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Why One Minute Praisings Work

“LET’S look at a few examples. Maybe then it will be clear to you why One Minute Praisings work so well.” “I’d like that,” said the young man.

“One example is when parents first help children learn to walk. Can you imagine standing a child up and saying, ‘Walk,’ and when he falls down you pick him up and spank him and say, ‘I told you to walk’?

“Instead, you stand the child up and the first day he wobbles a little bit, and you get all excited and say, ‘He stood, he stood!’ and you hug and kiss the child. The next day he stands for a moment and maybe wobbles a step, and you are all over him with kisses and hugs.

“Finally, the child, realizing that this is a pretty good deal, starts to stand on his legs more and more until he eventually walks.

“The same thing goes for teaching a child to speak. Suppose you wanted a child to say, ‘Give me a glass of water, please.’ If you waited until the child said the whole sentence before you gave her any water, the child would die of thirst.

“So you start off by saying, ‘Water, water.’ All of a sudden one day the child says, ‘Waller.’ You jump all over the place, hug and kiss the child, and get Grandmother on the phone so the child can say, ‘Waller, waller.’ That wasn’t ‘water,’ but it was close.

“Now, you don’t want a kid going into a restaurant at the age of twenty-one asking for a glass of ‘waller,’ so after a while you only accept the word ‘water’ and then you begin on ‘please.’ “These examples illustrate that the most important—and natural—thing to do to help people become winners is to catch them doing something approximately right in the beginning. Then you move on toward the desired result.” “So the key in the beginning,” the young man said, “is to catch somebody doing something approximately right until they can eventually learn to do it right.” “You’ve got it,” said the Manager. “By setting up a series of goals, they are establishing targets that can be more easily achieved.

“At work, and in life, too, you don’t have to catch a winner doing things right very often, because good performers catch themselves doing things right. But people who are learning benefit from praise and encouragement from others.” The young man asked, “Is that why you observe new people a lot in the beginning, or when your more experienced people are starting a new project?” “Yes. Most managers wait until people do something exactly right before they praise them. As a result, many people never get to become high performers because their managers concentrate on catching them doing things wrong—that is, anything that falls short of the final desired performance.” “That doesn’t sound like it would be very effective,” the young man suggested.

“It isn’t,” said the Manager.

“Sadly, that is what too many organizations do with new, inexperienced people. They welcome them aboard, take them around to meet everybody, and then leave them alone. Not only do they not catch the new people doing anything approximately right, but periodically they zap them just to keep them moving.

“This has been a popular management style for a long time. I call it the leave-alone-zap style. You leave a person alone, expecting good performance from them, and when you don’t get it, you zap them.” “What happens to these people?” asked the young man.

“If you’ve been in any organization, and I understand you’ve visited many, you know because you’ve seen them. They do as little as possible.” The young man laughed. “You’re right. I’ve seen it.” Then he added, “Working with that kind of a manager, you can understand why so many people don’t enjoy their work.” The Manager agreed. “That’s so true. And they’re also not engaged in what they’re doing or very interested in doing good work.” The young man said, “I’m beginning to see why the One Minute Praising seems to work so well. It’s certainly better than focusing only on what’s wrong.” Then he added, “It’s funny, but that reminds me of some friends of mine. They told me they had a new pet, and asked what I thought of their great idea for house-training the dog.” “I’m almost afraid to ask,” said the Manager. “How were they going to do it?” “They said if the dog had an accident on the rug, they were going to take the dog, shove his nose in it, pound him on the butt with a newspaper, and throw the dog out the open kitchen window into the backyard—where the dog was supposed to do his job.” The Manager laughed.

“Then they asked me what I thought would happen with this method. I laughed, because I knew what would happen—and it did.

“After about three days, the dog pooped on the floor and jumped out the window. The dog didn’t know what to do, but he knew he had better clear the area.” The Manager roared his approval.

“That’s a great story. Punishment doesn’t work when you use it with someone who’s learning.

“Rather than punish inexperienced people who are still learning, we need to re-direct them. That involves resetting clear One Minute Goals to make sure they understand what’s expected of them and what good performance looks like.” The young man asked, “So, after you have done that, do you try to catch them doing something approximately right again?” “Precisely. In the beginning you’re always trying to notice situations where you can give a legitimate One Minute Praising.” Then, looking the young man straight in the eye, the Manager said, “You are a very enthusiastic and receptive learner. That makes me feel good about sharing the Secrets of One Minute Management with you.” They both smiled. They knew a One Minute Praising when they heard one.

“I’d rather have a Praising than a Re-Direct,” the young man said. “I understand now why One Minute Goals and Praisings work. They make good sense.

“But why do One Minute Re-Directs work?”