The impact of faint praise

Dear Bob …

I just received an e-mail from my manager. Here’s the complete text:

Forwarded From:  Manager

To:  Staff

FYI

——————————————–

Forwarded From: CIO

To:  Managers

Please share with your team members.  Thank you.

——————————————–

From: CEO

To:  CIO

IS was the highest-rated division in the process segment of our Balanced Scorecard. Thanks!

My interpretation of the chain of e-mails is that the CEO is thanking the CIO for a significant achievement.  The CIO then passed the message to managers without comment.  And finally, my manager passed it on to staff with the message we get most often in e-mails from her… “FYI.”

Am I wrong to expect more from the CIO and manager?  Shouldn’t they add some sort of motivational thanks or something to the message as they pass it along?  Unfortunately, this is just one example of the routine communication coming down from above.  I can’t count the number of e-mails I get each month with nothing but “FYI” added.  It is a very demotivating environment.

– Disheartened

Dear Disheartened …

No, you aren’t wrong. But I’d like to contrast two perspectives of this situation: The view from “north” (leader) to “south” (staff) and the view from “south” to “north.”

North to south first: The most useful motivator in business is the desire for approval. Just about everyone values praise. It costs nothing to give. And so long as it’s meaningful – specific, a response to significant achievement, and sincere – it’s pretty durable as well.

Contrast “Please share with your staff,” and “FYI” with what the CIO could have said, in an e-mail sent directly to everyone in the IS division:

” I just received this message from the CEO. In case it isn’t entirely clear: The Balanced Scorecard is the set of measures everyone from the CEO on down uses to assess our performance as a company. It integrates financial and non-financial measures so we get a complete picture of how we’re doing.

I’ll share the whole Balanced Scorecard in another message, but I didn’t want to wait to share this news. It’s official. IS isn’t just doing a great job – the whole company recognizes that we’re doing a great job.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you, and every other member of the division for your efforts. My own role in making this happen is relatively small. It’s the management team, and even more it’s the dedicated, professional work performed by every member of the staff, that’s led to this outstanding result.

Take a moment to pat yourself on the back. You deserve it.”

I needed all of two minutes to compose this message. Of course, I write professionally – so triple it to estimate how long a competent CIO might have needed to achieve the same result. It would have been six minutes well-spent, providing positive motivation instead of the demotivating signal that the staff aren’t even worth the effort required to create a divisional distribution list.

That’s the view from north to south. From south to north it’s quite different.

The best way to determine who is leading whom is to see who is looking to whom for approval. To the extent approval from your management or its lack affects your motivation, that’s the extent to which you allow them to lead you. It’s a useful tool for them. From your perspective it makes you vulnerable to manipulation.

What I’d suggest is that you look at the situation more dispassionately. The nature of the communication you did and didn’t receive is useful information. It tells you the nature of the people to whom you report. They’re relatively ineffective leaders, poor communicators, have relatively poor manners, and don’t recognize that it’s staff-level employees who do all the actual important work.

That, in turn, tells you what you can expect in terms of respect, opportunity, and compensation. And that, in turn, should help you make appropriate career plans. If you have leadership aspirations of your own, take note of how to not communicate good news, too.

This doesn’t automatically mean you should plan your immediate departure, though. From the sound of things, it appears the CEO’s head is screwed on straight. And that suggests it might be worthwhile to wait things out in the hope that the CIO will be replaced by someone with better leadership skills.

– Bob