You will be able to give positive feedback specific enough that the person knows what to keep doing.
After a long project, your manager posts "Great job everyone, well done on the launch" in the team chat. People react with a thumbs-up and move on. A week later, you can't say what about your work was great, or whether anyone noticed the late nights you spent on data cleaning.
Vague praise is kind, but it does very little. It doesn't tell anyone what to do again, and people forget it as soon as they've read it. Specific praise takes perhaps another fifteen seconds to write (a rough estimate), and people remember it for months.
Positive feedback does more than make people feel good. Out of the hundred things someone did this week, it tells them which one worked, so they keep doing it.
Vague praise is generic approval such as "good job", "nice work", "well done" or "you're a star". None of these phrases says what worked. The person knows you are pleased but not why. Suppose they did ten things on the project and got "well done". They don't know which of the ten to repeat, so they may repeat none of them, or the wrong one.
Vague praise also sounds hollow if it is all someone ever hears from you. When every piece of work is "great", the word stops meaning anything.
Lesson 7.1, "Describe the behaviour, not the person", gives you the situation, behaviour, impact structure, and it works for praise as well as criticism. For situation, name when it happened. For behaviour, say what the person did in terms a camera could record. For impact, say what it made possible. Praise built this way is specific praise, and it tells the person exactly what to keep doing.
Take "Thanks Nabilah, great work on the launch." The specific version goes like this: for last week's launch, Nabilah checked every product code against the warehouse list two days before go-live and found the six that didn't match. Because of that, there were no failed orders on day one, and the team avoided a very messy week. Nabilah now knows to keep checking against source data before go-live. The message also shows that the manager noticed work that usually goes unseen, because nobody sees errors that didn't happen.
The same approach works for smaller moments. "Good presentation" becomes: starting with the client's own numbers on slide one got their CFO nodding before you'd made a single point. "Thanks for your help" becomes: walking me through the claims system on Monday meant I cleared the backlog by Wednesday instead of next week. "You're so good with clients" becomes: on yesterday's call, you summarised what Mr Goh wanted before answering, and Mr Goh visibly relaxed.
None of the specific versions is much longer than the vague one. What they take is having noticed something particular.
Give praise soon after the event, ideally the same day or week. If you save it for the year-end review, it has lost most of its use. By then the person can't connect it to what they did, and they have spent months not knowing it worked.
Where you give praise matters as much as when. Some people love public recognition in the team chat or at a meeting. Others find it awkward. This is more likely for people who are new, junior, or from a background where being singled out in front of peers feels uncomfortable. A shout-out that makes one person glow can make another want to disappear. You have three options:
If you don't know someone's preference, praise them privately first, in a direct message or a quick word after a meeting. Before you mention it publicly, you can ask, for example: "Can I mention this at the team meeting? Others could learn from it." Most people say yes when asked. They just don't like being surprised. Praise them to their manager. A two-line message to their boss, copied to them, that says what they did and what it led to can matter more than any public thank-you.
If a colleague only hears from you when something has gone wrong, they will tense up whenever you ask, "Can I give you some feedback?" If they also hear specific positive feedback from you regularly, they know you notice good work. They also know your criticism comes from someone who is paying attention rather than looking for faults.
Kim Scott's book "Radical Candor" describes caring personally while challenging directly. Specific praise is one of the clearest ways to show the caring-personally part.
None of this means using the feedback sandwich, where you hide criticism between two compliments. People see through it, and it makes them distrust the compliments. Give praise and criticism separately, each when it is due, so each one stands on its own.
Look back over the last week or two for moments when someone's work made yours easier or better. It might be a colleague who replied quickly, someone who caught a mistake, or a manager who explained a decision clearly. For each one, try to recall the exact thing they did and what changed because of it. If you can't remember the specific action, that shows how easily it goes unnoticed.
This week, send two pieces of specific positive feedback using situation, behaviour and impact.
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