Props: Giving Your Team Positive Feedback

Why you need to spend time on positive feedback + a quick way to work feedback into your team meetings

Less-Radical Candor

I’m a big fan of Radical Candor, but I think it gets one thing wrong. In it’s rush to encourage feedback, it doesn’t spend enough time on positive feedback. It praises “obnoxious aggression,” as better than what it calls “ruinous empathy.” This is bad because, according to the Harvard Business Review, the optimal praise-to-criticism ratio is about 5.6 to 1.

I’ve written about coaching and it’s importance before, and I believe in continuous feedback — there’s nothing worse than saving your feedback 6 or 12 months for a performance review. I also think it can sometimes be easier to give feedback that’s perceived as negative than it is to give positive feedback.

If someone on your team does something you don’t agree with or makes a mistake that affects you, you notice. If someone does something well, everything keeps humming along and you may not even notice, or if you do you may be too busy and distracted to say something.

So yes, embrace Radical Candor and give more feedback. But make sure that if you do this you’re also getting A LOT of positive feedback in.

Props: Upping the Praise Dial

I stole one tradition from Facebook and brought it to Quill: Props. It’s easy.

Once a week (or more), make time in your team meeting for people to give each other “props.” Props means the person did a good job on something, or went above and beyond. It’s a way of giving recognition.

I like it for a few reasons:

1. It reminds me to reflect on the week and note anything that I forgot to mention earlier, or that I want to mention again in front of the team.
2. Props is an open floor, so anyone can give someone else a shout out. Because life at a small start-up is hectic, I often learn about things for the first time at props.
3. By making it part of the schedule, it means we don’t forget to do it.

Each week, we end our Friday team meeting with props. Ending the week with props allows everyone to go into the weekend thinking good things, but you can definitely do it at other times too.

When you start, you’ll probably need to make a list and go first to encourage the team to do so. People will quickly catch on though; there’s never been a week where I was the only one to give props. Last week, someone on my team even made a #props slack channel so that we can do them more frequently.

So that’s it, easy. Bonus points if your props are specific, as that makes them more meaningful and memorable.

Building A Wall (Of Praise): Other Ways of Giving Positive Feedback

I’ve experimented and seen others do positive feedback in several other effective ways too. Props is useful, but it shouldn’t be the only time you give people positive feedback. So here are some other ideas.

Now’s when I admit I’m being a little unfair to Radical Candor because it does mention asking people how they like to hear positive feedback, which is great advice. If someone hates being recognized in front of the team, then make sure you give them ample private recognition too. Send them an email, or a slack message, or tell them in your one on one. If someone enjoys receiving something tangible, write them a thank you note or get them a small gift. If someone works a number of extra hours, think about giving them a bonus day off. A manager did this for me at Facebook once, and I still remember it now.

One clever tradition another team at Facebook had involved small rubber ducks. They kept boxes of them on hand (you can get 100 for $35 on Amazon), and anytime someone on the team wanted to recognize someone else, they were free to give the person a duck. I like this because it’s a visual reminder — you can put it on your desk and feel the happy feelings that come with positive feedback whenever you see it.

Another great idea from one of my teammates at Quill is even simpler.

When you want to recognize someone, write what they did on a post-it and put it on a “praise wall.”

For Quill, we’re going to do this with our values, which we recently printed, but you could just as easily designate part of your space the “praise space” and put them there. What matters is that people are recognized.

So go do props, and buy some ducks or find some post its. I’m sure there are many more ideas out there — how do you give positive feedback? Let me know in the comments. And if you’re interested in coaching, you can find me at The Leadership Team.