Praise and horizontal culture
I had a recent workshop with the managers of one of the largest companies in Korea on the subject of praise and recognition culture.
At the beginning of the workshop, we asked the participants to discuss what praise was actually like in their workplace. Since these attendees had, on average, more than 10 or 20 years of experience as managers, their opinions were an accurate reflection of their corporate culture. On the whole, they agreed, there had been little to no praise in their workplace. We then asked them how often they personally had been praised and recognized, how their morale had been boosted, and what was stopping them from creating a praise culture.
Here is a summary of their responses:
1. The managers said that they could not provide enough praise to their employees because they did not have enough time. If you feel like you barely have enough time to get your own work done, taking time out of your day to praise your employees might feel like an unnecessary luxury. Thus, criticism was far more common than praise, as it was seen as being more necessary.
2. Sadly, the managers also said that they themselves were never praised or recognized. This means that they are actually unfamiliar with how to praise and how to be praised. As they do not know what it feels like to be praised, they cannot understand the positive impact that praise and recognition would bring.
3. Even worse, many of the mangers felt that their organizational culture implicitly devalued praise. There were several points made by their responses that supported this conclusion. (1) Their performance management system focuses on finding the flaws and shortcomings of their employees. (2) It is naturally taken for granted in their organization that it is the responsibility of supervisors and managers to find these flaws. However, praise is not a part of this responsibility.
These responses, among many others, helped clarify why they were not motivating and encouraging their employees using praise and positive feedback. Notice that these answers were not personal. Rather, the issues stemmed from structural and cultural problems of the organization as a whole. Thus, the culture was to blame, rather than specific managers who do not praise their employees.
We do not need to try to find additional materials to prove that praise and recognition are beneficial to corporations. What is most important is how to create the correct system. It is relatively easy to teach praise and recognition skills in isolation; however, it is much harder to fix an organization’s deep-rooted culture. Thus, organizations should make an effort to change their rigid top-down cultures simultaneously with teaching praise skills to their managers. Praise, then, is not just a tool in and of itself: it can be a bridge to a horizontal culture that fully utilizes the strengths and competencies of its employees. Therefore, this is one of the key concepts that Korean companies should focus on in order to be more globally competitive.