“Praise in Public, Criticize in Private” is Bad Advice
Just Because Everyone Says It Doesn’t Mean It’s True
It’s often said that the more we hear something, the greater our tendency to believe it. It’s called the illusory truth effect and it preys on our availability bias, that human tendency where we associate the importance of something with how easily we can remember it. If you read the news or spend any time on social media, you’ve no doubt seen the effects. As different ideas and statements become more familiar to people, they stop questioning them and adopt them as facts.
Management’s not immune to this tendency either, with one of the prime offenders being the oft-repeated trope, “praise in public, criticize in private.” It’s fairly self-explanatory, but if you’ve never heard it, it’s the belief that managers should always give people praise in public while saving criticism for private conversations.
It’s catchy and somewhat intuitive, so it’s not surprising that it’s frequently repeated as a management rule. And yet, it’s wrong. Here’s why.
Don’t Praise in Public… Praise as People Prefer to Receive It
I recently saw a story where a French company tried to reward one of its employees with a ride in a fighter jet. It sounds like fun, yet this employee had…
