You will be able to give specific positive feedback that tells someone what to keep doing.
At the end of a long project, your manager posts in the team chat: "Great job everyone, well done on the launch." People react with a thumbs-up and move on. A week later, you couldn't say what about your work was great, or whether the late nights on the data cleaning were noticed at all.
Praise like that is kind. It also does very little. It doesn't tell anyone what to do again, and it's forgotten as soon as it's read. Specific praise takes another fifteen seconds to write, and people remember it for months.
Positive feedback has a job beyond making people feel good. It tells them which of the hundred things they did this week was the one that worked, so they keep doing it.
"Good job" doesn't contain that information. Neither do "nice work", "well done" or "you're a star". The person knows you're pleased, but not why. If they did ten things on the project, they have no idea which one to repeat, so they may repeat none of them, or the wrong one.
Vague praise also starts to sound hollow if it's all someone ever hears. When every piece of work is "great", the word stops meaning anything.
The situation, behaviour, impact structure from lesson 7.1, Describe the behaviour, not the person, works just as well for praise. Name when, say what they did in terms a camera could record, and say what it made possible.
Before: "Thanks Nabilah, great work on the launch."
After: "Nabilah, for the launch last week, you checked every product code against the warehouse list two days before go-live. You found the six that didn't match, and because of that we had no failed orders on day one. That saved us a very messy week."
The second version tells Nabilah exactly what to keep doing: checking against the source data before go-live. It also tells her that her manager noticed a piece of work that's usually invisible, because nobody sees the errors that didn't happen.
A few more rewrites:
"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 "When you walked me through the claims system on Monday, I cleared my 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 he visibly relaxed."
The specific versions aren't longer by much. They just require you to have noticed something particular.
Give praise soon after the event, ideally the same day or week. Praise that arrives at the year-end review has lost most of its use, because the person can't connect it to what they did, and they've had months without knowing it worked.
Where you give it matters as much as when. Some people love public recognition in the team chat or at a meeting. Others find it awkward, especially if they're 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.
If you don't know which kind of person they are, give it privately first, in a direct message or a quick word after a meeting. You can always ask: "Would you mind if I mentioned this at the team meeting? I think others could learn from it." Most people say yes when asked. They just don't like being surprised.
Praising someone to their manager is another option, and often a powerful one. A two-line message to someone's boss, copied to them, describing what they did and its effect, can matter more than any public thank-you.
There's another reason to get good at specific praise. It makes your critical feedback easier to take.
If the only time a colleague hears from you about their work is when something has gone wrong, they'll start to tense up whenever you say "can I give you some feedback?". If they also hear specific positive feedback from you regularly, they know you notice the good work, and that your criticism comes from someone paying attention, not someone looking for faults. Kim Scott, in her book Radical Candor, describes this as caring personally while challenging directly. Specific praise is one of the clearest ways to show the first part.
This isn't the old "feedback sandwich", where you hide criticism between two compliments. People see through that, and it makes them distrust the compliments. Praise and criticism should each stand on their own, given separately, when they're due.
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's a sign of how easily it goes unnoticed.
Send two pieces of specific positive feedback this week using situation, behaviour and impact.
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