“The Power of Praise”
By: Justin Waggoner, Ph.D., Beef Systems Specialist
Praise is likely one of the most powerful tools in the toolbox of any manager, leader or educator. I recently came across a summary of a research project conducted by Elizabeth Hurlock, which illustrates the power of praise in the book “How Full is Your Bucket” by Tom Rath and Don Clifton. This experiment evaluated the subsequent math scores of students who received different types of feedback (control, praise, criticism, or ignored) regarding their work in the classroom. Initially, the math scores of students who were praised or criticized for their work were similar. However, by day five of the experiment, the relative improvement in the scores of students who were praised improved by 71%, while those that were criticized improved 19% and those that were ignored improved only 5%. What surprised me the most about this study was that it was conducted in 1925, 94 years ago. Praise is a powerful tool that can be used to motivate all of us to do what we do better and that should not be overlooked.
For more information, contact Justin Waggoner at jwaggon@ksu.edu.
