciated. How do you think on-line merchants can better express appreciation to their customers?
I agree completely. It's such a small thing and so easy to do, yet it's amazing how few people take the little extra time to praise people for their good work.
Posted by: Darren Johnson | March 25, 2007 1:22 AM | Permalink to Comment