Why Positive Feedback is a Super Powerful Business Strategy

Most people have figured out by now that positive feedback goes a long way toward building morale and motivating people to do their best.

So you pledge to do more

As a super busy leader or co-worker, you may be reflecting on your recent failure to offer up much positive feedback. You may truly appreciate the good work people are doing and pledge to thank people more and praise their accomplishments.

But even after pledging to give more positive feedback, your day to day challenges are still here… Your good intentions may or may not come to pass. You put the positive feedback conversations on back burner and rush into problem solving mode. Time slips away…

Positive feedback IS a business strategy

You may not have considered, however, is how potent positive feedback as a business strategy. It’s a way to meet challenges, solve problems and  produce great results.

Positive feedback identifies what works and why

People in your work setting are running around doing what they know from experience and what they think works best. The mix of actions comprising anyone’s job contains both effective and inefficient ways of doing things. When you call out what works and what is getting great results, you are making distinctions for people about what they should do more ofL “Great that you called that customer immediately to explain the issue,” “Great that you didn’t settle for our normal procedure and created a new one to address that problem,” etc.  The people who did these great things may not even realize HOW effective their actions were and WHY. You are not just praising them to make them feel good. You are analyzing for them, yourself, and others WHAT is more effective.

Positive feedback leads to innovation

It’s common that people do something a different way and that way is a good thing. But they may be clueless about that the full effects of their actions. Sometimes the difference they are making is amazing. You are in a position to recognize that hugely better results are occurring and a to communicate the breakthrough now available in your company’s products or processes! The history of American inventions is filled with “mistakes” people did that turned out to be golden opportunities for their company.

Beyond nicey nice

Positive feedback is so much more than patting people on the back. It’s a rational business strategy. And when you combine the positive effects of morale-building with business acumen, POW! It’s amazing.