[toyg]

> A overly critical inner life can interpret it as “I like you as long as you are useful”

That's me after most praise: "you say you like me because the stuff I can do will help you, or because you have some unstated aim to take advantage of me, or because you don't know that it could have been so much better". I don't know when, but at some point any expectation of honesty in praise just went out of the window. Because of that, obviously, I also don't praise people as much as I should, because I expect they would react like I do - with obvious repercussions on social interactions.

The mind can be a right bitch.

[schneems]

I find some of the best advice for adults is found in advice for handling small children (I've got two kids).

The new research/trend is to try to praise behavior rather than outcomes (or in addition). The other bit is to focus on their actions instead of it's impact on you. For example "I'm proud that you won that baseball game" places the focus on me and on the outcome of winning. Versus "I saw you really focused out there in the outfield, I know getting distracted between bats is easy and you've come along way."

It's a very new way of speaking for me, but the more I practice it the more natural it comes. My family aims to "catch someone in praise" a few times a day. We also celebrate celebration. I.e. if I say something nice about someone, then they turn around and say "you get a point for giving a point."

> The mind can be a right bitch.

Too true :(

[JohnBooty]

This is really insightful and I'm going to try and do more of this!

    Versus "I saw you really focused out there 
    in the outfield, I know getting distracted 
    between bats is easy and you've come a
    long way."

A wise mentor told me a variation on this a long time ago. He mentioned that one of the most powerful things you can do is simply let somebody know that you recognize what they're doing or how they're struggling.

example: "I see you working on those reports! There are a million of them coming in every day, and you're cranking them all out yourself."

You don't even necessarily need to praise them, per se. (Although honest praise is of course very cool) Just the act of letting them know, and noticing is super powerful.

[rented_mule]

Agreed. For many, myself included, receiving praise for an outcome gets internalized as setting that outcome as the minimum bar. It applies more pressure. For some, they hear that the outcome is valuable and punish themselves psychologically for not achieving it sooner. For some, it's even more complicated than that.

A few years ago, I was managing the most impactful engineer I've ever been around (and I've seen a lot great engineers in my 30+ year career that included stints at several startups including my own, going through a a pretty big IPO, working at a FAANG as it came to dominate it's area, etc.). It was her first job and the team was stacked with high performers. We were directly responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenue. Three weeks into her career, everybody on the team was going to her when they couldn't figure things out. Just a phenomenal mind with a capacity for dealing with technical complexity and finding business value that I would have previously thought impossible. Of course that led to a lot of praise from me and everyone else. Every time I praised her for an outcome, she withdrew further, eventually getting to the point that she wouldn't say anything in one-on-ones other than short answers to direct questions. A few months in, the CEO (without telling any of us beforehand) used a slide from one of her design review presentations to inspire the company with the kinds of technical->business wins we were now achieving as a company - it devastated her, making her want to change careers. A month later, she tried to reject a significant salary increase.

Nine months in, she made (and corrected) a minor technical mistake. I mentioned it to her in our next one-on-one. As I did, she leaned forward and her eyes got big. She peppered me with questions until she understood my perspective on it from every angle. The more I spoke about it, the more she perked up. After seeing this response, I decided to try to find deeper "criticisms" to bring up with her. She was so good that it was HARD to find anything at all. Eventually I thought of what level she'd be at in ten years and framed things as "here are skills you have that you're not fully exploiting to be as impactful as you could be." It instantly turned our interactions inside out. She went from zero trust in me as her manager to complete trust in me as a life mentor in ~30 minutes.

Later I asked her why that worked and she said it was one of the few times in her life that she thought someone understood her faults and still valued her. It's just what you're saying about letting people know you see them and what they're doing, not just the outcomes they are a part of and how it affects you. I'm lucky to have learned so much about engineering, management, and life from my interactions with her.

One of my heroes, Fred Rogers, was very good at this 50+ years ago, saying things like "I like you just the way you are."

[pertymcpert]

My god she sounds like a force of nature. I'd feel so small next to her.

[rented_mule]

She absolutely is a force of nature. But she has a giant heart and is passionate about the entire team sharing in each others' successes and everyone being respected. The result is that the people around her feel like they are doing the best work of their career because they are a true team. People came away with a better understanding of what they are capable of, and not feeling small at all.

I'm retired now. I delayed my plans around retirement until she moved on. One of the few things that would pull me out of retirement would be the chance to be led by her on a team doing work I feel passionate about.

[tfigment]

You are not alone. I think it goes all the way back to high school or middle school for me. Its when you realize the gold star stickers were behavior manipulation or something and then see it everywhere.