I like to read a lot. Next to all the fiction novels, I typically go back and forth between technical and more leadership books. The last book at book about leadership I’m going through is ‘Leadership is language’ by L. David Marquet, author of ‘Turn the ship around!’.
There are a lot of take aways from this book, but today I want to focus on one aspect that resonated with me:
Appreciate, don’t evaluate.
As people, including myself, we kind of struggle with giving other people appreciation for their work. We either forget to do it or when there is acknowledgement, it is typically brief. An example from the book that you maybe recognize yourself:
“Great job! Now here’s what I’d change . . .”
Not only is the acknowledgement brief, it is immediately followed by criticism.
David explains that their are several problems with this kind of ‘celebration’:
- It does not rest long enough on the accomplishment.
- It does not invite the person to tell their story, including any struggles involved, or what they might see as the next steps.
- It does not unearth any useful observations.
- It comes from a place of authority rather than collaboration.
- The celebration is done for someone, not with them.
Celebrate with someone, not for someone
Celebration for happens, when I as the appreciation giver, celebrates the good feelings your work gives me. The reward of the work transfers from the person to us. This kind of celebration typically comes in the sense of a ‘praise’:
“I’m so proud of you!”
It is I who is feeling proud. For the target person, it makes the motivation extrinsic not intrinsic. David points out that this kind of praise encourages a people-pleasing mentality.
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He invites us to instead of celebrating for someone, we should celebrate with someone. We should appreciate, not evaluate; observe, not judge; and prize, not praise.
Celebrating with is done by describing what you have observed and signaling appreciation for the behaviors. Some examples from the book:
- “I see that you’ve organized the presentation into three sections—I’ve got your points organized in my head now.”
- “It looks like the product will launch on time. Your team has done the coordination with all the departments.”
- “I saw that the proposal went out yesterday. Thank you. That will allow the client to look at it before the weekend.”
The concept is simple: just describe the action and how that made things better. However while trying to apply this myself, it turns out not to be easy. It requires careful consideration to be as specific as possible and leave judgment and evaluation out. At first it even felt somewhat strange because I had the (wrong) feeling that I was diminishing the level of appreciation I wanted to show.