[javajosh]

>Recognizing people's successes and what they are doing well is a 1000% more effective than harping on what people have messed up

Yes, this is (verifiably) true. One must be aware, however, that positive feedback is usually going to be ineffective, thanks to natural "regression to the mean" effects, elucidated wonderfully in this Veritasium video[1].

(The point, in the end though, is that performance is going to statistically improve if people do worse than average, and do worse if they do really well, regardless of the feedback you give them", which is called "regression to the mean". The net effect is that you might get a false positive for negative feedback, and a false negative for positive feedback if you don't account for the natural tension that brings everything back to average.)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tSqSMOyNFE