A very close relative of feedback is praise and reinforcement. The feedback that
we talked about in the previous section is simply a matter of telling people when their performance
is off the track or on the track. The praise is the added ingredient that says, "Your performance is on the track." "You did a really good job." "I appreciate your work." "You're a pleasant person to work with." If you ask supervisors how to motivate an employee, many of them will immediately suggest that you give
that employee a raise.
The fact of the matter is most supervisors don't have enough control over wages
to use wages or money as a motivator. And besides that, research tells us that money is a motivator
only for short periods of time or only when work performance is directly connected to the wages.
In fact, in some places where wages are high and overtime pay is as much as $20 an hour, workers
sometimes refuse to work the extra hours because they would rather have the leisure time.
A powerful motivator that is within the reach of every supervisor is the use of
praise. One of the things learned from dealing with several thousand supervisors across the
United States is that deep down inside there really isn't much difference in people. Even the
toughest, crustiest workers, the ones you find in construction fields or coal mines, or on
the docks appreciate a word of praise for a job well done.
Praise needs to be honest; it should come from someone who understands the job,
and it doesn't need to be elaborate. A sentence will do. "That was a really fine job." "We can always depend on you." Sometimes it makes sense to let the employee know which part of the job you really liked. "I really appreciated the way you dealt with that crabby customer." "I appreciate all the effort that you made to meet the deadline."
Some supervisors are really fun to watch in operation. There are some who are
very skillful in creating a pleasant working atmosphere and one of the things they do is manage
to find a way to praise all of their employees. As you might guess, that can sometimes be a
challenge but you'll hear the supervisor telling an employee that they appreciate the fact
that they can count on them to be there every day. Or that it's really nice to know that they
can always count on "so and so."
Some will protest that they should not have to praise employees. "Isn't
it enough that we pay them for doing the job?" Well, it may be true that there isn't anything about praise in the union contract, or work agreement,
but if you learn to use praise skillfully, you'll get more performance for your dollar.
