Clear is kind: Part 2

The rule of thumb with praise is that if you can say it to a dog, it isn’t praise...

“Be so busy giving recognition to others that you don’t really need it for yourself” - Jim Rohn

In Part 1 I shared Kim Scott’s framework for being ‘radically candid’ to help us be more direct and clear with our communication.

For the most part, Radical Candor is seen as a method for effectively delivering critical feedback on performance and behaviours that are holding people back from doing their best work.

And there’s a good reason for that. As humans, we’re all pretty good at pointing out the mistakes people are making. We don’t need much help with that.

However, what comes less naturally to us is giving people praise for a job well done. 

If you can say it to a dog, it isn’t praise

Based on my work with hundreds of professionals, there are two major gaps when it comes to praise:

1. We don’t do anywhere close to enough of it

2. It feels good, but it’s rarely truly useful to the receiver