Praise

The following story is an excerpt from Bob Stone's book Ostentatious Time-Wasting: Tales from the White House, Pentagon, and City Hall and is posted here with the author's kind permission.

My first supervisory job at the Pentagon was directing analysis of manpower issues in the military. I supervised three analysts — two senior military officers and a civilian. The military analysts were terrific and needed no supervision; the civilian was new, and I hadn't made up my mind yet about her. She stumbled on her first assignment. I thought perhaps she had made some careless error. On her next assignment, she showed real talent and tenacity. I thought about telling her what a fine job she had done on an important paper for the Secretary of Defense.

But on second thought, I worried that such praise would encourage her to be less careful and diligent on future assignments. I didn't know the lingo at the time, but I was a Theory X manager, one who believes that the best results come from coercion and control of workers, and that praise only weakens the manager's authority.

So I never gave her any indication that I thought she had done a bang-up job. This was forty-six years ago, and I'm embarrassed and regretful to this day.

Over the years, I learned more about dealing with people and became more forthcoming with praise. But it was twenty years later when the impact of praise imprinted on my heart. Susan Valaskovic, my assistant at the reinventing government project, urged me to organize my office, which was filled with piles of papers. I needed to act on some of the papers, I needed to send some to staff, and I hadn't decided what to do with piles of others.

I bristled at Susan's suggestion, but she persisted, as she always did.

She had a system that started by gathering up all the piles and stacking them on my desk. Then she handed me papers, one at a time, for me to handle. Either I made a decision on it, sent it to a staffer to handle, or designated it for action on a specified date. The work was tedious, and I was unhappy.

But just a few minutes in, Susan said, "Gee, Bob, you have a real knack for this."

I perked up-just a little. Then, a few minutes later, "You're doing great."

Then, "This is going really well."

Then, "Bob, you're doing a terrific job."

In retrospect, I realize this was the way one gets an infant to eat strained spinach, but at the time, the repeated words of praise made me feel better about this unpleasant job and spurred me on to finish it. If praise was good, then extravagant praise was better. I learned the lesson. My final lesson about praise came from Alan K. Collins, a life coach that Morley Winograd, my boss at the White House, brought in to help the reinventing government leadership team become better team players and better leaders. My first assignment from Alan was to write down what a typical day looked like.

I reported that I tried to praise someone's work every day.

Alan wasn't impressed. He surprised me. "Don't praise people. That's about you! It only applies to their relationship with you. Instead, you should help them see their own greatness, help them see the results of their great actions."

I caught on instantly. When Jean Logan helped the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to speed up decision making on drug approval requests, I didn't tell her, "Good job." I engaged her in a conversation about how many lives would be saved through her action.

It had only taken me twenty years to progress from "praise corrupts" to "help them see their greatness."

Bob Stone practices revolution by storytelling. An MIT-educated engineer, he spent twelve years at the Pentagon strengthening bureaucracy, and then twelve years dismantling it. As Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Installations, he radically decentralized authority, cut regulations, and started a quality revolution. He then spent six years at the White House leading the effort to reinvent government, the most successful federal government reform effort ever. He's lectured at dozens of universities, and advised or taught mid-career government executives all over the US and in Europe and the Middle East.